November People Notes

Lawrence S. Bacow, president of Tufts University, was among the 187 scholars, artists and executives and 29 foreign honorary members inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on October 11. Other inductees included U.S. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, journalist Walter Cronkite, recording industry pioneer Ray Dolby, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Donald Glaser and Johns Hopkins President William Brody.

Aleksei I. Beltukov, Zihni Basar Bilgicer, John David Cowan, Elizabeth M. Dowling, and Hilary N. Green won awards for outstanding academic performance at the fifth annual Graduate Student Awards presentation last spring. The award recognizes a student’s overall academic achievement as evidenced by grades, quality of papers, theses and projects in the arts, humanities, natural sciences and social sciences.

Melissa Bernstein, N99, was the first author on the paper “Higher Dietary Variety Is Associated with Better Nutritional Status in Frail Elderly People,” which was selected by the American Dietetic Association for honorable mention for a paper appearing in 2002 in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.Among Bernstein’s collaborators were nutrition faculty members KatherineTucker and Miriam Nelson and former faculty members William Evans and Maria Fiatarone Singh. The award will be presented at the 2003 annual meeting of the American Dietetic Association.

Leena Bitar, J00, D04, has been installed as a student director on the board of directors of the National American Association for Women Dentists (AAWD). “It is a great honor for me to be able to serve the AAWD by improving communication with the school chapters and helping bring the national AAWD closer to the local student AAWD chapters,” Bitar said. “This is also a great honor for Tufts as no other Tufts student has been on the AAWD board of directors before, and this will bring greater attention to Tufts dental school and student concerns.” Bitar was installed during an AAWD meeting October 24­25 in San Francisco.

Jeffrey Blumberg, professor at the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy and associate director of the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA), and David Heber of the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition co-chaired a conference on “Multivitamins and Public Health: Exploring the Evidence” on October 1 in Washington, D.C. Dean Irwin H. Rosenberg was the discussant for a panel on “Vulnerable Populations: Older Adults.” The presenters were internationally known scientists in the areas of micronutrients and multivitamins in health promotion and disease mitigation. The meeting, underwritten by Wyeth Consumer Healthcare, will be summarized in proceedings to be published.

Dr. Stacey Breen, who is beginning her last year of a Tufts family practice residency in the Hallmark Health System, has received the American Academy of Family Physicians/Bristol Myers Squibb Award for Excellence in Graduate Medical Education, given to the “most outstanding family practice residents in the country.”

Dr. Ira D. Cheifetz, a 1974 graduate of the School of Dental Medicine, was elected for a two-year term as treasurer of the American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons at the association’s 85th annual meeting, held in conjunction with the 50th annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons, in Orlando, Fla., September 10­13. Cheifetz previously served in the association’s House of Delegates, as chair of the Committee on Practice Management and Communication and on the Committee on OMS Professional and Allied Staff. He is a diplomate of the American Board of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. He is the senior partner of Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery­ Central New Jersey, with offices in Mercerville, East Windsor and Princeton. The American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons represents more than 7,000 oral and maxillofacial surgeons in the United States.

Suzanne Cunningham, Shawna Li, Felicia Leung, Blakeley Murrell-Liland, Christopher Ober and Meghan Rollins are new interns in small animal medicine at the veterinary school.

Graduate students Jennifer A. Dicorciaa,psychology, Rebecca L. Dubay, art and art history, Megan E. Griffiths, biology, and Sunil Swaroop, drama, were recognized for Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education at the fifth annual Graduate Student Awards presentation last spring. The award recognizes excellence as a teaching assistant or excellence in other roles, including mentoring undergraduates in the arts, humanities, natural sciences and social sciences.

Richard Eichenberg, associate professor of political science, delivered a lecture on “European Assessments of American Foreign Policy” September 16 at a conference held at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. The lecture was based on Eichenberg’s paper, “European Defense Integration and the Commitment to NATO,” which has been accepted for publication in Public Opinion Quarterly. He also has been named to the advisory committee of Atlantic Trends, a yearly public opinion survey in the United States and Western Europe, also sponsored by the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Vanessa Greene, who worked as a program assistant in the Summer Session office from 2001 until this past summer, has been appointed coordinator for Tufts’ 2004 Commencement. She left Tufts to begin a Ph.D. in Spanish literature at Boston University. Greene received her M.A. in Spanish from Middlebury College and her B.A. from Kalamazoo College in Michigan.

