Jonathan B. Gressel (SX 1962) of the Weizmann Institute of Science has won the Israel Prize for Agricultural Research, regarded as the nation's highest honor. An internationally renowned expert on plant biotechnology, Gressel is also chief scientific officer for TransAlgae Ltd. The citation noted that he has carried out "breakthrough studies in the molecular mechanisms that allow the extermination of weeds in agriculture."

Eduard Muljadi (SX 1990), a researcher at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, has been elected a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering for his "contributions to wind turbine control and integration of wind power in the power system grid."

Sigma Xi Members in the News for January 2010

The Natick Chapter of Sigma Xi has instituted an Annual William L. Porter Memorial Sigma Xi Lecture, in honor of a long-time chapter member who was very active on the program committee, organizing many lectures. Porter died last year at age 91 after a long, productive career with the U.S. Army Natick Research, Development and Engineering Center in Natick, Massachusetts.

Lucy Shapiro (SX 1962), director of the Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine at Stanford University, will receive the 2010 American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Abbott-ASM Lifetime Achievement Award for her work on understanding the life of a cell. Sponsored by Abbott Laboratories, this is ASM's premier award for sustained, remarkable contributions to the microbiological sciences. Shapiro's three decades of work on Caulobacter cresentus has provided the most thorough understanding of the cell cycle in bacteria.

Patrick R. Murray (SX 1976) will receive the 2010 American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Founders Distinguished Service Award for his more than 25 years of service to the society. An ASM member since 1974, Murray's most visible leadership role has been as the editor-in-chief of four consecutive editions of the Manual of Clinical Microbiology, a premier ASM publication. He also served for 15 years on the editorial board and as an editor of the Journal of Clinical Microbiology.

Jennifer C. Shieh (SX 2003) has co-authored Guide to Research Techniques in Neuroscience (Elsevier/Academic Press, 2009), an introduction to the wide range of methods used to study the nervous system, from fMRI and electrophysiology to Western blots and confocal imaging.

Richard J. Komp (SX 1965), director of the Maine Solar Energy Association (MESEA), recently wrote a report on his solar energy work in Rwanda, which is available on the association Web site. At last report Komp was in Nicaragua working with the Grupo Fenix and the Solar Women of Totogalpa. Last year these women were one of five groups in the world to win the important United Nations SEED Award, and Komp got to be at the UN headquarters in New York as one of the people representing them to receive the award. Also in 2009 he worked in Pakistan. He will return to Rwanda in April, with a stopover in Mali to check on how the Afriqpower group of orphans are doing in their solar company.

William Z. Lidicker, Jr. (SX 1955), professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, was elected to a second term as president of the International Federation of Mammalogists at the 10th International Congress of Mammalogy held in Mendoza, Argentina, in August 2009.

John Chrysochoos (SX 1978), professor emeritus of chemistry at the University of Toledo, Ohio, has recently published a non-fiction book called In Reason We Trust, about politics, U.S. government and current affairs. It is available online and in some bookstores (www.RoseDogbookstore.com, Amazon.com, www.Borders.com and other online sites. His other books, Beyond the Blue Ikarian Sea (non-fiction) and Elusive Dreams (fiction on public education), are also available online. Contact him at: jchryso@utnet.utoledo.edu

Sigma Xi Members in the News for December 2009

Karthik Bodhinathan (SX 2009) was awarded the 2009 Alec Courtelis Award by the University of Florida International Center. The award was presented at the International Student Academic Awards Ceremony. The award was presented “in recognition of Karthik Bodhinathan academic excellence and outstanding contribution to the university community”.

Theodore L. Brown (SX 1955) has published two new books: Imperfect Oracle: The Epistemic and Moral Authority of Science, Penn State University Press, 2009 and Bridging Divides: The Origins of the Beckman Institute at Illinois, University of Illinois Press, 2009.

Frank R. Tangherlini (SX 1956) reports that his 1958 Stanford Ph.D. thesis, "The Velocity of Light in Uniformly Moving Frames," (Prof. Sidney D. Drell, thesis advisor) is now available on the Internet courtesy of The Abraham Zelmanov Journal. See: http://Zelmanov.ptep-online.com/issues.html. The thesis will appear later this year in Volume 2 of the journal. He says this came about due to interest in the thesis expressed several years ago by Dr. Gregory B. Malykin, of the Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Nizhni Novgorod. "The thesis is preceded by a 2009 preface by me that indicates how it came to be written, going back to some ideas I developed when I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago in the early 1950s, before completing my graduate work in the late 1950s at Stanford," Tangherlini says. It is followed by a brief article explaining in further detail one of the chapters of the thesis that deals with Maxwell's equations. There is also a lengthy article by Dr. Malykin and his son Edward G. Malykin (an assistant prof. of mathematics) commenting on the significance of the thesis, and its relation to other contributions to the subject of a similar nature, which is accompanied by numerous references to the literature.

Wilber E. Goll (SX 1953) of Shawnee, Kansas, recalls that at the time of his induction into Sigma Xi he was working with a group of colleagues on a classified project involving the development of "flash suppressors" for a number of military weapons. Several patents were eventually granted involving Midwest Research Institute in Kansas City, Missouri.

Tzu-Yang Yu (SX 2007) writes: "After graduating from MIT in June 2008, I joined the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Lowell in September 2008. I have a book entitled "Damage Detection of GFRP-concrete Systems Using Electromagnetic Waves" recently published by Lambert Academic Publishing, Koln, Germany. I am working on a research project sponsored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), regarding the dielectric properties of cementitious composites."

Yu Tong Jade Morton, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Miami University, was named 2009 Researcher of the Year by the Miami University-Ohio Chapter of Sigma Xi. His award lecture was on "The Global Positioning System: Past, Present and Future."

