February People Notes

Frank Ackerman, research director at Tufts’ Global Development and Environment Institute (GDAE), led a panel on “Economics for Health and the Environment” at the Allied Social Science Association’s annual conference in Boston on January 6. The panel included Ackerman’s talk on “The Unbearable Lightness of Regulatory Costs: Interpreting the Economic Impacts of REACH.”

Pamela Aghababian, A04, a staff assistant in the Arts & Sciences Development Office, has published her first novel, A Low Place Like Home (Lulu Press, 2006). She accepted the challenge put forth by National Novel Writing Month in which participants were encouraged to create a 175-page (50,000-word) novel between November 1 and November 30. Of the nearly 60,000 people who began the project, fewer than 10,000 finished. You can purchase the novel online at www.lulu.com for $12 plus shipping and handling.

Lynne Ausman, professor at the Friedman School, received the 2005 Distinguished Faculty Award for her work as an outstanding teacher, advisor and mentor to hundreds of nutrition students at Tufts.

Daniela Bartalesi-Graf, lecturer in Italian, has published a new book, L’Italia dal fascismo ad oggi: percorsi paralleli nella storia, nella letteratura e nel cinema (Guerra Edizioni, Perugia, 2005), a text for advanced students of Italian as a second language. Using an interdisciplinary method, the book analyzes the evolution of Italian society since fascism through the lenses of literature and cinematography.

Jean Bianchetto, recruiter for volunteer services in the Metabolic Research Unit at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA), gave a “Nourishing Touch” cooking demonstration at the Jubilee Christian Church in Dorchester, Mass., as part of the Reach 2010 Health Fair on November 4 and at the Franklin Park Golf Course on November 17 as part of the Boston Public Health Commission’s Reach Boston Elders 2010 Program. Bianchetto also discussed “Nutrition and Diabetes: Making Healthy Food Choices” at the Milton Council on Aging on November 18.

Jeffrey Blumberg, director of the HNRCA Antioxidants Research Laboratory, gave a presentation on “The Antioxidant Conundrum: Do They or Do They Not Provide Health Benefits” at the International Life Sciences Institute’s Workshop on Plant Antioxidants and Health in Beijing, China, last November 4. He was invited to speak on the “Bioavailability and Antioxidant Capacity of Almond Skin Polyphenols” at the sixth International Conference on Food Science and Technology in Guangzhou, China, November 7-9.

Nina Braten has joined the Advancement Division as marketing coordinator for the Gift Planning Office. She will identify new planned, major and annual gift prospects for every school. She holds a master’s degree in strategic communications from Columbia University. She comes to Tufts from EngenderHealth, an international nonprofit organization in New York, where she worked as part of a communications and marketing team to create and implement global communications strategies for the organization; wrote, edited and designed marketing collateral and worked closely with the development team to create effective donor appeals.

Drusilla K. Brown, associate professor of economics, presented a paper on “The Impact of Treatment for Anemia on Apparel Workers in Bangalore” at the annual meeting of the Allied Social Science Association January 6-8 in Boston.

Dr. Rachel Buchsbaum, assistant professor of medicine; Jonathan Garlick, professor of oral and maxillofacial pathology; Philip Hinds, professor of radiation oncology; Dr. Mircea Ivan, assistant professor of medicine; Dr. Orian Shirihai, assistant professor of pharmacology; and Daniel Ortiz, assistant research professor of physiology, have been awarded a total of $88,000 in grants from Tufts-New England Medical Center’s Center for Gastroenterology Research on Absorptive and Secretory Processes (GRASP). These pilot project awards are intended to provide early support for innovative scientific ideas in gastroenterology research so that data can be developed to support full funding from federal sources such as the National Institutes of Health.

Regina Corrao has been appointed director of organization development and training in Human Resources. For the past seven years, Corrao has been a senior organizational development consultant at Tufts, working on strategic planning, transformational change, performance development, executive coaching and team facilitation. Prior to Tufts, she was director of training and development for 13 years at Digital Equipment Corp. She holds an M.Ed. in higher education administration as well as a degree in communications.

Alva Couch, associate professor of computer science, and computer science graduate students Ning Wu and Hengky Susanto received a best-paper award at Usenix’ Large Installation System Administration Conference, which took place December 4-9 in San Diego. The title of the award-winning paper was “Toward a Cost Model for System Administration.” You can read it at http://www.usenix.org/events/lisa05/tech/couch.html.

