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2011: The Year in Review
• Date: December 22, 2011 • Categories: Campus and Community
The calendar year 2011 was filled with numerous moments of accomplishment, celebration and reflection at the University of Notre Dame. Here are some of the highlights.
Amazement at the Grotto
• Date: December 22, 2011 • Categories: Faith and Service
It appears early each Advent season, the massive crèche mounted on a platform of hay bales at the western edge of Notre Dame’s Grotto. Vibrantly colored, oversized figures of Mary, Joseph, an adoring shepherd, the oncoming Magi, some eerily well-groomed livestock and a girlish angel overhead, all symmetrically arranged around an empty patch of stable floor. All the figures, even the animals, have credulous and startled faces. The Baby is not yet where their apprehensive gazes fall.
While it is unlikely to be mistaken for a great work of art, this Grotto nativity scene is nevertheless irresistible, and not just for those small children whose parents bring them there to marvel and gawk and wonder where the Baby is. Naivete is commendable in this season.
Notre Dame researchers develop paint-on solar cells
• Date: December 21, 2011 • Categories: Research
Imagine if the next coat of paint you put on the outside of your home generates electricity from light—electricity that can be used to power the appliances and equipment on the inside.
A team of researchers at the University of Notre Dame has made a major advance toward this vision by creating an inexpensive “solar paint” that uses semiconducting nanoparticles to produce energy.
Woo named honorary Notre Dame alumna
• Date: December 21, 2011 • Categories: Academics
The Notre Dame Alumni Association has named Carolyn Y. Woo, the Martin J. Gillen Dean of the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, as an honorary alumna.
Woo is planning to leave the University on Jan. 1, 2012, to serve as president and CEO of Catholic Relief Services (CRS).
Five Notre Dame faculty members named AAAS fellows
• Date: December 20, 2011 • Categories: Research
Five University of Notre Dame faculty members have been named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in honor of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications.
AAAS, founded in 1848 as a nonprofit association, is the world’s largest scientific society and publisher of the prestigious journal Science.
The new Notre Dame AAAS fellows are: Mark Alber, Vincent J. Duncan Family Professor of Applied Mathematics, concurrent professor of physics and computer science and engineering, director, Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Biocomplexity and adjunct professor of medicine, Indiana University School of Medicine; Panos Antsaklis, H. Clifford and Evelyn A. Brossey Professor of Electrical Engineering; Margaret Dobrowolska, Rev. John Cardinal O’Hara, C.S.C., Professor of Physics; Jacek Furdyna, professor of physics, Aurora and Thomas Marquez Professor of Information Theory and Computer Technology and professor of physics; and Gary Lamberti, professor and chair of the Department of Biological Sciences.
Robinson Center Shakespeare Company member wins regional monologue competition
• Date: December 20, 2011 • Categories: Campus and Community
Candace Lebron-Williams, a member of the Robinson Community Learning Center Shakespeare Company, took top honors at the fourth annual Shakespeare at Notre Dame Regional Monologue Competition held Dec. 10 at the Robinson Center.
Lebron-Williams, a senior at John Adams High School, won accolades for her performance of the prologue from
“Henry V.” She now advances to the English Speaking Union of the United States
(ESUUS) State Shakespeare Competition in Indianapolis, to be held in February, and will compete for the opportunity to represent Indiana at the national competition in New York.
Volumes of poet Robert Creeley added to Notre Dame special collections
• Date: December 19, 2011 • Categories: Academics and Research
Renowned poet Robert Creeley (1926-2005) was a master bookshelf builder, driven by a need to keep his beloved books “safe, sorted and out of harm’s way,” says his widow, Penelope Creeley.
Thanks to a Library Acquisition Grant from the University of Notre Dame’s Office of the Provost, some 200 volumes of the late poet’s works are now safely tucked away in the special collections section of Notre Dame’s Hesburgh Library, with hundreds more to follow.
Noted conductor and artist Carmen-Helena Tellez joins Notre Dame faculty
• Date: December 19, 2011 • Categories: Academics
In July 2012, scholar, conductor and interdisciplinary artist Carmen-Helena Tellez will join the University of Notre Dame as a professor in the Department of Music and in the Master of Sacred Music program in the Department of Theology.
She comes to the College of Arts and Letters from Indiana University Bloomington, where she was the director of graduate choral studies in the Jacobs School of Music, holding the position previously held by noted artist-scholars Julius Herford, George Buelow and Thomas Dunn.
