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April 2008

April People Notes

Frank Ackerman, research and policy program director at the Global Development and Environment Institute (GDAE), presented a paper he co-wrote on the economics of climate change at a panel of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in February. The paper, "Implications of REACH for Developing Countries," written with co-authors Liz Stanton, research fellow at GDAE; Brian Roach, research associate at GDAE; and Anne-Sofie Andersson, researcher at the International Chemical Secretariat, was published in the journal European Environment.

Julian Agyeman, associate professor and chair of urban and environmental policy and planning, was keynote speaker at the UK-Ireland Planning Research Conference at Queen's University, Belfast, from March 18 to 20. His topic was "Toward Just Sustainabilities."

Astier Almedom, Fletcher professor of the practice and Institute for Global Leadership fellow, will give a keynote address at the Resilience 2008 conference in April. The conference is organized by the Resilience Alliance in Stockholm. The theme of Almedom's session is "Resilience, Global Change and Globalization," and the title of her keynote address is "Development of a Multidimensional Composite 'Resilience Index' for Global Health and Stability/Security." Also participating in the conference are Almedom's advisee, biology doctoral candidate Ayron Strauch, recipient of the 2007-08 NIH National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive Kidney Diseases' Water and Health Fellowship, and former advisee Amanda Fencl, A07, associate scientist with the Stockholm Environment Institute on the Medford/Somerville campus.

Linda Bamber, associate professor of English, is publishing her first book of poems, Metropolitan Tang, with Black Sparrow Press in April. She has three local readings scheduled: April 9, Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St., Brookline, 7 p.m.; April 28, Blacksmith House, 56 Brattle St., Cambridge, 8 p.m.; and May 13, Porter Square Books, 25 White St., Cambridge, 7 p.m.

Mary Alicia Barnes, fieldwork coordinator in the Department of Occupational Therapy, gave a presentation on mentoring in the health-care arena on March 15 at the spring conference of the Massachusetts Association for Occupational Therapy in Worcester, Mass. Her presentation-"Mentoring: Is the Odyssey for Me?"-shared the purported outcomes, complex meanings and underlying processes involved in the multiple dimensions of these developmental relationships.

Ethan Barron, Tufts men's track-and-field coach, established himself as one of the best young track-and-field coaches in the country when he was named New England's Indoor Coach of the Year by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association for the second straight season. This winter, Barron had three athletes qualify for the NCAA Championships, and senior Dan Marcy was the national runner-up in the triple jump. Barron, who is in his third season at Tufts, guided the Jumbos to the New England Division III indoor title, their first since 1991.

Catherine Beck, senior co-caption of the women's indoor track-and-field team, has been named the New England Indoor Athlete of the Year for the third straight season by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association. Beck competed in her 11th NCAA championship meet this year. She ran the anchor leg for the national champion distance medley relay and also took third in the mile. Earlier in the season, she won the mile and placed second in the 3,000 meters, leading Tufts to the New England Division III women's title.

Carla Berube, who led the women's basketball team to the NCAA Tournament "Elite 8" this season-the team's first-ever tournament berth-has been selected by the Women's Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) as the Region 1 (New England) Coach of the Year for 2007-08. The honor is the second of the year for Berube, who was voted New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) Co-coach of the Year. The women's hoops team had its best season in its 36-year history, opening with a school-record 12-game winning streak. Berube will be honored on April 7 during the WBCA National Convention in Tampa, Fla.

Tali Ditman, G07, has received the 2007-08 Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools Doctoral Dissertation Award. Ditman, who earned her Ph.D. in psychology, was honored for her dissertation, Neural Indices of Discourse Comprehension, which explored how readers are able to integrate information across sentence boundaries. Ditman is the first Tufts Arts and Sciences graduate to receive this award, which is given annually to a Ph.D. student who has completed his or her doctoral work within the previous five years. Eligible students come from 120 graduate schools in the United States and Canada, including research universities such as Harvard, Yale and Princeton. Ditman is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she is continuing to examine how and when the brain understands language using event-related potentials.

Asma Ejaz, a visiting graduate student from the University of Karachi, has had her abstract, titled "Curcumin inhibits angiogenesis and adipogenesis in cell culture system and in mice fed high fat diet," selected to be in the Proctor & Gamble Graduate Student Abstract Competition. Ejaz is currently working in the Vascular Biology Laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA).

Ioannis D. Evrigenis, assistant professor of political science, has received a Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Fellowship for 2008-09 from Princeton University's Center for Human Values, as well as fellowships from the Newhouse Center for the Humanities at Wellesley College and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. He has also been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities summer stipend and a Franklin Research Grant by the American Philosophical Society. See the Tufts Journal story in this issue.

