May 2012

The Center For Scientific Review at the National Institute for Heath has requested the services of Dr. Tanja Godenschwege, Associate Professor in the Biological Sciences Department , as a peer-reviewer for applications submitted to Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Neurosciences Integrated Review Group.
Dr. Godenschwege will be part of the Synapses, Cytoskeleton and Trafficking [SYN] Study Section that will be meeting 6/7/2012-6/8/2012 in Seattle. The Synapses, Cytoskeleton and Trafficking [SYN] Study Section reviews applications on the basic cell biology of nerve, muscle and other excitable cells, including synaptic plasticity, protein and organelle trafficking, cell surface and extracellular matrix molecules in cell recognition and function, and cytoskeletal functions across the life span. Emphasis is on fundamental mechanisms of excitable cell function, including those relevant to disease processes such as Alzheimer's, Huntington's, and Parkinson's diseases, epilepsy and fragile-X syndrome. For more information see http://cms.csr.nih.gov/peerreviewmeetings/csrirgdescriptionnew/mcdnirg/syn.htm.

April 2012

Congratulations to our Chemistry Ph.D. student's great accomplishment with a manuscript see VIP: Effects of Cyclic Lipodepsipeptide Structural Modulation on Stability, Antibacterial Activity, and Human Cell Toxicity (ChemMedChem 5/2012) (page 746) Nina Bionda , Dr. Maciej Stawikowski, Roma Stawikowska, Dr. Maré Cudic, Dr. Fabian López-Vallejo, Daniela Treitl, Dr. José Medina-Franco and Dr. Predrag Cudic

This Ms. was given VIP status with a cover page citation. Nina works with Dr. Predrag Cudic as a Chemistry Ph.D. student from the College at the Torrey Pines Institute For Molecular Studies. Congratulations Nina and Predrag!

The Center for Cryptology and Information Security (CCIS) (see http://brain.math.fau.edu/ccis/) was designated as a National Centers of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Research (CAE-R) by the The National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. The CAE-R program was started in 2007 to encourage universities and students to pursue research, development, and innovation in information assurance and cybersecurity. This is a FAU-wide Major interdisciplinary program involving Science, Engineering, Business and Design & Social Inquiry. Lot of hard work went into this over the last few years led by Drs. Spyros Magliveras, Rainer Steinwandt and Thomas Eisenbarth. Congratulations Spyros and the team!

Warner A. Miller, Ph.D., professor and chair of the department of physics has received a $675,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Defense for a three-year project titled “Discrete Ricci Flow in Higher Dimensions.” Miller will lead a team of researchers from FAU, Stony Brook University and Harvard University to apply the Hamilton’s Ricci Flow method, a form of geometric mapping and analysis, to characterize and possibly control information-based cyber applications. Congratulations Warner!

Congratulations to Dr. Jeanette Wyneken (Associate Professor, Biology) who was awarded a grant entitled "Satellite Tracking Neonate Green Sea Turtles (Chelonia mydas) in the Atlantic" by the Saveourseas Foundation (http://saveourseas.com/). Congratulations Jeanette!

Dr. Wolfgang Tichi, Associate Professor, Physics was awarded g a one year NSF grant through the NSF gravitational theory program entitled "General Relativistic Simulations of Binary Compact Objects". These are numerical simulations of Einstein's equations to explore the orbits and properties of black holes or neutron stars in binary systems. Such systems will radiate gravitational waves that will be detected by the future advanced LIGO detectors. In order to interpret the measurement such detectors will make, predictions form simulations will be essential. Congratulations Wolf!

Dr. Jonathan Engle from Physics was awarded a three year NSF award (gravitational theory program) entitled "Dynamics and Symmetry in Quantum Gravity". The goal of the project is to solve certain open questions in the application of loop quantum gravity to cosmology, necessary to make confident quantitative predictions about quantum gravity effects at the Big Bang. Congratulations Jon!

