Olivia DrakeThe 33rd annual Navaratri Festival, a celebration of Indian music, dance and food, was held on campus Sept. 30-Oct. 4. Navaratri, one of India's major festival celebrations, is a time to see family and friends, enjoy music and dance and seek blessings for new endeavors. Wesleyan's 33rd annual festival celebrated traditional music and dance while giving audiences a glimpse at the contemporary arts scene. Exciting pre-festival activities extend the festival into nine (nava) nights (-ratri), featuring performances by some of India's leading artists, a film screening, Dandiya Raas dance parties and an honoring of Navaratri's religious traditions; it culminated with…
Tsampikos Kottos, assistant professor of physics, is the co-author of "Exponentially Fragile PT-Symmetry in lattices with Localized Eigenmodes," published in Physical Review Letters 103,030,402 in 2009. The paper discusses the effects of disorder on a previously excluded class of quantum mechanical systems.
Stephen Horst, professor of philosophy, received a grant for $17,476 from the University of Oxford on Sept. 9. Horst will use the funds for a study titled "Whose Institutions, Whose Dualism."
Pam Tatge, director of the Center for the Arts, received a grant for $2,000 from Arts Presenters. The grant, awarded on Oct. 1, is for a project titled "Sustaining Strategies."
Philip Bolton, professor of chemistry, received a grant for $76,037 from the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of General Medical Sciences. The grant, awarded on Sept. 30, is for research titled "Structures and Complexes of Vertebrate Telomere Repeat DNAs." This is a Supplemental Recovery Act Award.
WesSukkah, designed and built by Wesleyan's Architecture II research-design-build studio, was dedicated Oct. 3 on Foss Hill. The sukkah is used by Wesleyan’s Jewish community during the festival of Sukkot. For eight days, students studied, socialized, mediated, ate, and occasionally slept in the religious structure. WesSukkah was honored with a 2009 "Faith and Form" Award for art and architecture from the American Institute of Architects. (Photos by Olivia Bartlett Drake and Steve Rowland P'11. Rowland travelled from Seattle, Wa. for the dedication Oct. 3. His son, Cameron Rowland '11, is one of the architecture students who designed WesSukkah)
Jill Morawski, director, Center for the Humanities, professor of psychology, and Don Moon, dean of the Social Sciences and Interdisciplinary Programs, the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Professor in the College of Social Studies, professor of government and tutor in the College of Social Studies; received a $142,000 Mellon Foundation grant on Oct. 2. The award will fund the John E. Sawyer Seminar on "Comparative Study of Cultures."
Suzanna Tamminen, director of the Wesleyan University Press, received a grant worth $4,000 from the J.M. Kaplan Fund. The award, presented July 24, will fund publication of a book by Ann Cooper Albright titled An Artist Inspired: Abraham Walkowitz on Isadora Duncan.
Wesleyan's Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software project (HFOSS) was featured in New Scientist magazine Oct. 3. In June, students from Wesleyan and Trinity College in teamed up with representatives from municipal and volunteer agencies including the American Red Cross, The Salvation Army and Catholic Charities USA to design a virtual emergency response center named Collabbit. The system could be used by relief agencies to coordinate their aid efforts in the aftermath of a disaster when speed is crucial. Collabbit is the handiwork of HFOSS. It acts as central repository for information, sending out project updates to workers via RSS…
Michaelle Biddle, head of preservation services, presented a lecture titled "Saving Nigeria's Islamic Manuscript Heritage" Sept. 17 at Columbia University. Biddle has studied Islamic manuscripts all over the world. In March 2008, Biddle went on a five-week sabbatical under a U.S. Ambassador's Cultural Preservation Fund Grant to survey Northern Nigerian private and public collections of Islamic Manuscripts. These manuscripts are similar to those in Timbuktu, a World Heritage Site. Her survey resulted in recommendations for the preservation and conservation of the manuscripts. She returned to Nigeria in August 2008 training two local conservation teams: one in Sokoto, the home of…
Rich Olson joined the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry as an assistant professor. Olson is an expert on X-ray crystallography and biophysical characterization of soluble/membrane proteins. He specifically studies the structure and function of membrane proteins in the nervous system, immunological molecules in the nervous system and structural biology of pathogen virulence factors. This semester, he is teaching a course titled "Receptors, Channels, and Pumps: Advanced Topics in Membrane Protein Structure and Function," and an individual undergraduate research tutorial. When applying to Wesleyan, Olson says he was looking for an institution that would provide a balance between teaching and…
Q: Jen, when did the ITS Print Shop move to the Usdan University Center and what were the benefits of this move? A: The ITS Print Shop closed on July 16 and opened on July 17 with a new name. We are now Cardinal Print and Copy. We have enjoyed a very loyal following with many of the departments across campus but new customers always seemed surprised to discover who we were and what we could do. Our new location solves that problem and is more convenient for most members of the Wes community. Q: What are your thoughts on…