Boris Hasselblatt, professor of mathematics, and Anatole Katok of Pennsylvania State University published a book, A First Course in Dynamics, with Cambridge University Press this past summer. This book treats basic topological and probabilistic phenomena in dynamical systems at an undergraduate level and includes a panorama of dynamical systems that should make the text interesting to those who apply this theory in natural and social sciences and engineering. Hasselblatt, Marlies Gerber of Indiana University and Daniel Keesing, E04, published a paper on differential equations this summer. Hasselblatt said this appears to be the first research collaboration in pure mathematics that involves faculty and an undergraduate student, and it was undertaken while Keesing was a sophomore. Hasselblatt also visited the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in Zürich for two weeks, the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach in Germany for three weeks and the University of Warwick for a week. During these visits, he organized an international workshop on “Recent Advances in Hyperbolic Dynamics” in Zürich and attended a conference on “Dynamical Systems” in Oberwolfach and a symposium on “Geometric and Probabilistic Aspects of Dynamical Systems” at the University of Warwick. Three of his weeks in Europe were dedicated to a collaboration that resulted in a paper due to be published next year.

Paul F. Jacques, associate professor of nutrition and chief of the Nutritional Epidemiology Program at the HNRCA, and Jacob Selhub, professor of nutrition and chief of the Vitamin Metabolism Laboratory at the HNRCA, gave a presentation on “Increased Plasma Homocysteine Concentrations Are Strongly Associated with Increased Risk of Hip Fracture in Elderly Men and Women: The Framingham Study,” at the 25th annual meeting of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research in Minneapolis September 19­23.

Darlene Jones has joined the Advancement Division as the new administrative assistant for records. Jones previously served as the executive assistant to the finance department and investor relations at the Beacon Companies Inc. in Boston. She also has worked for Wellington Management in Boston, where she provided high-level administrative support to a senior partner and a team of five research analysts. Her experience in nonprofit and corporate settings also includes the Pioneer Group, Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston University.

Leslie Lawrence, lecturer in English, read her work on November 5 at Chapter and Verse in Jamaica Plain as part of its 10th anniversary season.

Richard M. Lerner, Bergstrom Chair in Applied Developmental Science in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development, is the editor of a new book series by Greenwood Press. The first book in the series, Teenagers and Community Service by Maureen Kenny and Laura Gallagher, was released in late August. On October 23, Lerner attended the Search Institute’s conference, “Healthy Communities, Healthy Youth,” in Minneapolis, Minn. Also in October, Lerner attended a meeting of the Templeton Foundation board in Boston. On November 1­2, he participated in the third biannual meeting of the Society for the Study of Human Development at Harvard University and delivered the President’s Address on November 2.

Arpita Mehta, a third-year student at the School of Medicine, has been chosen to receive a prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Continued Fellowship for Medical Studies. She will receive two years of continued support under the auspices of the Research Training Fellowships for Medical Students program. The continuing fellowship award includes a $21,000 stipend for a 12-month tenure and a $16,000 cost-of-education allowance. Mehta entered the research concentration program in July 2002. She was accepted as a research scholar in the HHMI-NIH Research Scholars Program at HHMI. She studied at the National Institutes of Health for a year before returning to the medical school in July.

Dr. Michael E. Mendelsohn, professor of medicine, gave a presentation on “Plenary Symposium I: Estrogen, Bones and the Heart” at the 25th annual meeting of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research in Minneapolis September 19­23.

Piper Morris, senior director of development and alumni relations for the medical and Sackler schools, has stepped down from her post. Among her accomplishments at Tufts, Morris has recruited and coached a dedicated team of advancement professionals in a very competitive segment of fund-raising and external relations. “Piper is to be commended for bringing about a new sense of professionalism, prospect development and activity benchmarks, donor stewardship, and, perhaps most important, stronger relationships between the development office and the medical school administration and faculty and Tufts-New England Medical Center,” said Brian K. Lee, vice president for university advancement. A search is under way for her successor.

Quan Nghiem has joined the Advancement Division’s research department as a prospect researcher. He has been an associate with Lucash, Gesmer & Updegrove LLP, a corporate law firm in Boston, and with Bingham Dana LLP, another corporate group practice in Boston. He earned his B.S. in business administration from Washington University in St. Louis and his law degree from Boston College Law School.

Akoto Osei, N04, Jounghee Lee, N07, and Erin Boyd, N04, received financial support as Muffs Fellows for their internships this past summer. Osei and Lee worked in India with UNICEF, evaluating community-level integrated services, including nutrition services. They also attended the activities of Breast-Feeding Week, organized by the Bihar Obstetric and Gynecological Society in Patna. Boyd worked on a vitamin A supplementation program in Nepal.

