March People Notes

Astier Almedom, the Henry R. Luce Professor in Science and Humanitarianism, had her research on the effects of the 1998 to 2000 border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea and the role of social support in mitigating its worst effects cited in the first chapter of The World Disasters Report , published by the British Red Cross in 2005. Almedom’s work on the border war was first published in the Journal of Biosocial Science special issue on “Mental Well-being in Settings of Complex Emergency” in 2004, for which she served as guest editor. The World Disasters Report focused on how information is gathered, verified and used in times of crisis. In the case of the Asian tsunami in 2004, many villagers in India were able to escape harm upon hearing the news of imminent floods, while in the internally displaced communities of southern Eritrea, where Almedom conducted fieldwork, reliable news and updates broadcast on public radio augmented by regular discussion meetings led by camp administrators and leaders provided critical cognitive social support to displaced women, their families and communities. The Luce Program is coordinated by Tufts’ Institute for Global Leadership, directed by Sherman Teichman. Almedom is serving as an Institute for Global Leadership fellow through 2008.

Dr. Nancy Arbree, associate dean at the School of Dental Medicine, has been elected vice president of the Greater New York Academy of Prosthodontics. Dr. Gary Rogoff, associate clinical professor of oral and maxillofacial surgery, is president-elect of the organization.

Nancy Bauer, associate professor of philosophy, was interviewed on PBS’ “Religion and Ethics Newsweekly” on January 27 during a program on “Venezuelan Oil Subsidies.”

Marina Bers, assistant professor in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development, received the Jan Hawkins Award from the American Educational Research Association in recognition of her early career contributions to humanistic research and scholarship in learning technologies.

Stephen W. Bosworth, dean of the Fletcher School, was one of the featured speakers at an international banking conference sponsored by the Institute of International Finance, a global association of financial institutions, held February 25-26 in Oman. Leaders in finance from the Middle East and North Africa attended the conference, which looked at key trends in the international economy and major projects in the region, including infrastructure projects, and the opportunities that they offer to regional banks.

Donna Carey has been promoted to director of student affairs at the School of Dental Medicine. Formerly the associate director, Carey joined the dental school’s Office of Student Affairs in 1998.

Dr. Jinkun “Jake” Chen, professor of general dentistry, has been appointed to the Oral, Dental and Craniofacial Sciences Study Section, Center for Scientific Review, of the National Institutes of Health for a term ending on June 30, 2009. Members are selected on the basis of their demonstrated competence and achievement in their scientific discipline. Study section members review grant applications submitted to the NIH, make recommendations on those applications and survey the status of research in their fields.

Daniel C. Dennett, University Professor and professor of philosophy, was a guest on the WBUR radio show “On Point” on February 1. He also has two new DVDs out on his work for classroom use, “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea” and “The Magic of Consciousness.” For more, go to http://www.classroommedia.com. Dennett appeared on the PBS program “Greater Boston” on February 7.

Michael Forgac, professor of physiology, has been invited to chair a session on “Regulation of the Vacuolar ATPase” at the Gordon Conference in Molecular and Cellular Bioenergetics, one of the leading international meetings in this area, to be held June 11-16 at the Proctor Academy in Andover, N.H. Forgac’s laboratory focuses on understanding the structure, function and regulation of the vacuolar ATPases (or V-ATPases). The V-ATPases are a family of ATP-dependent proton pumps that play a crucial role in both normal cellular processes, such as membrane traffic and protein degradation, as well as in various human diseases, including osteoporosis and cancer.

Dr. Albert Forgione, associate professor of general dentistry at the School of Dental Medicine; Dr. David Mostofsky, professor of psychology and director of the Laboratory for Experimental Behavioral Medicine at Boston University; and Dr. Donald Giddon, professor of developmental biology at Harvard and founder and former president of Behavioral Sciences and Health Services Research, have edited a new book, Behavioral Dentistry (Blackwell Munksgaard, 2006). Forgione said the book provides dental students, practicing dentists and dental professionals with an entrée into the fascinating and important study of the interaction between people’s behavior and the status of the oral cavity. The text contains 21 papers written by those prominent in the field of behavioral dentistry. Topics covered include stress and saliva production, anxiety, fear and pain, a biobehavioral perspective of chronic orofacial pain, stress and periodontal disease, biofeedback and the treatment of myofascial pain disorder and TMJ joint pain.

Dr. Jonathan Garlick, professor of oral and maxillofacial pathology and director of the Division of Cancer Biology and Tissue Engineering at the School of Dental Medicine, gave an invited talk on “Reconstructed Human Skin to Study Early Skin Cancer Development and Wound Healing” at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in St. Louis on February 18. He will give an invited talk on “The 3rd Dimension: Mechanistic Studies of Tumorigenesis in Context” at a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research April 1 in Washington, D.C. Garlick will chair a symposium on “The Tumor Microenvironment in Cancer Progression” at a meeting of the International Association for Dental Research March 11. He has been appointed chair of the Special Emphasis Panel on Oral Cancer of the National Institute of Dental Research.