February 2012

Dr. Caiyun Zhang has been selected as the recipient of Early Career Paper Award sponsored by the Remote Sensing Specialty Group (RSSG) of the Association of American Geographers with the paper “Zhang, C., and F. Qiu, Mapping Individual Tree Species in an Urban Forest Using Airborne LiDAR Data and Hyperspectral Imagery” . RSSG will announce the award officially next week at the AAG meeting in New York City. The paper will be published in the top ranking journal, Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing.

Drs. Len Berry and Jayantha Obeysekera (affiliate at Center for Environmental Studies) have been selected to be co-authors on the National Climate Assessment (NCA) with a special focus on South east United States and the Caribbean. The NCA takes places every four years and this report is due to the President and Congress in 2013. See http://www.globalchange.gov/what-we-do/assessment/nca-overview

January 2012

Dr. David Lewkowicz, Professor, Department of Psychology published a manuscript in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, USA describing how babies learn to talk by lip reading.
Also see :
Associated Press Article
CNN News
YouTube

As an early event in Alan Turing's centenary Year, the Mid-Atlantic Mathematical Logic Seminar (MAMLS), held a meeting dedicated to Turing (Jan. 13-15, 2012) at the Wyndham Hotel in Deerfield Beach, FL. Turing's contributions to the field of computational science has a profound impact on diverse areas of research: For ex. Computer science, Cryptology, artificial intelligence to developmental biology and several other areas. Dr. Bob Lubarsky, from Mathematics organized the conference supported by NSF. Over 60 participants, including many local undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty, as well as others from as far away as Italy and Japan participated.

The Twelfth International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics was held at the Embassy Suites Hotel on SE 17th Street in Fort Lauderdale, January 9-11, 2012. The series of symposia began in 1990, and continues to the present time, under the sponsorship of the journal, Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence, and Florida Atlantic University. Dr. Martin Charles Golumbic of the University of Haifa is the General Chair, and Dr. Frederick Hoffman, Department of Mathematics at the CES College of Science, FAU Chaired the Conference.
See http://www.cs.uic.edu/Isaim2012/ for details.

December 2011

Dr.Chakrabarti's (Assistant Professor, Physics) recent paper in the Astrophysical Journal was chosen for the highlights in the prestigious Journal Science (Dec 9 ). See www.sciencemag.org/content/334/6061/twil.full.pdf.

November 2011

Dr. Robert P. Vertes (Complex Systems & Brain Sciences and Psychology) was recently awarded "Top Cited Article 2006-2010" by the highly rated journal "Neuroscience" for his paper entitled " Interactions among the medial prefrontal cortex, hippocampus and midline thalamus in emotional and cognitive processing in the rat, published in Neuroscience, Volume 142, Issue 1, 2006.

Dr. Pedro Marronetti (Physics) has been appointed as Program Director for the Gravitational Physics Program, Division of Physics, Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences, at the National Science Foundation. Dr. Maronetti will start this appointment on January 3, 2012 and serve at NSF for two years.

The following faculty from the College were chosen by the Division of Research for the Mentor-Mentee awards ( 2011-12):

Dr. Tanja Godenschwege - (Dr. Kate Detwiler, Arts & Letter)
Dr.Warner Miller - (Dr. Sukanya Chakrabarti, Physics)
Dr. Ramaswamy Narayanan - (Dr. Deguo Du, Chemistry & Biochemistry)
Dr. Alan Kersten - (Dr. Marissa Greif, Psychology)
Dr. Zhixxiao Xie - (Dr. Caiyun Zhang, GeoScience)
Dr. Salvatore Lepore - (Dr. Daniel de Lill, Chemistry & Biochemistry )
For details of the program see http://www.fau.edu/research/mentoring_program.php

October 2011

October 28, 2011: The College announces the establishment of a Master Researcher Program to provide research mentoring primarily to new faculty in developing research proposals and to become successful researchers. See listing.

