August People Notes

Molly Anderson, director of the Tufts Institute of the Environment (TIE), left Tufts on June 30 to devote more time to the two-year Food and Society Policy Fellowship she was awarded last September. This fellows program brings together leaders in health, consumer education, aquaculture, local food policy, nutrition, sustainable agriculture and organic farming to promote food systems changes through the media, scholarship and outreach. Associate Provost Peggy Newell will work with William Moomaw, TIE's senior director, TIE faculty and staff over the next few months during this transition period for TIE. Starting September 1, Provost Jamshed Bharucha has asked incoming Dean of Engineering Linda Abriola, who is a leader in environmental research, to take a look at TIE and advise him on next steps. "President Bacow and I have often expressed our dedication to interdisciplinary, cross-school programs," Bharucha said. "They are an important part of Tufts today, and they are part of our strategy to knit together schools and campuses. TIE is the oldest and largest of the cross-campus centers, and Tufts is renowned for innovative environmental research, education, service with community partners and professional organizations and efforts to reduce the environmental impacts of our own campuses."

Julian Agyeman, assistant professor of urban and environmental policy and planning, gave the inaugural lecture in the University of Northumbria's (UK) Sustainable Cities Seminar Series in June. The series gives key international speakers the opportunity to explore the dimensions of urban sustainability. His topic was "Environmental Justice and the Sustainable City: Observations from the U.S."

Mary Alicia Barnes and Mary Evenson, fieldwork coordinators at the Boston School of Occupational Therapy, gave a presentation in June on "Coach-Mentoring: Envisioning, Defining and Facilitating Professional Development" in collaboration with Julia Foster-Turner, a faculty member at Oxford-Brookes University in England. Their workshop was a part of the 83rd annual conference of the American Occupational Therapy Association in Washington, D.C.

Chris Beattie, a research analyst in the Office of Institutional Research, presented a paper, entitled "Do Students Really Want to Have Fun?" at the 2003 Association for Institutional Research Forum in Tampa, Fla., in May. Heather Roscoe, senior research analyst, and Dawn G. Terkla, director of institutional research, presented a paper on "Paper vs. Web: The Differential Impact on Responses of Men & Women." Terkla also was honored as the immediate past president of the association.

Dr. Stuart J. Brink, associate clinical professor of pediatrics, is a recipient of the Lilly Partnership in Diabetes award from Eli Lilly and Co. A pediatric endocrinologist, Brink is the only American among the five honorees chosen for the international awards, which were given at the 63rd scientific sessions of the American Diabetes Association in New Orleans on June 12. The award recognizes diabetes patients, health care professionals and patient advocates who have played significant but often unrecognized roles in diabetes treatment and support. Brink is a senior endocrinologist at the New England Diabetes and Endocrinology Center and educational chair for the International Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Diabetes. "This award isn't just for me; it is for my patients who at such a young age were confronted with such a difficult, incurable and potentially deadly disease. They are the real heroes." Brink was nominated for the award by the mother of one of his patients who lauded his compassion in caring for her son, who was diagnosed with diabetes at age 13.

Allison Davies has joined the Arts, Sciences & Engineering development staff as a new assistant director of the Tufts Fund. She will be working along side other members of the staff to grow the Tufts Fund to $5.8 million in FY04. Her major focus will be building and supporting a class agent volunteer structure in 10 alumni classes and soliciting gifts for the Packard Society. In addition, Davies will staff this year's 25th reunion class gift effort. Davies came to Tufts from Clear Channel Communications, where she developed new business for outdoor advertising in the Boston and Worcester markets. Previously, she worked for Fox Family Worldwide in the national advertising sales division responsible for Fox Family Channel, Fox Kids Network, Fox Kids Magazine & FoxKids.com. A graduate of Cornell University, she is an active fund-raising volunteer for her alumni class.

Karla Decker and Robin Graham, both practice assistants at the School of Dental Medicine, were chosen by their colleagues to receive the school's Golden Crown Award for outstanding performance by a staff member. The criteria for the annual award, now in its eighth year, include expertise, exceptional interaction with others, continuous improvement, resourcefulness and results and leadership. Decker and Graham each received a framed certificate, brass carriage clock and cash gift during the Golden Crown luncheon, held June 24 in the Becker Alumni Center.

Dr. Dan Fainboim has been appointed an assistant professor of prosthodontics and operative dentistry at the School of Dental Medicine.

Mario Flores, a doctoral degree candidate at the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, and nutrition alumna Margarita Safdie were the first and second author respectively on a study of the iron content of a nutritional supplement distributed as part of the Mexican national nutrition/health/economic development program called PROGRESA. As a result of their project, the composition of the supplements has been officially changed in line with the recommendations made in the study. Children now will receive a better supplement with a more bioavailable form of iron. This will have a nationwide impact on the iron status of poor children. The study, "Evaluation of Acceptability and Intake by Women and Children of Nutritional Supplements Fortified with Three Forms of Iron," was published by the National Institute of Public Health in Cuernavaca, Mexico. PROGRESA is one of the major programs of the Mexican government aimed at developing the human capital of poor households. Started in August 1997, it is an effort to break the entangling web of poverty where malnutrition, morbidity, high infant mortality rates, high fertility, school dropout rates and unhealthy living conditions prevail.

