May 2008

May People Notes

Frank Ackerman, director of the research and policy program at the Global Development and Environment Institute, gave a keynote address on economic evaluation of health and environmental policies at a meeting of the European Division of the World Health Organization in Milan on March 12.

Reem Al-Hashemi, J99, has been appointed minister of state of the United Arab Emirates. She had served as deputy chief of mission at the UAE Embassy in Washington, D.C., and also worked in the executive office of His Highness Sheikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, vice president and prime minister of the UAE and ruler of Dubai.

Jennifer C. Bailey, A09, and Sofia V. Nelson, A09, both political science majors, have been selected as 2008 Truman Scholars, an award often called the "Rhodes Scholarship for leadership and public service." Madeleine K. Albright, president of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation, said this year's crop of scholars includes 65 students from 55 U.S. colleges and universities. Each scholar receives up to $30,000 for graduate study. Bailey says she is passionate about providing equal access to educational opportunities for diverse populations of young people. At Tufts, she serves as president of the Emerging Black Leaders, is co-founder of the Tufts Social Justice Arts Initiative and is chair of the student senate's Culture, Ethnicity and Community Affairs Committee. She plans to concurrently pursue a master of public policy and a master of divinity degree. Nelson has interned with state and federal legislators and works at Tufts' LGBT Center. She plans to attend law school and serve as a social justice advocate for underserved and underprivileged communities. Since 2005, four Tufts undergraduates have been named Truman Scholars.

Nancy Bigelow, women's swimming and diving coach, received the second annual Heights Award, given by the Massachusetts State Lottery and Boston College Athletics to recognize Massachusetts residents who have made significant contributions to women's athletics. This year marked her 26th season at Tufts, where she oversees one of the most successful swimming programs in New England and is a three-time New England Coach of the Year.

Randy Boudrieau, professor of clinical sciences at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, presented several lectures at the 35th annual conference of the Veterinary Orthopedic Society in Montana, including "Tibial Tuberosity Advancement (TTA): Proof of Concept, in vitro Experimental Study" and "Tibial Tuberosity Advancement (TTA): Planning and Surgical Technique." He also participated in a variety of meetings at the conference, including the nominating committee and the VOS board of directors.

Faith Buckley, V09, Tufts' 2008 Western Veterinary Conference Student Scholarship Award winner, attended the 80th Western Veterinary Conference annual conference. The award was presented by Lowell Ackerman, along with WVC President Jim Furman and WVC President-elect Ann Johnson.

Vivian Cheung, M93, a pediatric neurologist at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and an associate professor of pediatrics and genetics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, has been named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. Members of this elite scientific fraternity receive long-term, generous funding for their labs in recognition of their work in translating scientific discoveries into improved medical treatments. Cheung investigates how the sequence of DNA units in chromosomes affects our susceptibility to disease. Her goal is to help physicians predict how a patient will respond to a given drug or treatment, based on the patient's genetic profile. Ultimately, these kinds of refined genetic tools may remove some of the guesswork in making treatment decisions. Cheung holds the William Wikoff Smith Endowed Chair in Pediatric Genomic Research at Children's Hospital, where she leads an NIH-funded laboratory.

Bill Denneen, director of Internet marketing at Mount Holyoke College, has joined Tufts as director of Web Communications in the University Relations Division. He succeeds Pete Sanborn, A99, who left Tufts to pursue a law career. Denneen managed many aspects of the Mount Holyoke website over the past four years, leading a team that created Mount Holyoke's virtual tour, which was awarded a Circle of Excellence Silver Medal in 2006 from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. He also managed the redesign of Mount Holyoke's website and the adoption of a content management system; co-chaired the campus-wide web strategy committee and consulted with internal clients, including the offices of Admissions and News & Media Relations. He has been an advocate for the adoption of social media and content syndication technologies. Prior to joining Mount Holyoke, Denneen was a direct marketing manager at publisher Channing Bete Co. He also has worked in advertising at Chicago's Leo Burnett agency and in dotcom consulting. He holds a B.A. in psychology from Brown University and a master's in marketing, strategy and technology management from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Ed Dente, A71, director of the Language Media Center and assistant director of media services for Arts and Sciences, retired this spring after dedicating 40 years to Tufts as a student, student assistant and employee.

