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Statistical Best
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alyampud R. Rao, emeritus holder of the Eberly family chair in statistics and director of the Center for Multivariate Analysis, was one of fifteen scientists named by President Bush to receive the National Medal of Science, the country s highest award for lifetime achievement in fields of scientific research. The fifteen honorees accepted their medals in a ceremony at the White House on June 13, 2002. Rao received the award for his pioneering contributions to the foundations of statistical theory and multivariate statistical methodology and their applications, enriching the physical, biological, mathematical, economic and engineering sciences. His ideas have become part of graduate and postgraduate courses in statistics, econometrics, electrical engineering, and many other disciplines at most universities throughout the world. In addition, Rao has applied his research to solving practical problems in economics, anthropology, geology, medical diagnosis and national planning. We are proud of these extraordinary people, said Rita Colwell, director of the National Science Foundation, and grateful for their unceasing inquisitiveness, creativity and dedication to obtain new knowledge for the good of all humankind.
— Clare Sigrist
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Greg Grieco |
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Meeting of Minds
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ast January in Lindau, Germany, Jason Stairs had a chance to rub elbows with Nobel Prize winners. Stairs, a doctoral student in chemistry, was chosen by the U.S. Department of Energy as one of 26 American graduate-student representatives to participate in the 52nd Meeting of Nobel Laureates. Altogether 400 students from around the world, all chosen to reflect the year’s emphasis on research in chemistry, met with 20 former prize winners. Stairs, who earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia and was honored with the American Chemical Society Young Chemist Award in 1995, currently works as a graduate assistant under A. Welford Castleman Jr., Evan Pugh Professor of Chemistry and Physics and Eberly Family Distinguished Chair in Science. In Germany, he reports, as important as meeting the laureates “was the opportunity to meet with some of the most brilliant young scientists in my peer group. They are going to be my colleagues for the rest of my life and I was privileged to be able to meet such a large and diverse group of them so early in my career.”
— Clare Sigrist
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Nano Center
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Paul Weiss |
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ith a $9 million grant from the National Science Foundation and matching funds from Penn State University and the state of Pennsylvania, a Center for Nanoscale Science has been established at Penn State. The new interdisciplinary center will absorb and expand on the Center for Collective Phenomena in Restrictive Geometries, formed two years ago as one of 28 NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers nationwide. “It’s a big addition to our programs, and a testament to the cooperation among faculty members and researchers at Penn State,” said Moses Chan, Evan Pugh professor of physics and the Center’s director. The latest award comes in response to a proposal submitted by a team of scientists led by Paul Weiss, professor of chemistry, and will allow several new research thrusts in addition to continuing work in established areas. One new area of focus will be molecular motors, tiny biological engines that could one day be harnessed in nano-scale devices with possible
applications in medicine, computing, and many other fields. “All kinds of molecular motors exist in nature, driving materials and processes in living organisms,” Weiss said. “By gaining a better understanding of those processes, we hope to learn to move materials at the molecular scale in synthetic systems.” In addition to funding research, the NSF grant supports educational opportunities for undergraduate students, K-12 teachers and students, and the general public.
— Clare Sigrist
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MacArthur Fellow
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nthropologist Lee Ann Newsom has been named a 2002 MacArthur Fellow by the nationally prestigious program that supports and recognizes scientists, artists, and writers for their “original creativity.” Newsom is one of twenty-four fellows, nominated anonymously and chosen by the MacArthur Foundation’s board of directors, who will each receive $500,000 in “no strings attached” support over the next five years. The board singles out “those who are a source of new knowledge and ideas, have the courage to challenge inherited orthodoxies and to take intellectual, scientific and cultural risks,” said MacArthur president Jonathan Fanton. An associate professor of archaeological anthropology, Newsom is one of a small number of paleoethnobotanists worldwide. She investigates ancient plant life in south-eastern North America and the Caribbean, analyzing fossilized plant and wood remains to glean new insights into subsistence strategies and the use of natural resources by prehistoric populations. She has been credited with identifying and analyzing ancient gourds, some dating as far back as 12,500 years, and developing new interpretations of human cultivation of the earliest domesticated plant in North America. Newsom’s investigations have resulted in new methods for identifying and cataloging early plant and wood species.
— Clare Sigrist
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New Evan Pughs
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ina Fedoroff, Willaman Professor of life sciences and director of the Life Sciences Consortium and the Biotechnology Institute, and Alan Walker, distinguished professor of anthropology and biology, have been named Evan Pugh professors, the highest distinction that Penn State can bestow upon a faculty member. Fedoroff, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, is a plant geneticist who currently explores the genes involved in plant resistance to disease and environmental pollutants. Her previous work in the isolation and molecular characterization of transposable elements in maize made her a pioneer in DNA sequencing. One of the world’s foremost
experts on the evolution of primates and humans, Walker too has been a pioneer. He helped to forge the study of living primates as a basis for the analysis of fossils and was one of the first to use scanning-electron-microscope studies of enamel microwear on teeth to understand the diets of extinct mammals. His discoveries include a famous hominid specimen known as “The Black Skull” and the four-million-year-old skeletal remains of a previously unknown human species, Australopithecus anamensis. Walker was named a MacArthur fellow in 1988 and a fellow of the Royal Society in 1999. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
— Clare Sigrist
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James Collins |
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Going Postal
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lexander Wolszczan, Evan Pugh professor of astronomy, has been honored in his native Poland by having his likeness placed on a postage stamp. In one of a series of 16 stamps issued to celebrate a thousand years of Polish nationhood, Wolszczan is remembered for his discovery of the first planets found outside our Solar System. In 1992, using the 1,000-foot Arecibo radio-telescope in Puerto Rico, Wolszczan detected three planets circling a swiftly spinning neutron star. His discovery fueled speculation that planets — and perhaps life — might be abundant throughout the universe. In the ensuing decade, some 100 extrasolar planets have been discovered. The stamp’s design includes Nicolaus Copernicus, who is depicted as Wolszczan’s predecessor, and who, like Wolszczan, was born in the city of Torun. Other famous Poles honored in the stamp set include composer Frederic Chopin, Pope John Paul II, and former president Lech Walesa.
— Clare Sigrist
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