People Going Places . . .
Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics
Lori Sussel received the prestigious Faculty Mentor of the Year Award at the recent national conference that annually gathers the nation’s largest group of minority PhD students, doctoral graduates and faculty mentors.
Sussel, an assistant professor of pediatrics/cell and developmental biology at UCDHSC, was nominated by doctoral student Christina Chao for her mentoring and support of the doctoral student as she progressed toward a doctoral degree.
The award, one of only five presented to faculty mentors from across the nation, was given at the Compact for Faculty Diversity’s 13th annual Institute on Teaching and Mentoring in Denver. The event brought together doctoral scholars and faculty mentors who participate in several different programs that support minority students as they pursue PhDs, with the goal of vastly increasing the number of minority faculty members at colleges across the United States.
Architecture and Planning
Landscape Architecture faculty Austin Allen, Lois Brink, Joern Langhorst and Tony Mazzeo presented “The Ninth Ward at the Crossroads of Design and Planning” with special guest municipal leaders from New Orleans at the 2006 ASLA Colorado Design Conference Redevelopment: Profession, Practice, Community in Vail Nov. 4.
CAP lecturer Christopher Jahn, architect/principal at FUSE STUDIO ARCHITECTS, has been working with Japanese artist Tatsuo Miyajima for the past two years on his piece ENGI - a permanent installation specifically for the four-story atrium of the new Frederic C. Hamilton Building - the new addition to the Denver Art Museum. The piece was commissioned by the Denver Office of Cultural Affairs Public Art Program and it directly involved 80 members of the Denver community in its creation. It is Miyajima's first major large-scale installation in the United States and it will be a permanent part of the museum.
Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture Ann Komara and her team received the Stephen H. Hart Award for excellence in historic preservation from the Colorado Historical Society for their work on the preparation of Colorado’s first contribution to the Historic American Landscape Survey, Skyline Park.
School
of Education and Human Development
Diane Estrada and Phil Rutter recently published the article “Using the Multiple Lenses of Identity: Working with Ethnic and Sexual Minority College Students” in the Journal of College Counseling.
College of Engineering and Applied Science
During the first two weeks of October, Computer Science and Engineering Associate Professor Min Choi traveled to South Korea where he was the invited speaker for two symposiums and four colloquia (to several different universities) at which he presented his research on physics-based deformable object simulation and ubiquitous health care. For more information on Min’s research, see
http://graphics.cudenver.edu/project.htm. On Oct. 9 and 10, Mechanical Engineering Professor Ken Ortega gave two invited talks at the centennial celebration held in honor of Max Delbrück (who received a Nobel Prize in 1969 for his work in molecular biology) at the Universidad de Salamanca, Spain: one talk was Ken’s memoir, "I wonder what Max would think?" and the other a report on Ken’s own (Delbrück-influenced) research, “Biophysical equations for the sporangiophores of Phycomyces blakesleeanus.” For more information, see http://www.es.embnet.org/~genus/Delbruck100.html .
Computer Science and Engineering Assistant Professor Ilkyeun Ra was invited to participate in a workshop about e-Science from October 13 to 15, 2006 at the Bloomberg Center at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Topics covered new techniques as well as the evolution, challenges, and potential of computing in scientific research, including how the latest tools, web services, and database technologies are being applied to scientific computing.
During the week of October 16, Civil Engineering Associate Professor Kevin Rens and his students presented five technical papers at the Fourth Forensic Congress of the American Society of Civil Engineers held in Cleveland. Kevin chairs the Technical Council on Forensic Engineering for ASCE, and he is a member of the editorial board of the TCFE Journal.
During the week of Nov. 6, Electrical Engineering Professor Jan Bialasiewicz presented two technical papers at the IEEE International Conference on Industrial Electronics in Paris, France: “The Wind Farm Aggregation Impact on Power Quality” and “Power Electronic Systems for the Grid Integration of Wind Turbines”; he also chaired two sessions.
On Nov. 13, Civil Engineering Assistant Professor David Mays presented a paper entitled "Clogging by Montmorillonite in Porous Media: Hydrodynamic and Chemical Effects" at the annual meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers in San Francisco. Details are available on the AIChE website at http://aiche.confex.com/aiche/2006/techprogram/S3033.HTM.
From Nov. 28 to 30, Civil Engineering Associate Professor Anu Ramaswami is participating in the 2006 U.S. EPA By-Product Beneficial Use Summit held in San Francisco. Anu is a keynote speaker for the plenary session on “Communication and Partnership,” at which time she is presenting the Urban Sustainability and Infrastructure Project.
On Nov. 5, two student teams formed by Civil Engineering Assistant Professor Stephan Durham participated in the American Concrete Institute (ACI) Concrete Cylinder Competition at the ACI Fall 2006 Convention in Denver along with fifteen other teams, placing 8th and 13th in the target strength category in concrete mixture design. Channel 2 news covered event—they were the only teams from Colorado—on the news that night at nine o’clock. Stephan is a member of the ACI Collegiate Concrete Council and also serves on the ACI Certification and Membership Committees.