Notre Dame researchers demonstrate new DNA detection technique
• Date: December 16, 2011 • Categories: Research
A team of researchers from the University of Notre Dame have demonstrated a novel DNA detection method that could prove suitable for many real-world applications.
Physicists Carol Tanner and Steven Ruggiero led the team in the application of a new technique called laser transmission spectroscopy (LTS). LTS is capable of rapidly determining the size, shape and number of nanoparticles in suspension.
Research to improve sanitation in Africa gets $1 million boost
• Date: December 15, 2011 • Categories: International and Research
Molly Lipscomb, assistant professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame, and Laura Schechter and Jean-François Houde, economists at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, hope to increase the accessibility of sanitation technology in poor neighborhoods, making sanitation services more environmentally friendly and improving the health of neighborhood residents in Dakar, Senegal.
Their two-year research project is supported by a more than $1 million grant to Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Professor joins leading scholars for second seminar of the Catholic-Muslim Forum
• Date: December 15, 2011 • Categories: Academics and International
Paolo Carozza, professor of law at the University of Notre Dame, participated in the second seminar of the Catholic-Muslim Forum on Nov. 21 and 23, held at the site of Jesus’ baptism in Jordan.
Carozza was one of 24 Catholics invited to attend the seminar by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, headed by Cardinal Jean-François Tauran. Twenty-four prominent Muslim religious leaders and scholars also attended, led by H.R.H. Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad of Jordan.
Michael Graves named 2012 Driehaus Prize laureate
• Date: December 14, 2011 • Categories: Academics
Michael Graves, whose celebrated career redefined the architect’s role in society, has been named the recipient of the 2012 Richard H. Driehaus Prize at the University of Notre Dame. Graves, the tenth Driehaus Prize laureate, will receive $200,000 and a bronze miniature of the Choregic Monument of Lysikrates during a March 24 ceremony in Chicago.
Graves is founding principal of the firm Michael Graves & Associates (MGA) and the Robert Schirmer Professor of Architecture, Emeritus at Princeton University, where he taught for 39 years. At Princeton, Graves reintroduced the principles of traditional and classical composition and also brought a dedication to urbanism to a modernist curriculum.
Robinson Center I-Robotics team receives top honors at state LEGO® competition
• Date: December 14, 2011 • Categories: Campus and Community
The Robinson Community Learning Center (RCLC) Lego I-Robotics Team has once again been awarded a top prize at Indiana’s FIRST® LEGO® League Championship. Since the team began in 2009, it has been recognized at the event as a top program.
The team travelled to Fort Wayne, Ind., where members participated in a day-long competition that required team work and innovation. This year’s theme had 52 teams from across Indiana seeking to find ways to combat food contamination. The RCLC I-Robotics team was honored as the top FIRST® (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) LEGO® League Robotics Team in the state.
ND Expert: EU fiscal summit unsuccessful; countries headed for recession
• Date: December 13, 2011 • Categories: Academics and International
University of Notre Dame Finance Professor Jeffrey H. Bergstrand, one of the world’s top experts in international trade and the world economy, says the European Union last week agreed on deeper economic integration, but fell short of a convincing plan to fix the region’s debt woes.
“The summit was not a success because they did not address one of the central issues the Eurozone has to face,” Bergstrand explains, “and that is the willingness of the European Central Bank to absorb some of the sovereign debt. The European Central Bank has powers even larger than the Federal Reserve system has in the US economy. They have explicitly said they can buy sovereign debt of countries like Italy, Spain and Greece. They can also buy private liabilities from banks to help solve their banking crisis. This is what the markets have been looking for and was not provided in the summit agreement.”
New director named for University of Notre Dame entrepreneurship center
• Date: December 13, 2011 • Categories: Academics
Jeffrey A. Bernel has been named the new director for the entrepreneurship center at the University of Notre Dame. Bernel, a longtime entrepreneur who has taught at the Mendoza College of Business for more than 12 years, will take over the position at the Gigot Center for Entrepreneurial Studies beginning Jan. 1.
“Notre Dame is at an exciting crossroads when you consider the intersection of the Gigot Center’s mission, the foresight of establishing Innovation Park, the cross-curriculum ESTEEM master’s program, and the support of the commercialization of the University’s research, among other factors,” Bernel said. “We share the following mantra with our entrepreneurship students: Start small, think big, and dream bigger. This will be the Gigot Center’s guiding polestar.”
