At Brown

Halloween on Wriston

Faculty, staff and students are invited to bring their children to celebrate Halloween on Wriston Quad on Friday, Oct. 29, from 4:30-6:30 p.m. The event, sponsored by the Greek Council, includes candy searches, haunted houses and cookie decorating.

Awards and Honors

John Donoghue, chair of the Department of Neuroscience, has won a 2004 Discover Magazine Innovation Award for his role in creating a neuroprosthetic device to restore independence to the paralyzed.

The system, called BrainGate, allows control of a computer using only movement commands from the brain. BrainGate is based on Donoghue's research at Brown and was developed by Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems Inc, a company headquartered in Foxborough, Mass., that Donoghue co-founded in 2001. Early results from a pilot study show that a quadriplegic can read e-mail, control a TV and do other tasks with the system.

According to Discover, Innovation Awards are given to people "whose pioneering vision, belief, and determination propelled the frontiers of biotechnology and medicine." Donoghue won in the neuroscience category. The Henry Merritt Wriston Professor and director of Brown's Brain Science Program, he accepted the award Oct. 14 at the TED MED conference in Charleston, S.C.

Two members of the faculty have been awarded Fulbright Scholar grants for 2004-05 to study international and cultural issues. Susan Bernstein, associate professor of comparative literature, and P. Terrance Hopmann, professor of political science, are among approximately 800 U.S. faculty and professionals who will travel abroad to some 140 countries during the 2004-2005 academic year through the Fulbright Scholar Program.

In addition, Talal Wehbe, assistant professor in languages and translation at the University of Balamand in Tripoli, Lebanon, and Luis Nuno Valdez Faria Rodrigues, assistant professor of history at the Higher Institute of Labor and Business Studies in Lisbon, Portugal, will be visiting scholars at Brown this year. They are among a similar number of international scholars receiving awards to come to the United States, primarily as researchers.

Bernstein will travel to Germany to conduct research at the Technical University of Berlin for an upcoming book, tentatively titled "Housing Problems: Writing and Building in Goethe, Walpole, Poe and Freud." From March through July 2005, she will investigate the relationship between building and writing, working in collaboration with Suzanne Doppelt, an avant-garde Parisian photographer whose work will illustrate Bernstein's book. Bernstein's work at Brown has focused on German, French and English literature from the 18th century to the present, romanticism, music history and literary theory.

Currently on sabbatical as a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., Hopmann will spend March through July 2005 at the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna, where he will lecture on international relations, conflict and conflict resolution, and security studies. He will also write a book based on his 30 years of research on the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe, a regional security organization based in Vienna, focusing on its role since 1992 in preventing, managing and resolving conflicts in the former Soviet states of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Balkans.

Ninni Jacob has been named a fellow of the Health Physics Society, an award that is presented to senior members of the society who have made significant administrative, educational and/or scientific contributions to the profession of health physics.

Jacob, who is a radiation safety officer with Brown's Department of Environmental Health and Safety, has been active with the organization for more than 20 years. Jacob has served on its board of directors and was president of its New England chapter. Jacob also was one of the organization's delegates who attended the International Radiation Protection Association Congress held in Madrid this past May.

Ken Miller, professor of biology, is the recipient of a Friend of Darwin Award, presented by the National Center for Science Education. The presentation of a plaque was made on campus Oct. 13. The award honors Miller for his support of evolution and science education, and for service to the center, which describes itself as "a nationally recognized clearinghouse for information and advice to keep evolution in the science classroom and 'scientific creationism' out."

People

As of Jan. 1, John Sedivy will be the new chair of the Department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry. Sedivy, a professor who came to Brown in 1996, takes over for Susan Gerbi, who founded the department 10 years ago. Michael McKeown, professor of medical science, is serving as interim chair.