Dr. Ken Dawson Scully’s (Biological Sciences) US patent entitled Composition and Methods for treating neural anoxia and spreading depression was approved. Congratulations Ken!. See Patent.

The College held a One day research symposium with VGTI on Fri Oct 14. Faculty across the Colleges of Science, Engineering and Computer Science, Medicine and HBOI participated in this event. This Symposium sets the stage for joint grants, graduate students rotation and mentorship and can lead to the development of new programs revolving around Systems Biology. See agenda.

Dr. Markus Schmidmeier delivered an invited lecture entitled "Operations on arc diagrams and a degeneration result for linear operators" at the Shanghai International Conference on Representations of Algebras at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, October 2 - 7, 2011. See http://www.math.sjtu.edu.cn/Conference/SCRTA/
Great news Markus!

Congratulations to Dr. Miller, Chair of Physics in getting a DOD grant on "Discrete Ricci Flow in Higher Dimensions" for $675K. Ricci Flow was developed in the 80's by Hamilton, and recently used by Perelman to solve the famous Poincare Conjecture. Ricci Flow is a diffusive curvature flow. In addition to its applications to fundamental problems in Mathematics, it has found many practical applications from medicine to communications, and from homeland security to Hollywood animation. Warner will be leading a team of researchers from FAU with Stony Brook ( Dr. David Gu) and Harvard (Field Medalist Dr. S-T Yau) to extend this method to higher-dimensional manifolds and to generalize this for more abstract structures found in complex networks.

September 2011

Congratulations to Dr. Sara Milton in receiving a grant ($650K) from NOAA entitled “ECOHAB: Brevetoxin metabolism and physiology - a freshwater model of morbidity in endangered sea turtles”. She is is the lead PI with collaborators at Mote Marine lab, Florida Fish and Wildlife, and the GA Aquarium. Great job Sara bringing in a major collaboration. Way to go!

FAU Student Receives Award from NASA to Study Factors Leading to Florida’s Coastal Hazards

BOCA RATON, FL (September 19, 2011) – Janie Forbes, a doctoral student in the department of geosciences within the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science at Florida Atlantic University, has received a grant from the Florida Space Grant Consortium (FSGC), an affiliate of NASA’s National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program. Forbes is FAU’s first-ever FSGC grant recipient. read more >

Congratulations to Dr. Sukanya Chakrabarti, Asst. Professor, Physics whose work appeared in the prestigious Journal Nature, a very high impact factor Journal. Great work Sukanya! This is a major milestone for you and for the College.

Nature Editor’s summary:
Since its discovery more than a decade ago, the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy (Sgr), a satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way, has been recognized as a local analogue to the numerous mergers thought to be common in galaxies throughout the Universe. Traditionally, Sgr has been treated as a negligible perturber to the Galactic disk. New simulations of the response of the Milky Way to the infall of the Sgr reveal that, on the contrary, Sgr has played an important part in shaping the disk morphology. Past impacts have triggered the formation of spiral structure and influenced bar evolution. For full paper and associated News and views see http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v477/n7364/full/nature10417.html

Congratulations to Dr. Dragon Radulovic, Professor of Mathematics whose paper was published in PloS Biology (High impact factor journal). For those who are working in areas of bioinformatics, Systems Biology, transcriptome analysis, Network of gene expression and yeast genetics this work is likely to challenge some of the current thinking. Congratulations Dragon!.

Abstract:
Networks of co-regulated transcripts in genetically diverse populations have been studied extensively, but little is known about the degree to which these networks cause similar co-variation at the protein level. We quantified 354 proteins in a genetically diverse population of yeast segregants, which allowed for the first time construction of a coherent protein co-variation matrix. We identified tightly co-regulated groups of 36 and 93 proteins that were made up predominantly of genes involved in ribosome biogenesis and amino acid metabolism, respectively. Even though the ribosomal genes were tightly co-regulated at both the protein and transcript levels, genetic regulation of proteins was entirely distinct from that of transcripts, and almost no genes in this network showed a significant correlation between protein and transcript levels. This result calls into question the widely held belief that in yeast, as opposed to higher eukaryotes, ribosomal protein levels are regulated primarily by regulating transcript levels. Furthermore, although genetic regulation of the amino acid network was more similar for proteins and transcripts, regression analysis demonstrated that even here, proteins vary predominantly as a result of non-transcriptional variation. We also found that cis regulation, which is common in the transcriptome, is rare at the level of the proteome. We conclude that most inter-individual variation in levels of these particular high abundance proteins in this genetically diverse population is not caused by variation of their underlying transcripts.

