Success at SIGGRAPH

Wenjin Zhou (left), a graduate student in computer science, received first place in the Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM) Student Research Competition at the 2006 SIGGRAPH conference. Her award-winning presentation, Perceptual Coloring and 2-D Sketching for Segmentation of Neural Pathways, uses scientific visualization to help doctors understand and analyze white matter structures within the human brain.

Zhou, with co-authors Peter G. Sibley, Song Zhang, David F. Tate, and David H. Laidlaw, have developed BrainApp, an application to visualize the geometric disparity between white matter tracts obtained from DT-MRI data by coloring in perceptually uniform color space.

Of the 179 posters accepted by the SIGGRAPH conference, 70 were designated as entries in the student research competition. Of those entries, 25 were selected for presentation at the conference with jurors selecting five semi-finalists for a final presentation.

Magazine honors Cu-Uvin

Ladies' Home Journal recently honored Susan Cu-Uvin, M.D., associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology, as one of seven recipients of its first Health Breakthrough Awards. The award honors leading medical professionals who have helped women and families. Cu-Uvin founded the world's first menopause clinic for women with AIDS or HIV infection.

"I worried about my female patients who were also in our regular HIV program," Cu-Uvin told the magazine. "As they got older they would ask, 'Will menopause be worse for me than for someone who doesn't have HIV?'" Such questions were Cu-Uvin's impetus to establish the clinic, which now serves 145 HIV-positive women from Rhode Island and Massachusetts, age 40 and older, and will follow them, and future patients, for life.

New administrators on campus

Several administrative positions were filled over the summer:

Katherine Bergeron (left, at Opening Convocation), professor and chair of Brown's Department of Music, is the new dean of the College, Brown's highest undergraduate academic officer. Her responsibilities include the curriculum, academic advising, international programs, and instruction. The dean reports directly to the provost and is a member of the University's senior academic administration.

"I have been so inspired by the students I have come to know during my short time here," Bergeron said when her appointment was announced in mid-June. "They have more passion, more creativity, and a greater zeal for learning than any I have ever taught. I am thrilled to be able to serve them as dean of the College, and to play a part in President Simmons' ambitious plan to shape the future of Brown undergraduate education."

Bergeron succeeds Paul Armstrong, who served as dean of the College for five years and now returns to full-time teaching and scholarship as a professor of English.

Professor Greg Crawford is the new dean of engineering. He succeeds Clyde Briant, the Otis E. Randall University Professor who became the University's new vice president for research on July 1.

Crawford, a member of the Division of Engineering's Electrical Sciences and Computer Engineering group, joined the Brown faculty ten years ago. Previously, he was a researcher at Xerox PARC.

As the new dean, he hopes to build on the division's interdisciplinary strengths and entrepreneurial attitude. "I like to emphasize social responsibility and awareness of purpose, with the underlying philosophy that engineering is a helping profession much like education and medicine. I strongly believe we can ill-afford to train engineers in a narrow way," he wrote recently, adding, "the book Engineering of 2020 boldly proclaims that the engineering degree will become the liberal arts degree in the future – a notion that I strongly believe in.



Flora Keshgegian has joined the University as its new faculty ombudsperson.

In announcing the appointment, Ann Dill associate professor of sociology and of gender studies, and chair of the Faculty Executive Committee, described the new position as "an impartial, neutral dispute resolution practitioner whose major function is to provide confidential and informal assistance to members of the faculty."

Keshgegian, who reports to President Ruth J. Simmons, said that her goal is to help clarify, mediate, or resolve issues that sometimes arise over such things as tenure decisions or resource allocation. She will offer an unbiased approach to solving problems, and though she has no authority to overturn decisions, her position does have the power for inquiry.

The position of ombudsperson is a new one, arising from 2003 discussions about faculty governance.

Keshgegian was an associate chaplain at Brown before assuming a faculty position at the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest in 1999.  She has most recently been a visiting professor at Stonehill College, and she is a visiting scholar at Brown's Pembroke Center.

She can be reached by e-mail at Ombuds@brown.edu or at Flora_Keshgegian@brown.edu and by phone at 863-6469.



Barbara Stallings, a political economist who specializes in the field of international development, is the new Howard R. Swearer Director of the Watson Institute for International Studies.

As director, Stallings provides intellectual leadership and strategic direction to the Watson Institute's research and teaching on contemporary global issues. She succeeds Thomas J. Biersteker, who headed the Institute for the last 12 years.