Michael Forgac, professor of physiology, was invited to speak at the 2003 FASEB Summer Research Conference on Transport ATPases: Genomics, Mechanisms and Relevance to Disease, which was held July 12-17 at the Vermont Academy in Saxton River, Vt. The title of his talk was "Structure and Regulation of the Yeast and Mammalian V-ATPases."

Dr. Sheldon Greenfield, professor of family medicine and community health and a pioneer in medical outcomes research and methods, has been appointed the Donald Bren Professor at the University of California College of Medicine in Irvine.

Eric Johnson has been promoted to the newly created position of director of principal and leadership gifts. In this new position, Johnson serves as a key member of the new University Advancement Division's senior leadership team, with primary responsibility for coordinating the effective cultivation, solicitation and stewardship of the university's most important donors and prospects. He will work with the senior leadership team to plan and implement the university's next capital campaign in support of priorities identified by the president and senior academic leadership of the university. Johnson joined Tufts in 1988 as associate director of development for Arts & Sciences and was part of the team that raised $90 million for the College of Liberal Arts and Jackson College within the context of the university's $250 million "New Campaign." As director of development for Arts & Sciences from 1993 to 1999, he played a leadership role in raising $150 million for the College of Liberal Arts and Jackson College during the Tufts Tomorrow campaign and coordinated the successful fund-raising efforts of $20 million for the Tisch Library and $9 million for the Gantcher Family Sports and Convocation Center. Johnson was appointed deputy director of capital campaigns in 1999, and was involved in the solicitation of numerous key gifts during the two-year extension of the Tufts Tomorrow campaign, including the commitment of $10 million from Pierre and Pam Omidyar to benefit the University College of Citizenship and Public Service.

Janis Lem, research associate professor of medicine, is part of an international research team that recently settled a long-standing dispute about what it takes for a mammal's eye to detect light. The team, headed by Johns Hopkins investigators, used triple knockout mice to discover that only three cells are involved in light detection in mouse eyes—rods, cones and cells that produce melanopsin. Others have contended that cryptochrome-producing cells also were essential for light detection. Light perception is essential in regulating internal clocks. The work was published in the June 15 issue of Nature online.

Richard M. Lerner, Bergstrom Chair of Applied Developmental Science in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development, has been invited to be a member of the board of advisors to the John Templeton Foundation through December 2006.

Alice Lichtenstein, the Gershoff Professor of Nutrition Science and Policy, has been awarded a training grant in nutrition and cardiovascular disease from the National Institutes of Health. This competitive award is the second for the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy in 12 months. Earlier in the year, Dr. Robert Russell, professor of nutrition and director of the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA), led a team that received a similar training grant from the National Institutes of Health focusing on the role of nutrition in the prevention or attenuation of chronic disease during aging. Friedman School doctoral students Suzanne Dorfman, Yuri Kim, Samuel Cadena and Sarah Anderson will be working on these grants.

Lawrence J. Link has joined the leadership team of the newly created University Advancement Division as the new executive director of development. Link will use his extensive fund-raising and management experience to direct the development organization in the creation of new strategies for achieving the highest fund-raising expectations and goals. Reporting directly to Brian Lee, vice president for university advancement, Link will oversee school and source development directors, annual giving, corporations and foundations and gift planning. He has more than 20 years of fund-raising and organizational experience, in both the not-for-profit and for-profit environments. He brings a comprehensive and diversified knowledge of both frontline fund-raising and management. Link has been a senior member of the Yale University Central Development Office for 14 years. Most recently, he was the deputy director for leadership and major gifts at Yale. In this capacity, he worked with the director to oversee staff management and training/mentoring, strategy, operations, volunteer and stewardship aspects of the division, while maintaining responsibility for his Asian donor pool and the President's Council on International Activities. Before Yale, Link was manager of university relations and human resources for Price Waterhouse Consultants, after serving as a senior consultant in the firm's small business advisory and audit departments. He is also a dedicated and effective volunteer in his community. He serves on the President's Advisory Council and as class/campaign fund-raiser for his alma mater, Franklin & Marshall College, the Vestry and Investment Committees of Trinity Church-on-the-Green, as well as having played various fund-raising and other committee roles for the Foote School, New Haven Lawn Club, and H.O.S.T.S., an urban youth advisory organization. He graduated from Franklin & Marshall College with a degree in business administration and a minor in English; he earned his CPA shortly upon joining Price Waterhouse.