Honoring our Latina mother
• Date: December 12, 2011 • Categories: Faith and Service
The Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe falls on Monday (Dec. 12), agreeably apposite to recent activities of Notre Dame’s scholars and administrators.
The feast celebrates the 16th century apparition of the pregnant, Nahuatl-speaking Virgin Mary and the vibrant image she left behind.
Her image, enshrined at the site of the apparition in what is now Mexico City, is venerated particularly in Latin America, but ubiquitously in the western hemisphere, including in the western apsidal chapel of Notre Dame’s Basilica of the Sacred Heart, where a rendition painted by Maria Tomasula, the Michael P. Grace Professor of Art, was installed three years ago.
New documentary explores “Compassion in Global Health”
• Date: December 09, 2011 • Categories: Faith and Service and Research
University of Notre Dame faculty and students joined colleagues at an inaugural symposium on Compassion in Global Health during the annual meeting of American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) this week in Philadelphia. The symposium featured a distinguished panel of experienced global health professionals, some of whom celebrated Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., Notre Dame president emeritus; and the late UNICEF President Jim Grant as among visionaries who have recognized the importance of linking compassion with global health and development.
The symposium featured the premiere of “Compassion in Global Health,” a new documentary by award-winning British filmmaker Richard Stanley.
Murphy named associate dean for entrepreneurship and ESTEEM director
• Date: December 09, 2011 • Categories: Academics
David Murphy, former president and chief executive officer of Better World Books, a for-profit social venture initially created and spun out of the University of Notre Dame, has been appointed associate dean for entrepreneurship for the Colleges of Science and Engineering and director of Notre Dame’s Engineering, Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Excellence Masters (ESTEEM) program.
A one-year master of science collaborative program between the Colleges of Science and Engineering and the Mendoza College of Business, ESTEEM augments the scientific and technical skills of individuals who have already earned their bachelor’s degree by providing the opportunity to obtain the unique skills required to take science and/or engineering inventions and translate them into commercial ventures.
New paper calls for strong steps to tackle antibiotic resistance
• Date: December 08, 2011 • Categories: Research
Shahriar Mobashery, a University of Notre Dame researcher, is one of the co-authors of a new paper by a group of the world’s leading scientists in academia and industry that calls for strong steps to be taken to control the global crisis of antibiotic resistance in bacteria. The group issued a priority list of steps that need to be taken on a global scale to resolve the crisis.
The paper is an outgrowth of a meeting the group held at the Banbury Conference Centre in Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., to discuss the crisis and it appears in the journal Nature Reviews Microbiology.
Notre Dame and Department of Energy collaboration enables development of unique spectrometer
• Date: December 08, 2011 • Categories: Research
A new, state-of-the-art instrument installed in the Radiation Laboratory will support a wide range of research at the University of Notre Dame. The AP-XPS (ambient pressure X-ray photoelectron spectrometer) was designed by Franklin Tao, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry, in collaboration with the manufacturer.
The project brought together faculty in the departments of physics and chemistry in a collaboration that included the Notre Dame Radiation Laboratory, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Vice President for Research and the College of Science. Creation of the system would not have been possible without such collaboration.
Notre Dame signs St. Francis Pledge
• Date: December 08, 2011 • Categories: Campus and Community and Faith and Service
Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., president of the University of Notre Dame, has signed the St. Francis Pledge to Care for Creation and the Poor , making Notre Dame a partner in a national movement to respond to Pope Benedict’s and the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ call for faithful action on climate change.
The St. Francis Pledge is the central outreach tool for the Catholic Coalition on Climate Change, a membership organization drawing guidance and support from a growing list of national Catholic organizations, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), Catholic Charities USA, Catholic Relief Services and the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities.
Crowdsourcing: Are two heads better than one?
• Date: December 07, 2011 • Categories: Academics
An old adage is being put to the test in a way that could change the lives of millions of people. As part of a National Science Foundation funded project titled “Open Sourcing the Design of Civil Infrastructure,” led by Tracy Kijewski-Correa, Linbeck Associate Professor of Civil Engineering and Geological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame, researchers are stepping outside the laboratory setting to seek answers to societal questions and also finally answer the question: Are two heads better than one?
“When you think about it,” says Kijewski-Correa, “it makes perfect sense. Even dedicated research teams can find themselves too close to a project. This is when tapping external sources — in this case crowdsourcing — is a cost-effective way to develop out-of-the-box solutions that can benefit mankind.”
Baby lab reveals surprisingly early gift of gab
• Date: December 07, 2011 • Categories: Research
From the moment they’re born, babies are highly attuned to communicate and motivated to interact. And they’re great listeners.