Larry Gianinno, research professor of child development, has been appointed an editor of Applied Developmental Science . He will join Richard M. Lerner, also a faculty member in Tufts’ Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development, and Celia Fisher of Fordham University in editing the journal, now in its tenth year. Gianinno will provide leadership in expanding the journal’s scope and audience into many of the areas of applied developmental science that have emerged over the last decade.

Dr. Alice Bendix Gottlieb has been appointed chair of the Department of Dermatology at the School of Medicine, where she will be nominated to serve as the Ansell Professor of Dermatology and dermatologist-in-chief at Tufts-New England Medical Center. She comes to Tufts from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey/Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, where she served as the W.H. Conzen Chair in Clinical Pharmacology, director of the Clinical Research Center and founding director of the Psoriasis Center of Excellence. Gottlieb is a graduate of Cornell Medical School and received her Ph.D. in immunology from Rockefeller University. She is board-certified in dermatology, rheumatology and internal medicine, one of only a handful of doctors in the United States certified in all three specialties. She is an internationally recognized expert in psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis and was one of the first scientists to demonstrate that psoriasis is a T-cell-mediated disease. Her research using targeted immunobiologics as pathogenic probes provided new understanding of the pathogenesis of the disease as well the foundation for drug development for psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. She has published extensively and has presented her work at conferences in Europe, Asia and the United States. Her current research includes the study of apoptosis and inflammation-related protein and gene expression in patients responding to novel psoriasis treatments. Gottlieb will start her new job on March 13.

Dr. James Hanley, assistant dean for clinical affairs at the School of Dental Medicine, passed the oral examination of the periodontal boards and is now a diplomate of the American Board of Periodontology.

Dr. John Kulig, professor of pediatrics, public health and family medicine at the School of Medicine, has been elected to serve a two-year term (2007 to 2008) as subspecialty chair of the Adolescent Medicine Subboard of the American Board of Pediatrics.

Richard M. Lerner, Bergstrom Chair of Applied Developmental Science, will present “Mapping the Future: The Tufts Longitudinal Study on 4-H Youth Development” to national 4H state leaders on March 15 in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Mohsen Meydani, director of the Vascular Biology Laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA), has been appointed to the scientific advisory board of Zila Inc., manufacturer of Ester-C(R) and Ester-E(R), nutraceuticals that may help maintain healthy immune and cardiovascular function. Meydani’s research focuses on the role of dietary antioxidants, lipids and oxidative stress on molecular mechanisms of immune/endothelial cells’ interaction in atherogenesis and angiogenesis. He has published more than 150 original scientific and review articles.

Karen Micale has assumed the role of reunion program coordinator in the Office of Alumni Relations on the Medford/Somerville campus. She has worked in alumni relations at Tufts since 1990.

William Moomaw, professor of international environmental policy at the Fletcher School, discussed the need for global cooperation to address climate protection and why now is the time to act locally February 28 at the Belmont Hill School in Belmont, Mass. Moomow, who directs Tufts’ Center for International Environmental Resource Policy, has been a convening lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and founded the EPA award-winning Tufts Climate Initiative.

Karen Morey has joined the Advancement Information Systems team as a business systems analyst. In her previous position at Edgewater Technology, she worked with clients to define requirements, write specifications and develop test plans. She also has worked for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as a liaison between system users and the information technology staff. A graduate of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Morey has also worked in the environmental engineering field as an analyst/scientist.

Bruce Morgan, the editor of Tufts Medicine, the alumni magazine of the School of Medicine and the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences, has received an Award of Excellence from the Association of American Medical Colleges/Group on Institutional Advancement (AAMC/GIA) for his profile of Dr. Gloria White-Hammond, M76, a pediatrician who has helped purchase the freedom of more than 10,000 slaves in the Sudan. The profile, which was the cover story in the summer 2004 issue of the magazine, was judged the best non-science feature produced by a U.S. medical school in 2004. This is Morgan’s third Award of Excellence from the AAMC/GIA. He received the award for the Tufts Medicine cover stories “Jail Time” (non-science, 2000) and “When the Heart Stops Cold” (science, 2003).

Julie O’Connor has been promoted to senior alumni relations officer on the Medford/Somerville campus. She has worked in the Office of Alumni Relations since 2003. As a member of the Outreach & Engagement Team, she now has expanded responsibilities with student, young alumni and reunions programs.

Dr. J. Mark Peterman, assistant clinical professor of medicine, has been appointed director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory at the Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield, Mass. He is an interventional cardiologist with the Tufts-affiliated Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass., and is board-certified in internal medicine, cardiovascular disease and interventional cardiology.