Dr. Mary Rose Paradis, associate professor of large animal medicine and director of the veterinary school’s Marilyn M. Simpson Equine Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, has been named president-elect of the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine. This international organization certifies veterinary specialists in large and small animal internal medicine, cardiology, neurology and oncology.

Dr. Michael Rosenblatt, dean of the School of Medicine, gave presentations on “IkB Kinase Beta (IKKb) Inhibition Prevents Ovariectomy-Induced Bone Loss in Mice” and “Development of an ‘All-Human’ Animal Model of Breast Cancer Metastasis to Bone” at the 25th annual meeting of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research in Minneapolis September 19­23.

Elizabeth (Libba) Russ and Christina Dahkle, both D05, have received National Health Service Corps scholarships that will provide stipends and tuition for their last two years of dental school in exchange for working after graduation in an area of the United States that lacks adequate dental health care. “I really wanted this scholarship so I could make a difference in communities that needed me the most,” Russ said. She and Dahkle were among 175 students chosen from among 1,900 applicants for the scholarships.

Stephanie Ryerson, V06, won first place and $500 for researching the mechanism of the neurotoxic effects of PCBs using a clam model at the School of Veterinary Medicine’s Student Research Day in October. Andrea Johnston, V05, won second place and $300 for her work on how to reverse liver cell death caused by diseases such as hepatitis and alcoholism, and Leah Stern, V06, won third place and $200 for investigating methods for diagnosing renal kidney disease without having to perform renal biopsies. The three students were among 20 who participated in the National Institutes of Health­supported summer research training program at the veterinary school.

Dr. Carmen Castaneda Sceppa, assistant professor at the Friedman School, and nutrition doctoral student Jennifer Layne prepared curriculum and lectures for the University of Lisbon Medical School Center for Nutrition and Metabolism in collaboration with Dr. Maria Ermelinda Camilo, director of the master’s degree program in clinical nutrition at the University of Lisbon. Layne attended the course during the first week in August and gave presentations on sarcopenia and body composition changes with aging as well as exercise and aging. Sara Pocernik, also a graduate student at the Friedman School, worked with Sceppa to prepare course materials on nutritional considerations for the elderly.

Dr. Rahul Sharma, a 2001 graduate of Tufts’ M.D./MBA in health management program and now a resident at NYU/Bellevue Hospital, has received the 2003 Emergency Medicine Residents’ Association Leadership Award. He was honored October 13 at the American College of Emergency Physicians’ scientific assembly in Boston.

Julie Sheldon is a new intern in exotics at the School of Veterinary Medicine.

Jan Swafford, lecturer in English, taught music history and theory at the University of Arizona last semester. Last season, he had three premieres of his compositions, two for orchestra and his piano trio performing “They That Mourn” in memory of 9/11. He is writing articles on music for Slate and The Guardian.

Jeff Taliaferro, assistant professor of political science, participated in a Ford Hall Forum on “What in the World Should We Do? U.S. Foreign Policy Today and Tomorrow” at Suffolk University Law School on October 1. The panel, which also included former Congressman Mickey Edwards, R-Okla., and Elaine Hagopian, professor of sociology emerita at Simmons College, was moderated by the Rt. Hon. Barbara McDougall, former secretary of state for external affairs under Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. Cornell University Press will publish Taliaferro’s book, Balancing Risks: Explaining Great Power Intervention in the Periphery, as part of the Cornell Studies in Security Affairs series in early 2004.

Grace Talusan, lecturer in English, published an excerpt of her novel, The Angel Gabriel, on The Del Sol Review (http://www. webdelsol.com/Del_Sol_Review/dsr10/talusan.htm)

Qisheng Tu, research associate in general dentistry, and Jake Chen, professor of general dentistry, gave a presentation on “Bone, Cartilage and Connective Tissue Matrix: Gene Identification and Expression I” at the 25th annual meeting of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research in Minneapolis September 19­23.

Katherine Tucker, associate professor of nutrition and a researcher at the HNRCA, and Dr. Bess Dawson-Hughes, director of the Calcium and Bone Metabolism Laboratory at the HNRCA, gave a presentation on “Low Calcium Intake Magnifies the Bone Loss Seen with Low Dietary Protein Intake in Elderly Men and Women” at the 25th annual meeting of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research in Minneapolis September 19­23. Tucker and nutrition doctoral student Lisa Troy gave a talk on “Carbonated Beverage Consumption and Bone Mineral Density,” and Dawson-Hughes and Susan Harris, instructor in family medicine and community health, presented on “Calcium, Multivitamin and Osteoporosis Medication Use in Women and Men with Recent Fractures.”