Natalia Crivello, a scientist in the HNRCA Nutrition and Neurocognition Laboratory, has received funding from the National Institute on Aging to study “Vitamin K and Sulfatides.”

Deborah Digges, professor of English, was a featured author at the kickoff of the 2006 Gwen Frostic Reading Series presented by Western Michigan University’s Department of English on January 19. The authors for the biannual series were chosen by faculty members in the creative writing program and their students. Digges is the author of four books of poetry, and her first book, Vesper Sparrows, won the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Prize from New York University. She also won the Kingsley Tufts Prize for Rough Music, published in 1995. Her most recent book of poems, Trapeze, was published in 2004. Digges is also the author of two memoirs, Fugitive Spring and The Stardust Lounge.

Asma Ejaz, a Ph.D. candidate at the International Center for Chemical Sciences at the University of Karachi, Pakistan, has joined the HNRCA Vascular Biology Laboratory to conduct research under the supervision of Dr. Mohsen Meydani, director of the lab. Her research during her two years of residency at Tufts will be oriented toward the role of dietary antioxidants on modulation of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Ejaz received a research scholarship from the Pakistan Higher Education Commission and the Government of Pakistan.

Ioannis D. Evrigenis, assistant professor of political science, has been awarded the Richard J. Herrnstein Prize for his Ph.D. dissertation, “ ‘Carthage Must Be Saved’: Fear of Enemies and Collective Action,” which examines the role of the fear of enemies in the formation and preservation of political groups. The Harvard University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences awards the prize to “the best dissertation that exhibits excellent scholarship, originality and breadth of thought and a commitment to intellectual independence.”

Roger A. Fielding, director of the HNRCA Nutrition, Exercise Physiology and Sarcopenia Laboratory, has received funding from the National Institute on Aging to study “Lower Extremity Muscle Power and Function in the Elderly.”

Kevin P. Gallagher and Timothy A. Wise, researchers at the Global Development and Environment Institute (GDAE), attended the WTO meetings in Hong Kong December 13-18 to present GDAE’s research on the social, economic and environmental impacts of trade liberalization. They also gave presentations at NGO forums in Hong Kong. They released several new GDAE publications relevant to the negotiations, including “The Doha Round’s Development Impacts: Shrinking Gains and Real Costs,” which they wrote.

Dr. Yoav Golan, assistant professor of medicine; Dr. Stephen G. Pauker, professor of medicine; Dr. John B. Wong, professor of medicine, and Dr. Susan Hadley, associate professor of medicine, had their article, “Empirical Anti-Candida Therapy among Selected Patients in the Intensive Care Unit: A Cost-Effectiveness Analysis,” published in the December 20, 2005, issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. Golan and Hadley are attending physicians in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Tufts-New England Medical Center, and Pauker is vice chair for clinical affairs and associate physician-in-chief of Tufts-NEMC’s Department of Medicine. Wong is chief of the Division of Clinical Decision Making, Informatics and Telemedicine at Tufts-NEMC.

Dr. David J. Greenblatt, Louis Lasagna Professor and chair of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics at the School of Medicine, received the 2005 Research Achievement Award in Clinical Sciences from the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists at its annual meeting on November 6 in Nashville, Tenn. The author of more than 700 original research publications, Greenblatt investigates the mechanisms of altered drug disposition and response in old age and the factors that modulate the response to psychiatric medications. In highlighting some of the areas from Greenblatt’s career in clinical and translational research, the organization noted that he “has shown in his clinical work that pharmacokinetic and intrinsic changes in drug sensitivity may both contribute to exaggerated drug response in the elderly. He has used in vitro drug metabolism models to identify and predict clinical drug interactions and to demonstrate age-dependent changes in the expression of hepatic CYP3A isoforms in experimental animal and human models.”

David Valdes Greenwood, lecturer in English, has signed a book deal with Da Capo Books for a humorous memoir of 10 years in a gay marriage. The book, Homo Domesticus: Notes from a Same-Sex Marriage, will be released in hardcover this fall. His plays, “Widow of Abraham” and “Constant,” both received staged readings last fall at the New York Theatre Workshop and at the Theater Offensive Plays at Work Festival, respectively. “Constant” will be in the Ensemble Studio Theatre First Light Festival this spring.