Todd Quinto, Robinson Professor of Mathematics, co-organized the workshop “New Mathematics and Algorithms for 3-D Image Analysis” at the Institute for Mathematics and Applications (IMA). This NSF-sponsored institute is located at the University of Minnesota. The workshop brought together 110 scientists and mathematicians from all over the world. Aleksei Beltukov, who earned his Ph.D. in mathematics at Tufts in 2004 and is now at the University of the Pacific, attended. Scientists presented their imaging problems, and mathematicians presented their most modern mathematical tools. Small break-out sessions were held to discuss the problems and tools in informal groups. Because of interest at the conference, the IMA plans to provide a repository of data for testing as well as a bulletin board to pose questions and discuss ideas.

George Scarlett, lecturer in child development, and Elizabeth Dowling, a Ph.D. graduate in child development, co-edited a new encyclopedia on religious and spiritual development that was published by Sage last November. It will serve as a library reference. Scarlett and doctoral student Iris Ponte have a contract with Sage to write a textbook on behavior and classroom management for prospective teachers, and he is working with Mona Abo-Zena, a doctoral student in child development, and Danyal Najmi, A08, produce a book on spiritual exemplars. Scarlett is also working with three members of the Tufts baseball team— Greg Chertok, A06, a psychology major; Jacob Lipton, A06, an international relations major; and Erik Johanson, A06, a political science major, to write a book on teaching and coaching youth baseball. “Our perspective on current books,” he says, “is that too many take complex explanations appropriate for high school players and use these same explanations in books on coaching children. Our book will help coaches adjust their explanations and teaching to the age and level of the child.” Scarlett is the co-author of the first-ever chapter on religious and spiritual development to appear in the prestigious Handbook of Child Psychology, which is due out this spring. His co-authors are Kathryn Tabone, A03; Mitchael Steorts, A06; and Alexis Gerber, A05. Richard Lerner, Bergstrom Chair in Applied Developmental Science at Tufts, co-edits the four-volume handbook with Bill Damon of Stanford.

Dr. Ernst J. Schaefer, director of the HNRCA Lipid Metabolism Laboratory, spoke on “Pharmacologic Therapies for High Density Lipoproteins (HDL) Raising and CHD Risk Reduction” at the Expert Workshop on HDL, Reverse Cholesterol Transport and Heart Disease January 20 at the HNRCA in honor of Dr. Julian Marsh of the Lipid Metabolism Laboratory. He was joined by laboratory members Bela Asztalos and Dr. Stefania Lamon-Fava, who discussed “HDL Particles, Reverse Cholesterol Transport and Coronary Heart Disease Risk” and “Gender and Hormonal Effects on HDL,” respectively. Alice Lichtenstein, director of the Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory at the HNRCA, gave a presentation on “Nutritional Effects on HDL.” The workshop was sponsored by an education grant from KOS Pharmaceuticals.

John Schneider, director of Corporate and Foundation Relations, will retire from Tufts in June after a 20-year career with the university. He has been an integral part of Tufts’ fund-raising efforts during the two previous campaigns, leading the foundation relations effort through 1993 and then managing corporate and foundation relations throughout the Tufts Tomorrow campaign that ended in 2002. Many programs that have evolved into Tufts’ strongest academic and research priorities have benefited from corporate and foundation support.

Christopher Schonhoff has joined the Cummings School as a research assistant professor of biomedical sciences. He received his B.S. in biology in 1992 from Boston College and his Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of Massachusetts in 2000. From 1992 to 1994, he was a research assistant at Tufts-New England Medical Center. Since 2001, he has been a postdoctoral fellow in infectious diseases at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He also was an adjunct professor at Dean College.

Rebecca Scott has been promoted to director of gift planning in the university’s Advancement Division. She joined Tufts last year as associate director of gift planning.

Laurence Senelick, professor of drama, had his annotated translations of The Complete Plays of Anton Chekhov published by W.W. Norton in December. It is the only one-volume edition of all of Chekhov’s dramatic works with variants in any language and is expected to become the standard edition. Senelick attended the annual conference of the American Society for Theatre Research in November, when he presented a paper on “The Word Made Flesh: Staging Pornography in 18th-century Paris.” He also published “Bleeding Hearts and Mocking Darts: A Suppositious Parody of Lidiya Avilova” in The Bulletin of the North American Chekhov Society.

Kyla Shea, a graduate research assistant in the HNRCA Vitamin K Laboratory, has been awarded a pre-doctoral fellowship from the American Heart Association to study “The Role of Vitamin K in Inflammation.” Her advisor is Sarah Booth, director of the Vitamin K Laboratory.