New research from the University of Notre Dame shows that during the first year of life, when babies spend so much time listening to language, they’re actually tracking word patterns that will support their process of word- learning that occurs between the ages of about 18 months and two years.
Notre Dame astrophysicist to present Christmas Star lecture
• Date: December 02, 2011 • Categories: Academics and Campus and Community
University of Notre Dame astrophysicist Grant Mathews will give two presentations of his popular program titled “What and When was the Christmas Star?” in the Digital Visualization Theatre of Notre Dame’s Jordan Hall of Science.
The programs, which are free and open to the public, will take place at 7 p.m. Dec. 10 (Saturday) and 3 p.m. Dec. 11 (Sunday).
Notre Dame MBA announces winners of Microsoft virtual case competition
• Date: December 02, 2011 • Categories: Academics
The heart of John Leahey’s marketing plan to help a software giant strengthen community engagement was a simple axiom: Make it easy for people to help each other out.
Leahey’s proposal for a Microsoft give-back plan that allows consumers to donate toward a community service organization won the grand-prize in the Notre Dame MBA Mini Deep-Dive Challenge, a virtual case competition sponsored by the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business. As part of the award, the Chicago resident will receive a $25,000 fellowship toward tuition upon successfully matriculating into the Notre Dame MBA program.
Hesburgh Library gets sustainable lighting upgrade
• Date: December 02, 2011 • Categories: Campus and Community
The University of Notre Dame’s Hesburgh Library is shining a little more brightly these days. Last May, new LED lights were installed to illuminate the “Word of Life” mural on the south side of the building. The lights replaced the old mercury vapor fixtures that previously illuminated the 134-foot tall mural.
The high-efficiency LEDs are expected to save approximately 57,000 kilowatt hours of electricity annually, reducing campus carbon emissions by nearly 80,000 pounds per year.
Archbishop Louis Kébreau of Haiti to receive Notre Dame Prize for Public Service
• Date: December 01, 2011 • Categories: Faith and Service and International
Archbishop of Cap-Haitien Louis Kébreau will be awarded the 2011 Notre Dame Prize for Distinguished Public Service in Latin America at a ceremony in Cap-Haitien on Dec. 8 (Thursday).
Presented annually since 2000 by the University of Notre Dame with support from The Coca-Cola Foundation, the Notre Dame Prize recognizes the efforts of visionary leaders to enhance the region’s welfare by strengthening democracy and improving life for its citizens.
Notre Dame, Purdue and GE Healthcare partner on "ultra low" radiation-dose, high clarity CT technology
• Date: December 01, 2011 • Categories: Research
Demonstrating their shared legacy of innovative research and commitment to patient-centered medical technology, the University of Notre Dame, Purdue University and GE Healthcare have announced the commercial availability of a new CT scanning technology, called Veo™, that enables physicians to diagnose patients with high clarity images at previously-unattainable low radiation dose levels.
CT is an advanced form of spiral x-ray technology that physicians use to help diagnosis disease in their patients – including cancer, cardiac and neurological diseases, and other conditions – with the goal of significantly improving treatment plans and patient health outcomes.
In memoriam: ND political scientist Guillermo O’Donnell
• Date: November 30, 2011 • Categories: Academics
Guillermo O’Donnell, professor emeritus of political science and senior fellow of the University of Notre Dame’s Kellogg Institute for International Studies, died yesterday (Nov. 29) in Buenos Aires after a long struggle with cancer. He was 75 years old.
A native of Argentina, O’Donnell, who joined the Notre Dame faculty in 1982, was graduated from the National University of Buenos Aires in 1958 and earned a doctoral degree from Yale in 1987. He is internationally renowned for original and influential scholarship on Latin American authoritarian regimes, the democratic transitions undergone by many of them, and how modernization and democracy affect each other.
New York Archbishop Dolan to give inaugural lecture for the Project on Human Dignity
• Date: November 30, 2011 • Categories: Campus and Community and Faith and Service
Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York will inaugurate the University of Notre Dame’s Project on Human Dignity with a lecture entitled “Modern Questions, Ancient Answers: Defining and Defending Human Dignity in Our Time” Tuesday (Dec. 6) at 7:30 p.m. in Notre Dame’s McKenna Hall auditorium.
Ann Astell, professor of theology, and Gerald McKenny, Walter Professor of Theology at Notre Dame, will give responses to Archbishop Dolan’s lecture, which is free and open to the public.