Jonathan Harris, director of the Theory and Education Program at Tufts’ Global Development and Environment Institute (GDAE), presented at a panel on “Rethinking Economic Theory” at the Allied Social Science Association’s annual conference in Boston on January 6. Harris presented his paper on “Reconciling Radical and Ecological Perspectives on Macroeconomic Policy.” He also attended a spin-off conference on economics pedagogy at which two of the featured speakers gave unsolicited rave reviews of the GDAE textbook Microeconomics in Context.

Rebecca Harris has joined the Department of Environmental and Population Health at the Cummings School as a research assistant professor. Harris received her B.A. in biology from Drew University in 1995 and her Ph.D. in biology from Tufts in 2001. She was a postdoctoral research associate in Tufts’ biology department and a teaching fellow at the Fletcher School. From 2002 to 2003, she was a research associate with the National Park Service, conducting bird surveys at the Boston Harbor Islands National Park. In August 2002, Harris became the program officer for the Cummings School’s Center for Conservation Medicine and was involved with the Seabird Ecological Assessment Network (SEANET).

Sara Hellmold has been promoted to assistant director of stewardship and donor relations for the School of Medicine. Since joining Tufts last April, Hellmold has taken on several special projects such as producing the first fact booklet for the School of Medicine that was distributed to all medical alumni nationwide and researching benchmark data comparing Tufts with 18 other medical schools.

Rosalie Hunt, assistant director of special events, retired from Tufts in December after 20 years of service. Time and time again, Hunt’s skills and abilities made an important difference in ensuring that the university did an outstanding job in recognizing the many donors and friends of the institution. She assisted the university in hosting former U.S. presidents, a prime minister, secretaries of state and senators as well as countless key donors.

Joseph Hurka, lecturer in English, will have a novel, Trowbridge Street, published in early 2007 by Thomas Dunne Books (St. Martin’s Press). Hurka’s previous book, Fields of Light, won the Pushcart Editors’ Book Award and is currently out in paperback.

Yannis M. Ioannides, the Max and Herta Neubauer Professor of Economics, and Adriaan Soetevent of the University of Amsterdam presented their paper, “Wages and Employment in a Random Social Network with Arbitrary Degree Distribution,” at the annual meeting of the Allied Social Science Association January 6-8 in Boston.

Dr. Paul Jodka, assistant professor of medicine and a member of the clinical faculty at Baystate Medical Center, received the 2005 Kenneth B. Schwartz Center Compassionate Caregiver Award. An ICU attending physician at Baystate, Jodka, M91, was one of 60 Massachusetts care-givers nominated for the award. Established in 1999, the award is in keeping with the Schwartz Center’s mission to strengthen the relationship between patients and care-givers. Nominated by his colleagues for his unfailing patience and respect for his colleagues, students and patients and their families, Jodka helped create Baystate’s “Going Home” program, which eases the transition from the ICU to home at the end of a patient’s life. “My patients and their families have taught me many lessons about the need for clear, timely and honest communication, about the importance of being fully available as a human being in times of crisis…and about being attentive to suffering in its many forms,” he said.

Elizabeth Johnson, a scientist in the HNRCA Carotenoids and Health Laboratory, discussed “Lutein Metabolism, Obesity and Age-Related Macular Degeneration: A Web of Connections” at the Gerontological Society of America meeting in Orlando, Fla., in November. She was invited to speak on “Lutein and Macular Degeneration” at Beijing Tongren Hospital in Beijing, China, on November 24.

Dr. H. Royden Jones, A58, lecturer in neurology at the School of Medicine and clinical professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, has completed eight years as a director of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. During the past year, he has published two texts: Netter’s Neurology (Elsevier) with Jaime Ortiz-Patino, chair of neurology at the Lahey Hitchcock Medical Center in Burlington, Mass., and Clinical Neurophysiology of Infancy, Childhood and Adolescence (Elsevier) with Dr. Gregory Holmes, professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, and Dr. Solomon Moshe, professor of neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Charlotte Kuperwasser, assistant professor of anatomy, won the fifth annual Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group/Aventis Young Investigator Award at the group’s annual meeting in November. She presented her work on a novel mouse model of estrogen promotion of estrogen-negative breast cancer.

Edward Kutsoati, associate professor of economics, had his joint paper with Dan Bernhardt and Murillo Campello of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign presented at the annual meeting of the Allied Social Science Association January 6-8 in Boston. Bernhardt presented the paper “Who Herds?”