For the full paper, See http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001144

June 2011

Dr. Ramaswamy Narayanan, Associate Dean for Research and Industry Relations was elected to BioFlorida’s Board of Directors ( see Board of Directors) . BioFlorida is the voice of Florida’s bioscience industry, and represents 200 member companies and research organizations in the biotechnology, pharmaceutical and medical device fields.

Dr. Robert W. Stackman Jr., Ph.D., Associate Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience co authored a paper in the prestigious Nature Neuroscience Journal with an Impact factor of 14.35. The paper describes the results of a combinatorial effort involving morphological, neurophysiological and behavioral analyses to define the role of the long isoform of the SK2 protein in the hippocampus.
(See Article).
Congratulations Bob for this accomplishment!

FAU Partners with Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute of Florida for Collaborative Research, Education and Training

BOCA RATON, FL (June 7, 2011) – Florida Atlantic University and the Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute (VGTI) of Florida in Port St. Lucie have reached an agreement to collaborate on research, education and training. The collaborative research will focus on novel cancer therapies, gene therapy and virus research that includes the study of the HIV virus, and the role of the immune system in cancer. The collaboration also will involve sharing facilities and equipment, co-hosting joint seminars and preparing joint grant applications to state and federal agencies.

“This interaction will contribute to the growth of the biotech workforce needed to meet the growing demands of the region,” said Ramaswamy Narayanan, Ph.D., assistant vice president for research in FAU’s Division of Research and associate dean for research and industry relations in the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science. “Our graduate students will work hand-in-hand with top faculty from VGTI to gain state-of-the-art experience in vaccines and gene therapy research. The collaboration can also help our undergraduate students through internships, and faculty will have an opportunity to work with VGTI scientists.”

FAU’s multidisciplinary doctoral program in integrative biology within the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science is said to be the first to interact with VGTI, whose research employs integrative biology and “computational biology” using mathematical and computational approaches to address biological questions to tackle human health issues in immunology. “All of our faculty/principal investigators come from academic backgrounds and wish to continue to work in an academic environment,” said John Schatzle, Ph.D., director of scientific affairs for VGTI. “We have opportunities to both contribute to graduate education, and also benefit from a partnership whereby our faculty can continue their academic careers and can also mentor and train Ph.D. or M.S. students directly in their labs on thesis or dissertation projects.”

Based at FAU’s Center for Molecular Biology and Biotechnology on the John D. MacArthur Campus in Jupiter, FAU’s Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine, as well as FAU’s College of Engineering and Computer Science and the College of Business will be involved in the collaboration with VGTI.

For more information, contact Ramaswamy Narayanan, Ph.D., at 561-297-2247 or rnarayan@fau.edu.

April 2011

Congratulations to Dr. Xavier Comas of Geosciences who has received a collaborative three-year, $515,000 National Science Foundation grant in conjunction with Rutgers University and University of Maine to quantify variation in storage and emission of greenhouse gases methane and carbon dioxide from northern peatlands using a combination of geophysical, hydrological and geodetic sensing techniques.
Congratulations Xavier!

Dr. Thomas Eisenbarth (Mathematics) was selected to receive the Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty enhancement award for 2011 by the ORAU. He was one the thirty faculty chosen amongst 118 applicants for the award nationally. Congratulations Thomas!