Jeffrey Marchant, assistant research professor of anatomy and cellular biology, is the winner in a contest to rename the award-winning Health Sciences Database. The new name, the Tufts University Science Knowledgebase (TUSK), is one of more than 120 suggested in the name-that-database contest. Marchant, who earned his Ph.D. from the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences in 1991, won a $100 American Express gift certificate. To go with the new name, a new homepage for the database should be ready by fall.

Dr. Simin Nibkin Meydani, director of the HNRCA's Nutritional Immunology Laboratory, received the Denham-Harman Lifetime Achievement in Research Award of the American Aging Association at its annual meeting in Baltimore, Md., on June 9 in recognition of her outstanding research. Meydani co-organized the FASEB Summer Research Conference, held July 5-10 in Saxon River, Vt., with Pamela Fraker of Michigan State University. This is the first time the meeting has focused on the topic of nutritional status on immune function and health. At that meeting, Dr. Mohsen Meydani, director of the HNRCA's Vascular Biology Research Program and professor of nutrition, presented a session on "Molecular Mechanisms of Green Tea-induced Modulation of Angiogenesis;" alum Sung Nim Han gave a presentation on "Vitamin E and Influenza Infection in the Aged;" Simin Meydani chaired a session on "Nutrition and Regulation of Immunosenescence" and presented a talk on "Molecular Mechanism of Antioxidant-induced Immune Enhancement in the Aged."

Larry Minear, instructor in nutrition and director of the Humanitarianism and War Project at the Alan Shawn Feinstein International Famine Center, and colleague Ian Smillie served as resource persons to an international meeting on good humanitarian donorship in Stockholm on June 16-17. The gathering of donors, agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) had before it three reports on humanitarian financing by the Organizational Development Institute, Development Initiatives and the H&W Project on the Quality of Money: Donor Behavior in Humanitarian Financing. Minear also served as a resource for an NGO/CEO leadership forum on "The New World Order: Islam, AIDS and American Power." In attendance at the meeting on Bainbridge Island in Washington State were the chief executives of a number of U.S.-based nongovernmental organizations, including Care, Mercy Corps, Oxfam America, Plan US/Childreach, Save the Children, World Concern and World Vision.

Martha Morris, a scientist in the epidemiology laboratory at the HNRCA, is one of the authors of a study that found that nearly 3,000 people who had suffered major depression showed lower levels of folate in blood and red blood cells than a control group. The study, which was published in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, also indicated that low folate levels may be the result rather than the cause of depression because people who identified themselves as currently depressed did not show particularly low folate levels. Researchers cautioned against folate supplementation in connection with depression without further study to determine effect and safe dosages.

Jose Ordovas, professor of nutrition and a senior scientist in the Lipid Metabolism Laboratory of the HNRCA, received an unprecedented honor at the 35th annual meeting of the European Society for Clinical Investigation XIV Congreso Nacional de la Sociedad Española de Arteriosclerosis in June. By unanimous decision, he was awarded the title of Member of Honor of the Spanish Society of Atherosclerosis. Ordovas received an engraved silver plaque from the president of the society and the president of the congress of the society. Ordovas' most recent paper, "Endocrinology and Metabolism Genetic Variation at the Scavenger Receptor Class B Type I Gene Locus Determines Plasma Lipoprotein Concentrations and Particle Size and Interacts with Type 2 Diabetes: The Framingham Study," was published in the June issue of the Journal of Clinical Nutrition. He also presented his work June 7 in Baltimore at the conference on the Nutritional Modulation of Aging and Age-related Disease in a talk titled "Nutrigenomics and Healthy Aging."

Sharan L. Schwartzberg, professor and chair of the Boston School of Occupational Therapy (BSOT) in the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, presented a paper, "A Matter of Degrees: Reflections About Developing an OTD Program and Expected Outcomes," at the annual meeting of the American Occupational Therapy Association on June 7 in Washington D.C. The BSOT also hosted a reception for alumni and associates at the meeting that was attended by members of the Class of 1952 through current students.

Dr. Leslie Sharkey, assistant professor of biomedical sciences at the School of Veterinary Medicine, has been elected interim chair of the school's Faculty Council to finish the one-year term of Dr. Antony Moore, who has left Tufts to return to his native Australia.

Dr. David R. Snydman, professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Geographic Medicine and Infectious Diseases at Tufts-New England Medical Center, received the Ken Kaplan Clinician Award from the Massachusetts branch of the Infectious Disease Society of America.

Jerry Sternin, a visiting scholar at the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, co-authored with Thomas Bertel a book chapter, "Replicating Results and Managing Knowledge," in Rath & Strong's Six Sigma Leadership Handbook (John Wile & Sons Inc., 2003).

Peter Walker, associate professor of nutrition and director of the Alan Shawn Feinstein International Famine Center, has been invited by the Harvard Business School to participate as a trainer in its annual Humanitarian Leadership Program. This is a one-week course for CEOs of humanitarian and similarly focused organizations. This year, the CEOs of Amnesty International, CARE, World Vision and about 20 others will attend. He has been asked to help facilitate a few of the case studies around the development of globalized and networked organizations.