Dr. Mary Y. Lee, dean for educational affairs at the School of Medicine and associate provost, attended the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis, Tunisia, in November, when she participated on the panel, “The Growing International OpenCourseWare (OCW) Movement.” More than 100 leaders of the global education community attended the summit. Tufts launched its own OCW offerings last summer (http://ocw.tufts.edu), and Lee stewards the university-wide collaboration that, she says, “is helping to develop open source learning tools that will impact the way students around the world both access information and learn.”

Stephanie Levine, lecturer in English, discussed her book, Mystics, Mavericks and Merrymakers, January 12 at Temple Emanu-El in Marblehead, Mass. The book, which won the 2004 Moment Book Award, provides a rare glimpse into the inner worlds and daily lives of Hasidic teenage girls.

Dr. Barry Levy, adjunct professor of public health and family medicine, received the Sedgwick Memorial Medal, one of the highest awards of the American Public Health Association (APHA), at its annual meeting in Philadelphia on December 11. The APHA established the award in 1929 to recognize distinguished service and advancement of public health knowledge and practice. It honors the late William Thompson Sedgwick, who was president of the APHA in 1915 and head of the Department of Biology and Public Health at MIT from 1883 to 1921.

Dr. Joann Lindenmayer has joined the Cummings School as an associate professor of environmental and population health. Most recently, she was a faculty member at Brown University Medical School and an epidemiologist with the Rhode Island Department of Health. At Brown, she taught applied public health and was the founding director of the M.P.H. program. Lindenmayer received her D.V.M. from Tufts in 1985 and her M.P.H. from the Harvard School of Public Health in 1988. As a Peace Corps volunteer in north Borneo in the mid-1970s, she developed an interest in zoonotic diseases and animal production in developing countries, and she was one of the first Tufts veterinary students to work on the Niger Integrated Livestock project, a joint project of the veterinary school and the Fletcher School. In 1988, she was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from the Medical Foundation in Boston for studies of animals as sentinels for Lyme disease. In 1992, she joined the Epidemic Intelligence Service of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Lindenmayer’s professional interests include fostering collaboration between human and veterinary medicine and public health, building capacity for chronic disease epidemiology among state health departments, and collaborating with state and national organizations to incorporate advances in genomics into public health practice. In addition to carrying out her research, she will direct the public health course and mentor veterinary students interested in careers in public health.

Linda Datcher Loury, associate professor of economics, presented her paper, “All in the Extended Family: Schooling and Employment,” at the annual meeting of the Allied Social Science Association January 6-8 in Boston.

Lisa Lynch, William L. Clayton Professor of International Economic Affairs at the Fletcher School, in January was appointed deputy chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. In addition, she became chair of the American Economics Association’s Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession and was elected to the executive board of the Labor and Employment Relations Association (formerly the Industrial Relations Research Association). On the research front, she was the keynote speaker at a conference in January on the use and analysis of employer-employee data, held at the Institute for Social Research in Oslo, Norway. She is also co-chair of a National Academy of Sciences committee on Measuring Business Formation, Dynamics and Performance.

Isabel Madzorera, a master’s degree candidate in food policy and applied nutrition at the Friedman School, has received at $12,000 grant from the Margaret McNamara Memorial Fund at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. The grant, which honors the memory of the wife of a former president of the World Bank, Robert McNamara, was awarded in an international competition of 125 women applicants from developing countries. Madzorera is from Zimbabwe. She has worked as a nutritionist with Save the Children in Norway, as a program manager with Farm Community Trust of Zimbabwe and as a district nutritionist at the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare in Zimbabwe. She has been active in designing nutrition interventions for women and children in emergency situations and has developed supplementary feeding programs to prevent and reduce malnutrition in HIV/AIDS orphans, children under age five and women who are pregnant or nursing. After receiving her degree in May, Madzorera plans to return to Zimbabwe to work for an NGO or the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare.

Dr. Kenneth Malament, clinical professor of prosthodontics and operative dentistry in the Division of Graduate and Postgraduate Prosthodontics at the School of Dental Medicine, is now secretary-treasurer and examining director of the American Board of Prosthodontics. Malament gave a talk on “Integration of Esthetic Dentistry and Prosthodontics” at the Litvak Symposium at New York University last November.

Mike McCann, a senior linebacker on the Tufts football team, was named to the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) All-Academic Team for the second consecutive year. NESCAC scholar-athletes must maintain a minimum 3.35 grade-point average while making a significant contribution on the athletic field. McCann started all eight games for the Jumbos and was their fourth-leading tackler with 42. He compiled a season-high 10 tackles against Williams College.