"The world today faces daunting problems of poverty, environmental degradation, and conflict," said Stallings, the William R. Rhodes Research Professor of International Relations. "I look forward to leading the Watson Institute's work, bringing academics and policy-makers together to analyze these problems and propose solutions."

Before joining the Watson Institute in 2002, Stallings was director of the Economic Development Division of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean in Santiago, Chile. She was previously professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she also served as director of the Global Studies Research Program, director of the Latin American Studies Program, and associate dean of the graduate school.

Thompson Webb III, professor emeritus of geological sciences, is the recipient of this 2006 Distinguished Career Award from the American Quaternary Association. The letter nominating Webb noted his " innovative research and leadership that helped establish strong interlinkages between Quaternary paleoecology and paleoclimatology, and between the proxy-data and modeling communities. His synoptic perspective helped transform Quaternary paleoecology from a site-oriented discipline to one characterized by a stronger datasharing and interdisciplinary collaboration. Indeed, it helped propel the entire Quaternary field toward greater interaction along these lines."

Two members of the Brown community recently were named recipients of special fellowships.

Tracy Breton, visiting professor of English, is among the ten recipients of Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism. A reporter for the Providence Journal, Breton will use her fellowship to examine the abuse, neglect, and exploitation of elderly people with mental health issues in Rhode Island, particularly in how the state is meeting the needs of its elderly residents as compared to other states and countries.

Graduate student Ann Harleman received the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts fiction fellowship for 2006. The fellowship, awarded through a blind panel selection process, is based solely on the artistic merit of the works submitted Harleman is the author of Happiness, a collection of short stories which won the Iowa Short Fiction Award; Bitter Lake, a novel, and a second story collection, Thoreau's Laundry.

"Echolocating Big Brown Bats Shorten Interpulse Intervals When Flying in High-Clutter Environments," a paper written by graduate student Anthony Petrites, won the Best Student Paper Award in Animal Bioacoustics at the June meeting of the Acoustical Society of America.

National Alliance for the Mentally Ill presented its 2006 Exemplary Psychiatrist of the Year Award to Linda Carpenter, M.D., director of the Mood Disorders Program at Butler Hospital and associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown Medical School. The award recognizes outstanding psychiatrists for their support of the organization's mission, education, and excellent clinical care.

George Lamming (left), visiting professor of African studies, received the Du Bois Memorial Medal September 19 in Paris. The award, part of the 50th anniversary of the First International Congress of Black Writers and Artists, is co-sponsored by UNESCO, Harvard's W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Research, and Presence Africaine. The event was held at the Sorbonne.

Music Librarian Edwin Quist is one of five Rhode Islanders named Newport Ambassador by the Newport County Convention and Visitors Bureau. The designation is part of a new campaign to honor people who bring convention business to Newport. Quist is responsible for attracting the Music Library Association's national convention to Newport in February 2008.

Brown University's health promotion programs earned the University a Superior Workplace Award from the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce. The awards were presented last May at the annual Worksite Health Awards Breakfast sponsored by the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Rhode Island, and the Worksite Wellness Council of Rhode Island. The breakfast is where employers across the state are recognized for successful health promotion and wellness initiatives designed to promote healthy behaviors among their workforces.

Associate Professor of Community Health Melissa Clark received a $10,000 grant from the Lesbian Health Fund, a program of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, for her project titled "Planning for Our Health and Economic Future: Experiences of Legally Unmarried Middle-Aged and Older Women."

Michael J. Lysaght (left), professor of medical science (research) and director of Brown's Center for Biomedical Engineering, is the new president of the American Society of Artificial Internal Organs (ASAIO). Founded in 1953, ASAIO is the oldest and largest learned society covering the field of substitutive medicine.

A grant to the Cogut Center for the Humanities from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has enabled the center to bring Sherine Hamdy and Michael Rohlf to the center as postdoctoral fellows. They will teach one class per semester and will participate in the weekly Fellows' Seminar series to discuss their research and that of the Faculty and Graduate Fellows.

Hamdy, an expert in the modern Middle East, culture and science, and comparative bioethics, received her doctorate in anthropology from New York University this past spring. Her dissertation, Our Bodies Belong to God: Islam, Medical Sciences and Ethical Reasoning in Egyptian Life, addresses questions of science, medicine, bioethics, and Islam.

Rohlf received his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania in December 2004. He is a specialist in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, with additional interests in ethics, aesthetics, and the history of modern philosophy, especially German Idealism. His dissertation, Kant on the Unity of Reason, analyzes Kant's conception of reason and what is at stake in Kant's claim that theoretical and practical reason are ultimately manifestations of one and the same cognitive faculty operating on a common principle.