Kevin P. Gallagher, senior researcher at the Global Development and Environment Institute, delivered a talk to the G-77 at the United Nations on April 11 on the extent to which current WTO negotiations are consistent with the Monterrey Consensus and Millennium Development Goals. He also published an article titled "Trading Away the Ladder? Trade Politics and Economic Development in the Americas" in the March issue of the academic journal New Political Economy. He traveled to San Francisco to present three papers on international trade to the International Studies Association.

Neva Goodwin, co-director of the Global Development and Environment Institute, wrote a chapter titled "From Outer Circle to Center Stage: The Maturation of Heterodox Economics" in Future Directions for Heterodox Economics (University of Michigan Press).

Jonathan Harris, director of theory and education at the Global Development and Environment Institute, gave a presentation on March 28 to faculty and students at the School of Economics, University of Maine at Orono, titled "Macroeconomics and Climate Change: The Twenty-First Century Challenge." The presentation drew on the GDAE teaching module Economics of Climate Change.

Justin Hollander, assistant professor of urban and environmental policy and planning, spoke at the conference on "Building Bridges in the City and Beyond: Languages, Communities & Culture" on April 11 at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. His co-authored paper was titled "Activist Literacy in Shrinking Cities: Lessons for Urban Education."

Yannis Ioannides, the Max and Herta Neubauer Professor of Economics, was an associate editor for the newly published second edition of the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, a major reference work. He contributed expertise on the sections concerning urban and rural economics and economic geography.

Gretchen Kaufman, assistant professor of wildlife medicine at the Cummings School, was invited to participate in a Veterinarians without Borders-Canada workshop to provide information on her dog sterilization and rabies control program in Nepal and give advice about starting similar projects in other developing countries. The workshop was held in Montreal in March. Along with Gwen Griffiths of the Alliance of Veterinarians for the Environment, Kaufman also organized an afternoon session at a meeting of the American Animal Hospital Association in Tampa, Fla., in March on greening veterinary practice. This session was coordinated with the launch of a website that will incorporate data compiled by Kaufman, Griffiths and Tufts veterinary students Jill Yoshizawa, V09, and Adina Kahn, V08.

Michael Kowaleski, associate professor of clinical sciences at the Cummings School, was the scientific program chair at the 35th annual meeting of the Veterinary Orthopedic Society in Big Sky, Mont., in March. He was also the Purina Speaker in Small Animal Surgery, lecturing on "BFX Total Hip Replacement," at Texas A&M University in February.

Alice Lichtenstein, the Gershoff Professor of Nutrition Science and Policy and director of the HNRCA Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory, received the American Heart Association (AHA) Atherosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology Council 2008 Mentor of Women Award at the AHA meeting on April 17 in Atlanta.

Joann Lindenmayer, associate professor of environmental and population health at the Cummings School, traveled to Indonesia and Thailand for her work on a Rockefeller Foundation grant assessing the need for advanced education and training in veterinary public health and the management of infectious disease. While there, she met with representatives of the Cummings School-FAO Avian Influenza team; the president of the Indonesian Veterinary Medical Association; deans, senior administrators and veterinary public health faculty from Gajah Mada, Airlangga and IPB universities; and regional FAO representatives. The project is scheduled to be completed in December 2008.

Janet Martin and Alison Robbins, both research assistant professors at the Cummings School, attended the International Conference on Emerging Infectious Disease in Atlanta in mid-March.

Erin Munro, who is slated to receive her Ph.D. in mathematics in May, has been awarded a three-year National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship. In her thesis, Erin has used mathematical modeling and analysis and numerical simulation to study mechanisms underlying very fast oscillations in electrical fields in the hippocampus region of the brain. Her dissertation advisor is Professor Christoph Börgers. During her postdoctoral fellowship, she will continue work in this direction, specifically focusing on the experimentally documented connection between strong, very fast oscillations and the onset of epileptic seizures. She will do her postdoctoral work in the Mathematics Department and Center for BioDynamics at Boston University, under the direction of Professor Nancy Kopell.

Julie Nelson, senior research associate at the Global Development and Environment Institute, traveled to New York on March 6 to speak at William Milberg's Seminar on Economic Methodology at the New School.

José M. Ordovas, a professor at the Friedman School and director of the Nutrition and Genomics Laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, was awarded an honorary degree in medicine from the Universidad de Córdoba in Spain in April. It is just the fourth time that the university has awarded an honorary degree in medicine, including one to Severo Ochoa, who shared the 1959 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his research on the synthesis of RNA.

Roberto Porzecanski and Kevin P. Gallagher, researchers at the Global Development and Environment Institute, have published an article titled "China Matters: The Economic Impact of China in Latin America," in the latest issue of the Latin American Research Review.