Kevin P. Gallagher, senior researcher at the Global Development and Environment Institute, gave a talk on the merits of U.S. bilateral investment treaties in Latin America at a congressional briefing on February 5. The talk was sponsored by the Inter-American Dialogue. In January, Gallagher and Ha-Joon Chang, University of Cambridge economist and winner of GDAE's 2005 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought, spoke to a standing-room-only crowd at the Fletcher School on the theme, "Bridging the Development Gap: Making Globalization Work for Developing Countries." Each gave a presentation based on his recent book.

Neva Goodwin, co-director of the Global Development and Environment Institute, spoke to a group at Boston's Ethical Cultural Society on January 27. Her topic was "How Climate Change Makes It Necessary to Think Differently About the Economy."

Alice Gottlieb, the Harvey B. Ansell Professor of Dermatology, recently published an article, "Etanercept Treatment of Children and Adolescents with Plaque Psoriais," in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Weimin Guo, research associate in immunology at the HNRCA, published an article, "Avenanthramides, Polyphenols from Oats, Inhibit IL-1beta-induced NF-kappaB Activation in Endothelial Cells," in the February issue of Free Radical Biology and Medicine.

Jonathan Harris, director of the Theory and Education Program at the Global Development and Environment Institute, has been elected an at-large member of the board of the United States Society for Ecological Economics.

David Kahle is now associate CIO for academic technology services, a new position. He has directed academic technology since 2001. Under his leadership, the department has delivered an ever-increasing array of educational technologies, faculty development opportunities and research computing support and resources.

Alicia Karas, assistant professor at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, presented a talk, "What Are They Searching For?," at the AWEN Group's Assessment and Treatment of Pain conference "Humane Endpoints: Where Science and Welfare Meet" in Waltham, Mass., in February. She gave a talk on "Postsurgical Pain in Rodents: Significance, Assessment, Treatment" at the Wake Forest University Primate Center in Winston-Salem, N.C., in February.

Carsten Kowalczyk, associate professor of international economics at the Fletcher School, was a member of the international business panel at the International Careers Day at Harvard University. Other panelists included John Clarkeson, chairman emeritus of the Boston Consulting Group.

Zhenhua Liu, a scientist in the Vitamins and Carcinogenesis Laboratory at the HNRCA, received a two-year grant from the Prevent Cancer Foundation to study how inadequacy of folate and other 1-carbon nutrients increases Wnt-signaling in the colons of mice.

Steven Manos, former executive vice president of Tufts, has been appointed to the Cambridge Health Alliance board of trustees. CHA, a health-care system covering Cambridge, Somerville and Boston's metro-north communities, includes three hospital campuses, more than 20 primary-care and specialty practices, the Cambridge Public Health Department and the Network Health plan, and is affiliated with Tufts University School of Medicine, among others. "Mr. Manos brings to CHA's board of trustees invaluable experience in institutional management and administration as well as dedication to civic engagement and public service," says Francis H. Duehay, chair of the board. Manos, who retired from Tufts last fall, will also receive an honorary degree at the Tufts commencement in May.

Janet Martin, research assistant professor of environmental and population health at the Cummings School, received renewal of a Massachusetts Department of Public Health grant for the Wildlife Disease Surveillance Project for the fourth year.

Nicola McKeown, of the Nutritional Epidemiology Program at HNRCA, was promoted to Scientist II.

Kristen Morwick, head coach of the women's indoor track-and-field team, has been named New England Indoor Coach of the year by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association. Five members of Morwick's team qualified for the NCAA Championships this season. The Jumbos went on to finish sixth as a team at Nationals, with the distance medley relay team winning the second NCAA crown of Morwick's eight-year tenure at Tufts.

Jocelyn Muller and Ayron Strauch, graduate students in biology, gave presentations at the annual conference of the Society for Applied Anthropology March 25-29 in Memphis, Tenn. The conference was titled "The Public Sphere and Engaged Scholarship: Challenges and Opportunities for Applied Anthropology." Their presentations were titled "The Dynamics of Social-ecological Resilience in East and West Africa: Examples from Niger and Tanzania" and "A Local Eye to the Conservation Telescope in Boumba, Niger." Muller and Strauch did their work with Astier Almedom, professor of the practice at the Fletcher School.

