Kudos

:: research survey ::

Kudos

Geographer Benedy Dziegielewski, an internationally known expert on water resources planning, has been tapped as an adviser to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD), one of the world's largest water suppliers. MWD provides water to 17 million people in parts of Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Ventura counties. Dziegielewski is helping the district develop an overall water supply and system strategy to enable it to accurately forecast and meet water demands.

Obstetrics expert Donald Torry has received a five-year, $1,112,650 grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to continue his research on preeclampsia, a common obstetric complication that causes premature deliveries and can endanger the mother's life. Torry's work aims to determine how to boost expression of genes needed for blood vessel formation in the uterus, which could potentially lessen the severity of preeclampsia and allow more time for the pregnancy to continue.

The federal Rehabilitation Services Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Education, honored the SIUC Rehabilitation Institute with its 2006 Commissioner's Award. The award recognizes innovation, collaboration, effectiveness, and distribution of curriculum materials. The institute's research and service activities include investigating treatment approaches for autism, methamphetamine addiction, traumatic brain injuries, and gambling disorders. Three rehabilitation faculty members currently edit national scholarly journals, and associate professor Carl Flowers is serving as president of the National Rehabilitation Association.

Physiologist Andrzej Bartke has been awarded a five-year, $1,592,850 grant from the National Institute on Aging for his research on the genetic and nutritional control of aging. Bartke will evaluate the responses of normal mice and long-lived mutant mice to calorie restriction, which can extend life span by reducing insulin release and improving insulin sensitivity. The research could lead to the development of new therapies to protect against the effects of aging in humans.

Cultural anthropologist Jonathan Hill has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship to digitize hours of cassette recordings he made in the 1980s of the music and rituals of the Curripaco, an indigenous people living along a tributary of the Amazon River in Venezuela. The recordings will become part of the "Archiving Significant Collections" project at the Archives of Indigenous Languages of Latin America, housed at the University of Texas at Austin. The sound files will be posted with accompanying transcripts, translations, photographs, and notes.

David Rush, associate professor of theater and head of SIUC's playwriting program, has won first place in the 2007 Firestone Theatre New Play Contest. Rush's submission, One Fine Day, was selected from among hundreds of applications. The play, which was produced on campus in April, will be produced by the Stage Left Theater in Chicago.

The American Physical Society named physicist F. Bary Malik the recipient of its 2007 John Wheatley Award. The biennial award honors scientists who have contributed to the development of the field in Third World countries. An expert in theoretical physics, Malik has collaborated on research projects with colleagues from Argentina, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Jordan, and many other countries, and he has organized countless international conferences. He was named SIUC's Outstanding Scholar in 1996.