Congratulations to Dr. Erika Hoff who was awarded an NIH RO1 grant entitled “Early Dual Language Development in Children from Spanish-Speaking Families”- $542,350 (4/1/11- 3/31/16).
Congratulations Erika!

March 2011

Join me in congratulating Dr. Herb Weissbach who was awarded the first joint NIH grant (1 R03 DA032473-01)from FAU with Scripps Florida (Project Title: High Throughput Assay for Activators and Inhibitors of MSRA).
Congratulations Herb!

January 2011

Dr Yuan Wang, Professor, Mathematical Sciences, gave an invited lecture at the 5th International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians (ICCM 2010) held in Beijing (Dec 2010). See (http://iccm2010.org/) Congratulations Yuan!

Dr. Thomas Eisenbarth, from the Mathematics Department was awarded a five year NSF grant entitled “Practical Leakage Resilience: Provable Sid-Channel Resistance for Embedded Systems” for $500,000. Congratulations Thomas!

November 2010

Two new grants to the College from Florida Board of Governors.

Two of three FAU Research Priority themes from the College gains statewide recognition

- A Clustering Grant in the amount of $300,000, was awarded by the BOG to further develop continuing partnership with Max Planck in the area of neuroscience. Congratulations Drs. Murphey and Blanks!

- Also, A Clustering Grant in the amount of $175,000, was awarded by the BOG to foster collaborative partnership of the State University System Climate Change Task Force. Florida State University and the University of Florida received similar grants to allow formal collaborative activity in studying and modeling Climate Change. Congratulations Drs. Berry and Koch-Rose!

October 2010

The thirteenth annual Information Security Conference (ISC) covering research in theory and applications of Information Security was held at the Deerfield Hilton (Oct 25-28, 2010). Over forty-five participants from around the globe joined the conference. Dr. Spyros Magliveras, (General Chair), Florida Atlantic University together with Dr. Mike Burmester, Florida State University and Dr. Gene Tsudik, University of California, Irvine, (Program Co-Chairs) organized the conference.

Initiated as a workshop in Japan in 1997, it has become an international conference attracting top scientists from around the world. For detail see http://math.fau.edu/~isc2010/index.html

Great Job Spyros!

The FAU Climate change symposium was held on Oct 25, 2010. Participants addressed adaptation to climate change in South Florida detailing local, state and federal initiatives and current climate change research activities by FAU faculty, students and their colleagues. For details see http://www.fau.edu/research/symposium/

Len and Marguerite- Thanks!

September 2010

Dr. Thomas Eisenbarth joins the Department of Mathematical Sciences as Assistant Professor in Cryptology. He worked as a researcher at the Horst Goertz Institute for IT Security at University of Bochum, Germany, where he also received his Ph.D. His research interests include the design of embedded security solutions as well as efficient implementation of cryptographic algorithms in hardware and software. Thomas is also interested in methods for analyzing and improving physical security and practical attacks on cryptographic implementations such as side channel cryptanalysis. Thomas - Welcome to the College and to FAU!

August 2010

Want to know how the universe .. and even biology ... came to be? The good news is that the Department of Physics hired a professor to help answer this question! We warmly welcome Dr. Jonathan (Jon) Engle into the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science as an Assistant Professor of Physics. He comes to us from his joint positions as (1) a A. V. Homboldt Fellow at Albert Einstein Institute in Potsdam, Germany, and (2) an NSF International Research Fellow at the Center for Theoretical Physics in Marseille, France. He is a recognized world expert in Loop Quantum Gravity and he joins the FAU Spacetime (FAUST) group which is one of the largest general relativity groups in the world. Welcome Jon to the College and to FAU!

Dr. John Nambu has joined the Department of Biological Sciences as a Full Professor. He comes to us from UMass Amherst. He joins a growing group of biologists who use model genetic systems to study variety of biological processes such as aging and neuro-development and neurological diseases . His lab is interested in elucidating the mechanisms that underlie development of the central nervous system. They employ a multidisciplinary approach using cell biology, genetics, and molecular biology in the fruit fly Drosophila. In particular, they are interested in identifying genes that are important for the generation, differentiation and survival or death of neurons and glia. Welcome John to the College and to FAU!