Alexandra Pryor, A08, is the winner of the 2008 Wendell Phillips Award, which recognizes an upperclassman of noteworthy speaking ability and rewards him or her with the chance to address graduating seniors at the annual Baccalaureate ceremony, scheduled this year for May 17 at 3 p.m. at Fletcher Field on the Medford/Somerville campus. Pryor and the four other finalists for the award had to give a speech before the Committee on Student Life on this topic: "How has something you learned at Tufts affected the way you serve your own community or communities?" Pryor, a philosophy major who is treasurer of the student senate, discussed how her restaurant coworkers had opened her eyes to the pitfalls of the U.S. health-care system, and noted that she felt a responsibility to use her Tufts education to help address the problem.

Beth Rohloff and Laurie Sabol, reference librarians at Tisch Library, recently presented an interactive talk and demonstration on library instruction teaching and presentation techniques at the national Music Library Association conference in Newport, R.I.

George Saperstein, professor and chair of environmental and population health at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, attended the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges annual meeting in March, when he was named chair-elect of the International Affairs Committee.

Sharan L. Schwartzberg, professor of occupational therapy and adjunct professor of psychiatry, completed the Master Class in Group Analysis with Malcolm Pines in Umbria, Italy, in early March. She presented a research seminar at Rush University College of Health Sciences titled "Psychiatric Inpatient Group Outcome Study: An Occupational Therapy Perspective and the Functional Group Model," in Chicago on March 31.

Rebecca Steers, V10, is president-elect of the national Student American Veterinary Medical Association, the student branch of the American Veterinary Medical Association that has chapters on each U.S. veterinary school campus.

Kendall Swett, A08, closed out her collegiate diving career in spectacular fashion, capturing both the 1- and 3-meter diving titles at the NCAA Division III National Championships at Miami University in Ohio. "I don't normally do as well in the 1-meter as the 3-meter," she says. "I didn't put any pressure on myself, and did the dives I've done every day, and did them better than I've ever done them."

E. Charles Sykes, the Usen Family Career Development Assistant Professor of Chemistry, has been named a 2008 Beckman Young Investigator, a program of the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation that provides research support to promising young faculty members in the early stages of academic careers in the chemical and life sciences. The award includes $300,000 in research funding.

Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, associate professor of political science, spoke as part of the Ambassador John and Marcia Price Lecture Series on American Foreign Policy at the University of Utah on April 11. His topic was "The Primacy of Power: Realism and U.S. Grand Strategy, 1940 to Present."

Flo Tseng, assistant professor of environmental and population health at the Cummings School, has been appointed director of the school's Wildlife Clinic. Tseng succeeds Associate Professor Mark Pokras as clinic director. Tseng gave a lecture and workshop on avian fracture immobilization, a talk on "Natural History and Rehabilitation of Albatrosses" and another talk on "Medical Considerations for Porcupines" at the National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association meeting in Cherry Hill, N.J., in early March.

W. Douglas Weaver, M71, is the new president of the American College of Cardiology, which represents 34,000 heart doctors nationwide. The head of cardiovascular medicine at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Weaver says he will continue the organization's push for national health-care reform. Current health-care costs are "unsustainable," he says, "despite medicine's technological innovations and treatment advancements. We have been working harder, seeing more patients, providing newer and more testing and treatment options. This just simply cannot continue. We now have to focus on value." He notes that America's health-care costs are projected to balloon to $2.7 trillion by 2010-a 30 percent increase since 2004.

Gene White was recently named director of the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine's Tufts Ambulatory Service, located in Woodstock, Conn. White joined the service in 1997.

Timothy Wise, deputy director and researcher at the Global Development and Environment Institute, traveled to Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on March 27 to present a lecture on the promise and perils of agricultural trade liberalization. The talk was part of the International Development Program's funded lecture series. The lecture was based on Wise's research project on agriculture and globalization in Latin America, done in collaboration with the Working Group on Development and Environment in the Americas. He also traveled to Washington, D.C., on March 6 to speak at a tri-national conference, "Linking Agriculture, Development and Migration: A Critical Look at NAFTA Past, Present and Future."

Pamela C. Yelick, director of the dental school's Division of Craniofacial and Molecular Genetics and associate professor of oral and maxillofacial pathology, has been appointed to the editorial board of the journal Tissue Engineering for a term that ends in December 2011.

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