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Andrew Logan ’18April 25, 20161min
On April 14, the final day of WesFest, a select group of Wesleyan students gathered in the Exley Science Center Lobby to share some of their research projects in the natural sciences and mathematics. This relatively small gathering represented only a fraction of the 150 students on campus actively engaged in natural science and mathematics research. (more…)

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Andrew Logan ’18April 25, 20162min
In April, the Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program presented scholarships to five Wesleyan undergraduate students. As Doris Duke Scholars, Olivia Won ’18, Emily Murphy ’18, Ryan Nelson '19, Gabby Vargas '18 and Kelly Lam '19 will receive two summer experiential learning and research opportunities at the University of Washington and the University of Michigan. The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation initiated the Conservation Scholars programs at several universities across the country in 2013 with the intention of attracting and training members of under-represented communities in the field of conservation. Over the course of their two years in the program, the scholars…

Andrew Logan ’18April 25, 20164min
An article in the journal Sapiens highlights the current work of anthropologist Ruth Behar in "Lifting the Emotional Embargo With Cuba." Working with poet Richard Blanco, the two are "cultivating reunion and reconciliation among people and cultures that have been estranged for decades," said author Barry Yeoman. Cuba is part of both the poet's and the anthropologist's identities. While Blanco grew up hearing about Cuba from his ex-pat community in Miami, Behar was born in Havana, Cuba. Her parents were of Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewish descent who moved the family to New York City after the Cuban revolution. As a child in…

Andrew Logan ’18April 11, 20162min
The Portland Business Journal named Kaiser Permanente President Andy McCulloch ’76 one of the top 10 executives of 2016. This award honors area executives whose business strategies have successfully expanded their companies over the last year. During the past year with Kaiser Permanente, McCulloch boosted membership by 3 percent while maintaining a member retention rate of 97 percent. In just their two hospitals, Kaiser Permanente physicians logged 3 million doctor visits and 420,000 dental appointments while earning $3.4 billion in yearly revenue. McCulloch began his presidency in 2006 and directs Kaiser Permanente in Oregon and Washington State. During this time, the…

Andrew Logan ’18April 11, 201610min
On April 5, six Wesleyan alumni–David Rabban ’71, Roxanne Euban ’88, Lyle Ashton Harris ’88, Rick Barot ’92, Adam Berinsky ’92 and Jonas Carpignano ’06–were each awarded Guggenheim Fellowships by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. According to the foundation, these prestigious awards aim to “further the development of scholars and artists by assisting them to engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts, under the freest possible conditions and irrespective of race, color or creed.” Rabban is an award winning author and academic whose research focuses on labor law, higher education and the…

Andrew Logan ’18March 28, 20162min
NPR’s All Songs Considered featured the former Wesleyan band Overcoats in its preview of the 2016 South by Southwest Music festival in Austin Texas. Overcoats, made up of Hana Elion ’15 and JJ Mitchell ’15, have made the leap from small on-campus concerts to performances in New York City's Mercury Lounge and the Longitude Festival in Ireland. Currently, Overcoats resides in New York City where they are performing and recording new music in studio. Overcoats describe their style as “combining electronic backdrops with soaring, harmonic intimacy — a sort of Chet Faker meets Simon & Garfunkel.” Their songs "draw strength from…

Andrew Logan ’18March 11, 20162min
Manju Hingorani, professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, was featured in the “Coordinates” section of ASBMB Today, the monthly publication of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Here, Hingorani briefly reflected on her marriage and career through a haiku. Her haiku read: Home is where the lab is, was, will be, my partner he’s home too – elsewhere. She added, “I’m a professor of biochemistry, and my husband is a pharmacologist in the industry. We’ve lived under the same roof for about seven of our 19 years as a married couple. But it has been a fabulous life,…

Andrew Logan ’18March 11, 20162min
A research paper co-authored in 1995 by Johan Varekamp, the Harold T. Stearns Professor of Earth Science; Ellen Thomas, research professor of earth and environmental science; and Wesleyan alumnae Koren Nydick ’95 and Alyson Bidwell ’95 has returned to the spotlight. The paper, “A Sea-level Rise Curve from Guilford, Connecticut, USA,” originally published in Marine Geology, was cited last month in another paper on sea-level rise in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States. Professor Varekamp admits that the “paper has done remarkably well, with 93 citations, not bad at all for a senior thesis-based…

Andrew Logan ’18February 15, 20163min
Bill Herbst, the John Monroe Van Vleck Professor of Astronomy, and James Greenwood, assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences, co-authored an article published in the planetary science journal Icarus. Their article, “A New Mechanism for Chondrule Formation: Radiative Heating by Hot Planetesimals” grew out of research seminars from the recently introduced Planetary Science graduate concentration and minor at Wesleyan. Their work focused on chondrules, or tiny spheres of molten rock that permeate primitive meteorites and date to very close to the beginning of the solar system. For decades, the existence of chondrules has puzzled astrophysicists and cosmochemists as no…