Dr. Jorge Enrique Silva and Dr. Kamal Shoukri have joined the staff at Baystate Medical Center, an affiliate of Tufts School of Medicine. An internationally known endocrinologist, Silva is chief of the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism. He comes to Baystate from Jewish General Hospital in Montreal, Canada, where he was chief of endocrinology and metabolism and professor of medicine at McGill University. Shoukri is the fellowship program director of Baystate’s Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism. Shoukri was an associate professor of medicine and fellowship program director for endocrinology at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine.

George Smith, professor of philosophy, participated in a televised interview on the PBS program “NOVA” on November 15 during a show titled “Newton’s Dark Secrets.”

Christina “Tina” Snell has joined the Advancement Division as the new administrative assistant for engineering development. She comes to Tufts from the communications department at Wide Horizons for Children in Waltham, Mass. She has degrees in theater arts from the University of California at San Diego and Brandeis University.

Dr. Jennifer Steinberg has joined the Cummings School as a clinical instructor in biomedical sciences. She is a 2001 graduate of Tufts’ veterinary school and completed a small animal medicine and surgery internship before entering the combined clinical pathology residency and Ph.D. program at Colorado State. After completing two years at Colorado State, she returned to Tufts to finish her residency. She recently passed the American College of Veterinary Pathologists’ certifying exam in clinical pathology.

Robert Sternberg, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and director of the Center for the Psychology of Abilities, Competencies and Expertise, gave a talk on hate, genocide, terrorism and massacres February 23 as a guest of the Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. He is the editor of The Psychology of Hate (American Psychological Association, 2005).

Bill Sullivan has joined the Advancement Information Systems team as a business systems analyst. Most recently, he was the manager of programming and systems support at MIT, where he wrote specifications, ad hoc reports and documentation. He also has worked as director of advancement services at Bentley College.

Jeff Taliaferro, associate professor of political science, delivered a paper on “Neoclassical Realism and the Resource Extractive State” on December 1 at the Program on International Politics, Economics and Security (PIPES) seminar at the University of Chicago.

Allen Taylor, director of the HNRCA Laboratory for Nutrition and Vision Research, discussed “Dietary Carbohydrate Intake and Glycemic Index in Relation to Cortical and Nuclear Lens Opacities” at the Age-Related Eye Disease Study Cooperative Cataract Research Group meeting in Kona, Hawaii, on November 1. Taylor gave an invited talk on “Aging, Visual Function and Food Ingredients,” focusing on the effects of diet and nutrition on sight and visual ability, at the International Conference on Foods for the Healthy Elderly—Fit for Growth in Amsterdam January 25-28. The conference offered the latest science-based and market developments in designing food and beverages for healthy elderly.

Dawn Geronimo Terkla, executive director of institutional research, presented an invited lecture on “IR Is More Than Just Data!” at the Future of Institutional Research in Irish Higher Education seminar November 22. The seminar was sponsored by the Irish Universities Quality Board, and representatives from the seven national Irish universities and the Dublin Institute of Technology attended. On December 7, she was an invited presenter at the New England Association of Schools and Colleges’ 120th annual meeting and conference. The topic of her presentation was “Learning about Experiences and Outcomes through Alumni Surveys.”

Cindy Briggs Tobin, director of annual giving and alumni relations at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, and Elizabeth Stearns, director of annual giving and alumni relations at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, gave a presentation on “Fundraising for Graduate and Professional Schools” at the 2006 Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) District I conference February 14 in Montreal, Canada.

Jane Van Dae has joined the Office of Medical Development as a staff assistant. She moves east from the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, where she worked as a staff assistant in the Office of Student Affairs with the summer career exploration program, Adventures in Veterinary Medicine. She graduated from Indiana University with a B.A. in English and a minor in Italian and history.

Dr. Xiang-Dong Wang, director of the HNRCA’s Nutrition and Cancer Biology Laboratory, has been promoted to professor in the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy. His major research interests have included investigating the mechanisms of actions of carotenoids and retinoids in cigarette smoke-related lung carcinogenesis and in alcohol drinking-associated liver disease. He was the recipient of the 2005 ELR Stokstad Award from the American Society for Nutritional Sciences.

Dr. Eugene White, assistant professor of environmental and population health at the Cummings School, has become a diplomate of the American Board of Veterinary Practitioners (ABVP). The ABVP is different from other American Veterinary Medical Association specialty boards in that diplomates of ABVP are certified by species specialization rather than by discipline. White is certified in dairy practice, joining a select group of fewer than 40 individuals.

Jeffrey Zabel, associate professor of economics, and his co-author, Robert Paterson, presented their paper, “Spatial and Temporal Aspects of the Impact of Regulation on Housing Supply: An Analysis of Critical Habitat Designation in California,” at the annual meeting of the Allied Social Science Association January 6-8 in Boston.