Olivia DrakeJohn Kirn, chair and professor of neuroscience and behavior, professor of biology, director of Graduate Studies, is the co-author of a book chapter titled "Regulation and function of neuronal replacement in the avian song system." The chapter is published inside the book Neuroscience of Birdsong, released in 2009 by Cambridge University Press. The book provides a comprehensive summary of birdsong neurobiology, and identifies the common brain mechanisms underlying this achievement in both birds and humans. Written primarily for advanced graduates and researchers, there is an introductory overview covering song learning, the parallels between language and birdsong and the relationship between…
The Green Street Arts Center received a grant worth $10,000 from Citizens Bank and the Citizens Bank Foundation to support the Community Mural Project, an 18 month-long art program that will culminate in a large public mural, to be installed in the spring of 2009 on the corner of Main and Green Streets in the North End of Middletown. Led by mural artist Marela Zacarias, the project’s participants are a diverse group of Middletown children, their families, professional artists, Wesleyan students, and other community members.
Seth Redfield, assistant professor of astronomy, has received funding from NASA for three research grants. From the Space Telescope Science Institute a grant of $138,639 for his research "A SNAPSHOT Survey of the Local Interstellar Medium: New NUV Observations of Stars with Archived FUV Observations", and $50,766 for his research "Probing the Atomic & Molecular Inventory of the Beta-Pic Analog, the young, Edge-On Debris Disk of HD32297." Both awards include new observations with the Hubble Space Telescope. From the JPL Spitzer Program $41,213 for his research of "Interactions of the Cold and Hot ISM: Imaging the Nearest Molecular Clouds in…
A group of Wesleyan faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, along with three post-docs from the Molecular Biology and Biochemistry and Chemistry departments, attended the 53rd Annual Biophysical Society Meeting in Boston. Several labs contributed posters including those run by David Beveridge, the University Professor of the Sciences and Mathematics, professor of chemistry; Irina Russu, professor of chemistry; Manju Hingorani, associate professor of molecular biology and biochemistry; Don Oliver, the Daniel Ayres Professor of Biology, chair and professor of molecular biology and biochemistry; and Ishita Mukerji, professor of molecular biology and biochemistry. Noah Biro '09 was a co-author on a poster contributed by…
Richard Grossman, chair and professor of economics, was interviewed on WJLA TV in Washington, DC on the financial crisis.
Jorge Arevalo Mateus, a Ph.D candidate in ethnomusicology, was featured in the March 5 edition of The Middletown Press in an article titled "Global music, culture student in residence at Wesleyan." Mateus, a music archivist, ethnomusicologist, scholar, musician, composer and audio installation artist, is a Grammy-winning producer for Best Historical Recording. In 2008, Mateus won an award for writing from the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award, CD Liner Notes, and he has published many essays, articles and reviews in academic and popular journals, edited volumes, and other publications such as New York Archives Magazine, Ethnomusicology, Journal of Popular Music Studies; and…
Choreographer Hari Krishnan, artist in residence of dance, will present his first New York season with his company inDANCE in New York City. Performers include Julie Neuspiel '09 and Emily Watts '03; and musician Aaron Paige, music graduate student. The evening features five works choreographed by Krishnan. With dancers of diverse personal and training backgrounds, inDANCE strives toward "radical innovation in the extraction of post modern dance vocabulary from contemporary Bharatanatyam and classic modern dance with an uncompromising standard of excellence." The company’s socio-political consciousness characterize the repertoire and its approach to dance-making. inDANCE is a Toronto-based Canadian company, that…
Norman Shapiro, professor of romance languages and literatures, has won the Association of American Publishers Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division 2008 award for the best single-volume reference work in the humanities and social sciences. The award was for his 1,200-page collection of translations, French Women Poets of Nine Centuries, published by Johns Hopkins, 2008. The AAP awards prizes in several categories, ranging from the humanities and social sciences to life sciences, physical sciences, and medicine. Shapiro's winning single-volume work, competing against multi-volume works, went on to win as well the overall Award for Excellence in Reference Works.
Laura Grabel, the Lauren B. Dachs Professor of Science in Society, was one of three guests featured on PBS's "Where We Live" on March 23. Grabel joined scientists and ethicists from all over the country for StemCONN 2009—an international stem cell research symposium held in New Haven, Conn. The symposium organizers and experts spoke on what new federal policy means for a state like Connecticut, which has already heavily invested in stem cell research. Connecticut is home to leading academic institutions for human stem cell research, including Wesleyan, Yale University, the University of Connecticut. It is a place where national and international stem cell research partnerships develop,…
Q: Ariel, when were you hired at Wesleyan? A: I started at Wesleyan in October 2006. Q: As the manager of University Relations Information Services, what information do you oversee? A: I manage our data services staff to ensure data integrity throughout our database. We have a database of over 150,000 constituents consisting of alumni, parents, corporations and foundations and friends of Wesleyan. My area is responsible for processing all the gifts we receive as well as all the biographical data we maintain on people. Q: What type of information do you keep track of? A: Each constituent has their…