Heather Mernitz and Fuzhi Lian, Friedman School graduate students in the HNRCA Nutrition and Cancer Biology Laboratory, have been chosen to receive travel scholarships to attend the Keystone Symposia on Molecular Targets for Cancer Prevention March 6-10 in Tahoe City, Calif. Mernitz will present her research on “Inhibition of Lung Carcinogenesis by 9-cis Retinoic Acid and 1a, 25 Dihydroxyvitamin D3 in the A/J Mouse Model: Evidence of Retinoid Antagonism of Vitamin D.” Lian will present his research on “Beta-cryptoxanthin Inhibits the Growth of Immortalized Human Bronchia Epithelial Cells and Non-small Cell Lung Cancer Cells and Up-regulates Retinoic Acid Receptor-beta Expression.”

Dr. Klemens Meyer, associate professor of medicine and a nephrologist at Emerson Hospital in Concord, Mass., has been named outstanding physician in nephrology by the National Kidney Foundation. He was honored for his extraordinary commitment to patient care and the treatment of chronic kidney disease. For the past 15 years, Meyer also has served as director of dialysis services at Tufts-New England Medical Center.

Dr. Akmal A. Mikhail, assistant professor of anesthesiology, provided anesthesia care in Pune, India, for children undergoing eye surgery to correct their vision. During the week-long humanitarian mission, Mikhail also gave continuing medical education lectures for Indian doctors. The mission was supported by Orbis International, a nonprofit organization that seeks to improve the quality and availability of eye care services where the need is greatest.

Herbert W. Mower, assistant clinical professor of radiation oncology, has been elected vice chair of the American College of Medical Physics for 2006. He will become chair in 2007. As vice chair, he is responsible for the annual meeting of the college, which will take place June 2-6 in Las Vegas.

Elena N. Naumova, associate professor, and Nina H. Fefferman, assistant research professor, both in the Department of Public Health and Family Medicine at the medical school, are participating in groundbreaking interdisciplinary research on human immunity to influenza. They will join colleagues from the Blood Center of Southeastern Wisconsin, the Medical College of Wisconsin and the University of Massachusetts Medical School as part of the NIH-funded Center on Translational Research in Human Immunology and Bioterrorism, a $25 million enterprise. Naumova is leading a team to develop conceptual and mathematical frameworks that describe complex immune responses on individual and population levels. Fefferman will build mathematical models to predict the dynamics of influenza and design tools to analyze changes in immune response. The Tufts researchers will be supported by $3 million in NIH funding over five years. Naumova and Fefferman also will serve as the lead investigators for the Tufts Initiative for the Forecasting and Modeling of Infectious Diseases (InForMID), a new program in public health and family medicine designed to improve biomedical and public health research through the development of these kinds of analytical and computational tools.

Julie Nelson, senior research associate at the Global Development and Environment Institute, gave a presentation on “Feminist Economics and Caring Labor,” based on her joint work with Nancy Folbre, at Williams College on December 13.

Dr. Kenneth L. Noller, professor and chair of obstetrics and gynecology at the School of Medicine, has been elected president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. The Louis E. Phaneuf Teaching and Research Professor of Gynecology, Noller investigates the effects of diethylstilbestrol (DES) given during pregnancy to prevent miscarriage. In the 1970s, Noller and his colleagues determined that the daughters of women who took DES faced increased risk of infertility, rare forms of vaginal cancer and increased pregnancy losses themselves. Noller and his colleagues also found that DES mothers had a 30 percent higher risk of developing breast cancer than women who did not take the drug. He also is principal investigator for the Ovarian Cancer Prevention and Early Detection Study, a study of 3,400 women across the country funded by the National Cancer Institute in collaboration with the Gynecologic Oncology Group.

George Norman, professor of economics, and his co-author, Darlene Chisholm of Suffolk University, presented their paper, “When to Exit a Product: Evidence from the U.S. Motion Picture Exhibition Market,” at the annual meeting of the Allied Social Science Associations January 6-8 in Boston.

Martin Obin, a scientist in the HNRCA Obesity and Metabolism Laboratory, has been awarded a three-year, $300,000 grant from the American Diabetes Association to study the role of inflammatory cells in diet-induced obesity and insulin resistance.

Jose M. Ordovas, director of the HNRCA Nutrition and Genomics Laboratory, received funding from Interleukin Genetics Inc. for a “Single Center, Double-Blind Parallel Group Study to Evaluate the Association of IL-1 Genotypes with Inflammatory Biomarker Response Following a Standardized Fat Load Challenge.”

