From the Dean's Desk -- January 31, 2013

Information technology associate professor Jeff Pittges was awarded a 2012 IBM Faculty Award to further his research on teaching Business Intelligence.   The award includes a $10,000 donation for research.  The IBM Faculty Awards is a worldwide competitive program, and nominations for these awards must be initiated by someone within IBM.  Pittges is the only professor from Virginia who received this award in 2012.  Award winners hail from universities across the globe including Carnegie Mellon University, University of Cambridge, Columbia University, University of Michigan, Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications and MSU Moscow State University.  Pittges was one of 91 information technology faculty members to receive this international award.

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Physics professor Rhett Herman, junior physics major Alec Frazier, Southwest Virginia Governor’s School teacher Dan Blake and student Andrew Vaccaro recently discovered a correlation between the surface temperature of sea ice in Barrow, Alaska and its depth.  The group and other students in the Physics 450—Arctic Geophysics class conducted research during February and March 2012 in Barrow.  Since then Herman, Frazier, Blake and Vaccaro have been crunching numbers and analyzing data.  “We now just have to nail down the modeling parameters, and we might have a way to get the ice thickness over a large area in a very short time,” says Herman.

 Last month, the group presented their research findings at the American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) 45th annual fall meeting in San Francisco.  Their poster presentation “Correlation between the surface temperature and thickness of Arctic sea ice” was a popular stop for arctic researchers from across the globe.  For example, the group presented their research to one of the world’s leading arctic researchers James Maslanik from the Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder.  “Alec and Andrew did very well in their presentation, answering all of the technical questions.  I stayed back to let them have a chance to be at the forefront,” says Herman.

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Biology faculty member Jason Davis and biology majors Laken Cooper, Tara Paterson and Kristan Cale traveled to San Francisco in January to present their research at the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology conference.

Cooper presented a talk Stop on Red: Neophobia and corticosterone in house sparrows (Passer domesticus). Paterson presented a poster Effect of captivity on hippocamal volume of Passer domseticus, and Cale presented her poster Developmental Investigation of Juvenile Hormone and Royal Jelly in Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches (Gromphadorhina portentosa).

Cooper, a senior biology major and Radford native, says that presenting at this conference that was dominated by graduate students was a little overwhelming.  "Surprising, given the norm, most of the attendants expect you to be a graduate student and are delightfully surprised and impressed when they find out that you are not," says Cooper.

Davis says the students represented Radford University very well and many of the faculty in attendance were amazed that they were undergraduate students.  "Laken gave her talk to a packed auditorium, Kristan and Tara were so busy talking to people in front of their posters that I couldn't even find a moment to step in and check on them.  They did an incredible job, made me very proud, and represented Radford fantastically well," says Davis.

Cooper says this was a great learning experience. "From this experience, I was able to make connections with other professors as well as get feedback for ideas of future study," says Cooper.  She also enjoyed hearing talks from other disciplines, which made her think of other areas of interest she might want to explore.

Chemistry students and faculty presented their collaborative research at the Southeast Regional meeting of the American Chemical Society in Raleigh, N.C. 

Chemistry chair Joe Wirgau and students Michelle McDonald and Anthony Eid presented a poster Effect of Iron (II) Chelator on the Growth Rate of Escherichia coli Under Oxidative STress in the Presence of Ascorbate and Desferrioxamine B.

Chemistry faculty member Tim Fuhrer and his student Chris Pregot presented Computational study of synergistic effects of chlorine and fluorine as catalysts for fullerene formation.