The South Florida Water Management District Governing Board awarded Dr. Dale Gawlik, associate professor in biological sciences $1 million for continuing support of a unique study that is helping scientists protect and restore wading bird colonies in the Everglades. This study is helping the District to meet an objective of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), which calls for restoring nesting colonies of wading birds in the Everglades.

Congratulations Dale!

Dr. Steven Bressler, Professor in Complex Systems and Brain Sciences and Psychology, co-authored with Vinod Menon of Stanford University, the feature review article in the June 2010 issue of Trends in Cognitive Sciences, a Cell Press journal. The paper, "Large-scale brain networks in cognition: emerging methods and principles", was exclusively highlighted on the journal cover. It has now been recommended as a"must read" article by the Faculty of 1000 Biology, the prestigious online service that highlights and evaluates the most interesting papers published in the biological sciences based on the recommendations of over 2000 of the world's top researchers.

Congratulations Steve!

Dr. Daniel T. de Lill joins the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry as Assistant Professor in Inorganic Chemistry. He was a NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Nevada Reno His research interests include Design and synthesis of inorganic materials including coordination polymers/metal-organic frameworks and nanomaterials, lanthanide chemistry and spectroscopy (visible, near infrared (NIR), upconversion), nanomaterials in bioimaging, group IV metals and photocatalysis as related to environmental remediation and energy, small molecule X-ray crystallography. Welcome Dan to the College and to FAU!

Dr. Deguo Du joins the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry as Assistant Professor in Biochemistry. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Scripps Research Institute, California. His research interests revolve around Biochemistry and molecular biophysics, protein folding, molecular basis of protein misfolding in neurodegenerative diseases, protein engineering, biosensor and bio-imaging to probe protein folding and amyloid formation in vivo. Welcome Deguo to the College and to FAU!

July 2010

Congratulations to Drs. Leonard Berry & Marguerite Koch (CES/Biological Sciences) and Rod Murphey & Janet Blanks (Biological Sciences/CCSBS) for being chosen to lead two of the three University Research Priority themes (Climate change and Neuroscience). For details see Division of Research.

Dr. Edward Large, Associate Professor, Complex System and Brain Sciences and Psychology was awarded a grant by Air Force Office of Scientific Research, 2010 “Modeling Auditory Pattern Recognition and Learning,” AF09-BT12.

Dr. Edward Large, Associate Professor, Complex System and Brain Sciences and Psychology was awarded a grant from NSF, 2010. “Neurodynamics of Tonality”

Dr. Brett Laursen, Professor of Psychology, gave a lecture entitled "The Origins of Peer Homophily: A New Look at an Old Problem" at the The 12th Biennial Conference of the European Association for Research on Adolescence, Vilnius, Lithuania (12-15, May 2010)

June 2010

Dr. Stephen Locke, Professor, Mathematical Sciences, gave a lecture at University of South Florida entitled, "Cycles Spaces of Graphs" (April 23, 2010).

Dr. Salvatore Lepore, Associate Professor, Chemistry & Biochemistry was awarded an NIH grant by the Mental Health Institute (1R21MH087932-01A1) “New Methods for the Expedited Synthesis of C11 and F18 PET Tracers”

May 2010

Dr. Shailaja Kesaraju, CMBB, received an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellowship (Sulindac Sensitizes Cancer Çells to Oxidative Stress: Studies with DCA) for 3 years (2010-2013). Mentor: Dr. Herbert Weissbach

Dr. Weissbach, Director, CMBB, was an invited speaker for the annual Julius Schultz lectures at University of Miami Medical School sponsored by the Dept. of Biochemistry.

Dr. Weissbach has been reappointed by Governor Crist to the Biomedical Research Advisory Council (BRAC) for a term beginning April 19, 2010 and ending on January 1, 2012.