Sigma Xi Members in the News for November 2009

Sheila S. Emmett (SX 1968) has been named "Professional of the Year" by Cambridge Who's Who for showing dedication, leadership and excellence in all aspects of secondary education.

Paul W. Bosland (SX 1986) at New Mexico State University recently received the 2009 New Mexico Distinguished Public Service Award. He is a world expert on chili genetics, breeding and evaluation, leading that research at NMSU. He has also headed a program that provides first-generation children of migrant farm workers the opportunity to experience agricultural research.

Natarajan Krishnamurthy (SX 1969) reports from Singapore that he has been invited to run a one-day workshop "Risk Management for Movers and Shakers" on Sunday, December 6, 2009 at the annual meeting of the Society for Risk Analysis in Baltimore, Maryland. He will also be presenting a paper with a new proposal for risk assessment at the same meeting, on the 9th. He will be giving a copy of his book, Introduction to Risk Management, as part of course material. For further details, he may be contacted at: safety@profkrishna.com

Anthony Debons (SX 1953), professor emeritus in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, is the author of a new text titled Information Science 101, designed to alert high school students and college freshman of the broad scope of Information science--its subjects and career possibilities. "Information Science's broad perspective is written to provide a frame of reference to students who are shaping their career interests," he says. The book is published by Scarecrow Press (2008).

Walter R. May (SX 1961) of SFA International, Inc. in Houston, Texas, published a book in 2008 called U.S. Energy Independence - A Plan for Energy Independence by 2020. It is available at Barnes & Noble and other bookstores, as well as on his company Web site. "The energy situation in the U.S. is critical and becoming more so with every passing day," he says.

Sigma Xi Members in the News for October 2009

William M. Manger (SX 1956) and the National Hypertension Association in New York, which he chairs, have received the Mayo Clinic Alumni Association Humanitarian Award for their efforts to prevent and combat the obesity crisis in our nation. Their VITAL (Values Initiative Teaching About Lifestyle) program, which teaches healthy eating and appropriate physical activity to schoolchildren (kindergarten through grade 2), has been enormously successful in improving lifestyle and preventing excess weight gain. "We have implemented the program in elementary schools in 11 states and Washington, D.C.," Manger reports.

Joel S. Miller (SX 1979) was honored with the prestigious 2009 Lifelong Learning and Service Recognition award by the Academy of General Dentistry recognizing his commitment to lifelong learning, volunteer services to the communities in need, mentorship to associates and new dentists and participation in organized dentistry.

Alexander Lowy (SX 1931) was a distinguished author, educator, inventor and university professor. His life (1889-1941), along with his many accomplishments in the field of science (especially organic chemistry), are now being acknowledged by his family and also by the University of Pittsburgh. Visit www.alexanderlowy.com to learn more about his contributions and how they made a difference.

Virginia Steen-McIntyre (SX 1964) reports that a new umbrells Web site called The Pleistocene Coalition brings together scientists and researchers whose data seriously question the ruling dogma, "Cave Man Dumb: Modern Man Smart." Homo erectus, at least, just may be in for a major image change!

Eugenie Carol Scott (SX 2003) has received the California Academy of Sciences' highest honor, the Fellows Medal. The medal recognizes Scott's "...many important contributions to science, education, and evolution, and for her tireless efforts to safeguard scientific integrity in public life."

Sigma Xi Members in the News for September 2009

John E. Warnock (SX 1964) was won the 2008 National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the nation’s highest honor for technological and scientific achievement, for pioneering contributions that spurred the desktop publishing revolution.

Michele G. Wheatly (SX 1985) has been named provost and vice president for academic affairs at West Virginia University.

Sigma Xi Members in the News for August 2009

John W. Prados (SX 1956), vice president and University Professor Emeritus at the University of Tennessee, received the Benjamin Garver Lamme Award at the 2009 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition. He was honored for 50 years of combined service to the University of Tennessee as well as professional and governmental organizations. Prados has served Sigma Xi for many years in a variety of capacities at the local and national levels, including multiple terms as Society treasurer.

Christopher Colenda (SX 2005), dean of medicine at Texas A&M University, will become West Virginia University's new chancellor for health sciences.

Robert C. Titus (SX 1971), professor of geology at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York, has begun a weekly column about the geology of the Hudson Valley and Catskill Mountains in four newspapers of the Hudson-Catskill Newspaper Chain. His column "Windows Through Time" focuses on the geological history of the region.

Ana Barahona (SX 1995), a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, is the new president of the International Society for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology for 2009-2011.

Life member A. Fred Spilhaus (SX 1961), recently retired executive director of the American Geophysical Union and only one of eight Council of Scientific Society Executives (CESSE) Leadership Award recipients, was honored in Orlando at the CESSE annual meeting in July with the renaming of the coveted award to the A. Fred Spilhaus Leadership Award.

Sigma Xi Members in the News for July 2009

Nancy L. Elwess (SX 1999), associate professor of biological sciences at SUNY Plattsburgh, has been named by President Obama as a recipient of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring. The award is designed to recognize the crucial role that mentoring plays in the academic and personal development of students studying science or engineering and who belong to minorities that are underrepresented in those fields.

Members in the News for April-June 2009

Members in the News for January-March 2009

Members in the News for October-December 2008

Members in the News for July-September 2008

Members in the News for April-June 2008

Members in the News for January-March 2008

Members in the News for October-December 2007

Members in the News for August-September 2007

Members in the News for June-July 2007

Members in the News for May 2007

Send items for Sigma Xi Members in the News to Charles Blackburn at cblackburn@sigmaxi.org

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Phone: 800-243-6534 or 919-549-4691
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