Theodore Munsat, professor of neurology emeritus, has been working since his retirement as chairman of the education committee of the World Federation of Neurology. "Our primary efforts have been directed to developing countries," he writes. "We are working with 46 national neurologic societies in low-resource countries to help them improve patient neurologic care by developing their own effective training programs. In addition, we have developed a continuing medical education process and educational material specifically designed for neurologists practicing with limited resources."

Julie Nelson, senior research associate at the Global Development and Environment Institute, has been elected to serve a five-year term on the executive council of the Association for Social Economics. She presented a draft paper in February on the limitations of standard economic models of climate costs at the Forum on Climate Economics Modeling, held by the Economists for Equity and Environment (E3) at the Fletcher School. She also gave a talk on "What Is Care? (And What Should Economists Do About It?)" at the Realist Workshop at the University of Cambridge in February.

Jose Ordovas, director of the Nutrition and Genomics Laboratory at the HNRCA and professor of nutrition, received the American Association for Clinical Chemistry Nutrition Division Garry/Labbe Award. It is given for outstanding contribution to nutrition science for producing high-impact research that has contributed to a better understanding of the role of nutrition in human well-being, has enhanced medical knowledge and has resulted in fundamental publications in peer-reviewed journals.

Brian Roach, research associate at the Global Development and Environment Institute, gave a presentation in January at the Eastman Community Center in New Hampshire on global climate change, covering the science of climate change, policy options and personal actions.

Alison Robbins is a new-and returning-research assistant professor in environmental and population health at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine. She will work on the Wildlife Disease Surveillance Project and the Oral Rabies Vaccine project.

George Saperstein, professor and assistant dean for research in environmental and population health and international veterinary medicine at the Cummings School, gave a presentation on "Common Congenital Disorders in Alpacas" at the first International Workshop on Camelid Genetics in Scottsdale, Ariz., in February.

Linette Scibelli is the new director of special programs at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, with primary responsibility for the Adventures in Veterinary Medicine program. Prior to coming to Tufts, she was director of premedical advising at the University of Miami. Scibelli has a bachelor's degree in biology and psychology and a master's degree in higher education administration, both from the University of Miami.

Laurence Senelick, the Fletcher Professor of Oratory and professor of drama, has been awarded the 2007-08 Graduate Faculty Doctoral Teaching Award from the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools.

Kenneth Shadlen, senior research fellow at the Global Development and Environment Institute, published an article in the Journal of Development Studies. The article, "Globalisation, Power and Integration: The Political Economy of Regional and Bilateral Trade Agreements in the Americas," appears in Volume 44, Issue 1 of the journal.

Charles Sykes, assistant professor of chemistry, has been appointed to the Usen Family Career Development Professorship, a faculty development chair designed to recognize an especially worthy junior faculty member.

Grace Talusan, lecturer in English, published an essay about her experiences teaching memoir writing online to the Tufts community through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute: "Writing from Life: Elder Learning and the Power of Blogs," in the January-February 2008 issue of Aging Today, the bimonthly newspaper of the American Society on Aging. The literary magazine, Buràn, translated Talusan's award-winning short story, "Japanese Times," into Italian and published it here: http://www.buran.it/IL_CIBO/Materiale.htm?F=M_Japanese.htm.

Paul Waldau, director of the Center for Animals and Public Policy at the Cummings School, delivered an invited lecture at Yale University's Bioethics Center to the newly convened "Animals and Ethics" group on February 28. Waldau also presided over a panel at the "Renewing Hope" conference convened by the Yale School of Forestry and the Yale Divinity School from February 29 to March 2. Waldau also was one of two respondents at Harvard University to a paper presented on March 5 by the leading moral philosopher Christine Korsgaard regarding Kantian and Humean positions on animals and ethics. Waldau was also invited to give a keynote address, "Ethical Consideration Surrounding Pain and Distress," on March 28 in Atlanta at the annual Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee conference on Professional Responsibility in Medicine and Research.

David Walt, the Robinson Professor of Chemistry, was named to the National Academy of Engineering for his development of revolutionary sensors that can simultaneously image and perform biochemical analyses. He is one of 65 new members and nine foreign associates. He is the second professor in the School of Engineering, following Dean Linda M. Abriola, to receive this designation. In 2006, Walt was named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor, which includes a $1 million grant from the medical institute to advance innovation in undergraduate science teaching. He is also an adjunct professor in the biomedical engineering department in the School of Engineering.

Timothy Wise, deputy director and researcher at the Global Development and Environment Institute, was quoted in a February 1 Houston Chronicle article on Mexico's recent farm protests.