Lynne Pepall and Daniel Richards, both professors of economics, presented their paper, “Strategic Subsidies and Investment Spillovers,” at the annual meeting of the Allied Social Science Association January 6-8 in Boston.

Marisel Perez, associate dean of students in Arts & Sciences, and Sean MacDonald, patient services supervisor at the School of Dental Medicine, have been inducted into Tufts’ Hall of Diversity. Perez was recognized for her efforts in founding and overseeing the Bias Prevention Team and MacDonald for the work he has done in providing employment, interview skills and internship opportunities to recently immigrated members of the community. The Hall of Diversity is an initiative of the Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action, which recognizes individuals, departments and committees that work to promote diversity within the university. To learn more about the initiative and to nominate someone for the hall, go to http://www.tufts.edu/oeo/hallofdiversity.html.

Dr. Ronald Pies, clinical professor of psychiatry, has been named science content editor of Psychiatric Times, a monthly tabloid news magazine published by CMP Healthcare Media for more than 39,000 psychiatrists. “Dr. Pies has been a dedicated columnist, contributor and editorial board member of our publication for nearly 20 years,” said Marcy Holeton, Psychiatric Times publisher. “We are delighted he has agreed to assume this newly created position.” Pies is an author/coauthor of numerous clinical journal articles, book chapters and books, including the Handbook of Essential Psychopharmacology, second edition (2005), Handbook of Geriatric Psychopharmacology (2002), The Difficult-to-Treat Psychiatric Patient (2001) and Clinical Manual of Psychiatric Diagnosis and Treatment: A Biopsychosocial Approach (1994), all available from American Psychiatric Publishing Inc., and A Consumer’s Guide to Choosing the Right Psychotherapist (Jason Aronson, 1997).

Dr. Charles Rankin, associate professor of endodontics and director of pre-doctoral endodontics at the School of Dental Medicine, gave presentations on “Endodontic Diagnosis” and “Endodontic Rotary Instrumentation” at a meeting of the Bahamian Dental Association (BDA) November 9-11 in Nassau, Bahamas. Dr. Ericka Lowe, D04, introduced Rankin at the meeting, and Dr. Andre Rollins, D01, the president of the BDA, presented Rankin with a certificate of appreciation. Dr. Herb Bennett, D04, also attended the meeting.

David Rivard, lecturer in English, is the author of four books: Sugartown (Graywolf, 2006), Bewitched Playground (Graywolf, 2000), Wise Poison (Graywolf, 1996), the winner of the James Laughlin Prize from the Academy of American Poets and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and Torque (Pitt, 1988), winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize. His poems and essays appear in the American Poetry Review, TriQuarterly, Ploughshares and other magazines. Among his awards are fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Arts Foundation and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, as well as two Pushcart Prizes. He is a member of the writing committee at the Fine Arts Work Center and the former poetry editor of Harvard Review.

Dr. Irwin H. Rosenberg, director of the HNRCA Nutrition and Neurocognition Laboratory, and Alice Lichtenstein, director of the Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory at the HNRCA, will receive major awards at the 2006 Experimental Biology meeting April 1-5 in San Francisco. Rosenberg will receive the Conrad H. Elvehjem Award for distinguished service to the public through nutrition science. Lichtenstein is the recipient of the Robert H. Herman Memorial Award, which honors a clinical investigator whose research work has contributed to the advancement of clinical nutrition, particularly the biochemical and medical aspects of human nutrition. In addition, Lichtenstein was invited to discuss “The Case against Low-Carbohydrate Diets” at the Obesity, Lifestyle and Cardiovascular Disease Symposium January 19 in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Robert Russell, director of the HNRCA, was an issues expert on “Nutrition and Aging” at the White House Conference on Aging, held in Washington, D.C., December 10-14. He spoke in support of nutrition resolutions regarding older adults having a right to a healthful diet and for food and nutrition services being essential to keeping Medicaid and Medicare recipients healthy, independent and living in the community.

Dr. Carmen Sceppa, a scientist in the HNRCA Nutrition, Exercise Physiology and Sarcopenia Laboratory, has received funding for the New Hampshire Celebrates Wellness 2005-06 project.

Paul Waldau, director of the Center for Animals and Public Policy at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, again will teach the “Animal Law” course at Harvard Law School beginning in February. He’ll also give the keynote address, “Ethical Issues Impacting Animal Use in Veterinary Medical Teaching,” at the annual meeting of the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges in March in Washington, D.C.