David PesciMcNair Fellows Asia Neupane ’09 and Aivi Doan ’10 have both received recognition for their research initiatives. Neupane, who also is a Mellon Fellow, was awarded first prize for her poster presentation "Mercury Pollution in Tobago, West Indies" at the 8th Annual New England Science Symposium, which was held April 3 at Harvard Medical School. Neupane collected samples for her research this summer in Tobago, West Indies, and has been analyzing them in the Earth and Environmental Sciences lab of Johan Varekamp, the Harold T. Stearns Professor of Earth Science. She has been a research assistant with Professor Varekamp since…
Anna Haensch, graduate student, mathematics and computer science, is on the steering committee of Fourth Annual Spuyten Duyvil Undergraduate Mathematics Conference, which is being held at SUNY-New Paltz April 25. She also will be making a presentation titled "The Pell Equation" which will discuss the Pell equation (x2-ny2=1) which was studied by the ancient Greeks and is one of the oldest Diophantine equations, and arguably the most important.
Next to the Sundance Film Festival, the annual South By Southwest (a.k.a. SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas, may be the most prestigious forum for new independent films in The United States. So when Noah Hutton ’09 had his film Crude Independence accepted by SXSW in the documentary category he couldn’t help feeling excited. “It was a huge honor,” he says. “The festival has evolved so quickly in the past few years to be one of the top US film festivals with an international spotlight and it was a perfect place to show our work. The exposure you receive there is…
Janice Naegele, chair and professor of biology, professor of neuroscience and behavior, has received a $499,988.00 grant from the Connecticut Stem Cell Research Advisory Committee for her study titled: "Brain Grafts of GABAergic Neuron Precursors Derived from Human and Mouse ES Cells for Treating Temporal Lobe Epilepsy." The four-year grant will begin in July 2009, and will support research in laboratories in Wesleyan's biology department and neuroscience program. The research is directed toward generating inhibitory interneurons that we will transplant into the hippocampus of mice that have temporal lobe epilepsy. The goal of the project is to investigate the potential…
A piece in The New York Times discusses how applications for the Class of 2013 remained strong at the nation's most competitive colleges, despite the economy's recent economic recession. Mentioned in the article was Wesleyan which, unlike several liberal arts colleges, saw an increase in applications this year. In fact, Wesleyan's dramatic increase set a record: 10,065 applications, which is up 22% over last year's admissions cycle (which was also a record). The Times had previously written about Wesleyan's increase in applications during the November early decision application period, which was also up a record 40% over the previous year.…
The new Wesleyan University Press book, The Old Leather Man, was 20 years in the making, and as this story in The New York Times illustrates, its author's journey to the finished work was as intriguing as the book's subject.
Crude Independence, a documentary film directed and scored by Noah Hutton '09 and edited by Hutton and Alex Footman '09, has been featured at a number of flim festivals during the last few months, including the presitigious South By Southwest in March. Hutton is profiled in The Hartford Courant. A free screening of Crude Independence for the campus community was held at the CFA Cinema on Friday, April 3.
Award-winning, best-selling author Anna Quindlen P'07, pioneering entrepreneur and philanthropist Azim Premji P'99, and two dedicated members of the Middletown community, Mark Masselli and Jennifer Alexander ’88, will be the honorary degree recipients at the 177th Wesleyan Commencement on May 24, 2009. Quindlen will also give this year's Commencement Address.
Brad Karsh '87 and Michael Sciola, director of Wesleyan's Career Resource Center, are both quoted in a piece in The Wall Street Journal titled "Graduating with a Major in Go-Getting." The article discusses a variety of strategies up-coming graduates may want to consider for their first post-commencement job search.
An award-winning best-selling author, a pioneering entrepreneur and philanthropist, and two dedicated members of the Middletown community will be the honorary degree recipients at the 177th Wesleyan Commencement on May 24, 2009. Anna Quindlen P’07, who will also give the Commencement Address, is a novelist, a journalist, and a champion of higher education. She currently writes the “Last Word” column on the back page of Newsweek and serves as chair of the board of Barnard College, where she received a degree in English literature. Quindlen has published five novels, all of them bestsellers. Her most recent, Rise and Shine, debuted at…
Elizabeth McAlister, associate professor of religion, associate professor of African American studies, is part of a roundtable discussion on Haitian Music in The New Yorker magazine. McAlistar, an expert on the Vodou religion has written a book titled Rara! Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and Its Diaspora about this musical celebration that is a vital part of Haitian culture.
Laura Grabel, the Lauren B. Dachs Professor of Science and Society, professor of biology, was one of three guests on WNPR's "Where We Live" discussing the international scientific stem cell conference in New Haven known as StemCONN. She and Lori Gruen, associate professor of philosophy, associate professor of feminest, gender and sexuality studies, both presented at the conference.