Welcome to the March issue of the Fulbright Academy of Science &
Technology's news bulletin. This publication is sent to educational
innovators and leaders in scientific and technical fields in the US and
around the world. Please look to the end of this email for information
about the Academy and its mission. We can be reached at info@fulbrighter.org
The Academy is an independent non-profit organization based in the
United States. We receive support from selected Fulbright alumni groups,
businesses, institutions, organizations, foundations, and individuals
interested in developing a network of leaders in science and technology,
and we are not affiliated with the Fulbright Association, the US State
Department or the Board of Foreign Scholars.
We look forward to having you as a member of the Academy.
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Minister of Science & Higher Education -
Portugal |
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 The Minister of
Science and Higher Education in Portugal, Dr. Maria da Graça
Carvalho, will be the special guest and key speaker at a
celebratory dinner in Lisbon celebrating the 44th Anniversary of the
US-Portuguese Fulbright Commission. The dinner is at the Tivoli
Hotel in Lisbon on Wednesday, March 24, 2004 at 8.00 PM.
This is an event co-hosted by the Fulbright Commission and
Fulbrighters Portugal - the Portuguese Fulbright Alumni Association.
The Fulbright Academy of Science & Technology is also promoting
the event through our newsletter. You may register by fax
(217996391) or by email (headoffice@ccla.pt). Tickets cost 40 Euros,
and preregistration is required.
Dr. da Graça Carvalho was named the Minister for Science and
Higher Education in October 2003. She has a particular interest in
energy and
sustainable development.During her professional career, she has
been very involved in internationally; she has been on working
missions to 63 countries. She is involved in numerous national and
international professional organizations. In 2000, she was named a
fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Dr. da Graça Carvalho earned her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering
at the University of London in 1983 and returned to her native
country to become a professor in Applied Thermodynamics at the
Technical University of Lisbon. From December 2002 to October 2003,
she was the Director General of GRICES - the Office for
International Relations in Science and Higher Education.
Portuguese Ministry of Science &
Higher Education »
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Chief Science Advisor to the UK Office of Science &
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 Last month a group of Fulbright Academy
members gathering at the AAAS meeting in Seattle, WA, heard from
Sir David King. Sir David advises the British Prime Minister
on scientific issues, and serves as the Head of the Office of
Science and Technology.
Sir David's spoke about global warming and the imperatives for
action based on the existing science on climate change. He stressed
the tremendous economic and political destabilization that will
occur due to rising sea levels and changing climate, and noted that
things are already changing. The CO2 level in the atmosphere is
nearly double what it was during most of the last 400,000 years (372
ppm, up from 200 ppm). He also estimated we already have an extra
160,000 deaths per year because of drought, heat, flooding and other
extreme events.
Developing countries will play a big role in future carbon
releases, so active engagement of North-South capacity building and
technology transfer so that those countries can apply the most
energy efficient and technologically advanced solutions to human and
economic development. At the Fulbright Academy, we believe that a
network of Fulbright scholars can play an important role in tech
transfer and capacity building - that is a key part of our mission.
Changing climate is not only going to effect humans. Sir David
concluded his remarks with a quote from Spencer Weart's book, The
Discovery of Global Warming (Harvard Univ. Press, Sept. 2003):
"Our response to the threat of global warming will affect our
personal well-being, the evolution of human society, indeed all life
on our planet."
UK Office of Science &
Technology »
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New Job for NSF Director |
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 Dr. Rita R. Colwell
retired on February 21 as the Director of the US National Science
Foundation to become Chairman of Canon US Life Science Inc, a newly
created subsidiary of Canon USA. Their goal is to identify and
develop life-science solutions with applications in diagnostics and
medical instrumentation. She had been appointed to the NSF post in
1998.
Dr. Colwell, a microbiologist and internationally recognized
expert on cholera and other infectious diseases, will also serve as
Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland,
College Park, and on the faculty of The John Hopkins Bloomberg
School of Public Health, where she will help develop a new
international center for the study of infectious diseases, water,
and health in conjunction with scientific colleagues from Sweden,
Norway, Japan, and Bangladesh. A Massachusetts native, she holds a
BS in bacteriology and a MS in genetics from Purdue University, and
earned her doctorate in oceanography from the University of
Washington.
"I am extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to lead NSF
through two Administrations and major transformational changes,"
Colwell said. "During the past five and a half years, our budget has
increased by 68 percent, our merit review system has been recognized
throughout government as the gold standard for responsible use of
public funds, and our programs have helped U.S. science and
engineering evolve into the flexible, robust and diverse endeavors
that they must become to keep America preeminent at the frontier of
research and education."
Among the highlights of her tenure, Colwell championed increases
in grant size, which rose from an annual average of $90,000 in 1998
to $142,000 at present, and promoted innovative collaborations
across traditional disciplines such as biocomplexity in the
environment, nanoscale science and engineering, bioinformatics and
information technology.
In addition, she initiated programs to increase NSF's investment
in mathematics and to integrate mathematics with the life and social
sciences, urged and obtained substantial increases in
graduate-student stipends, and called for expanded opportunities for
minorities and women in the nation's science and engineering
communities. [source: NSF Website]
NSF Press
Release »
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Fulbright Books |
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| The Academy is creating a library of science
and technology-related books published by Fulbrighters. If you have
recently published a book, please consider donating a copy to our
library.
We are pleased to highlight these recent books written by
Fulbright authors:
Dr. Anna Kriskova, a Fulbright Scholar in Residence at
Otero Junior College in Colorado, has recently published the first
occupational health nursing textbook to be written in the Slovak
language. As the author of Occupational Health Nursing, Dr.
Kriskova worked in cooperation with the International Institution of
Rural and Environmental Health and the College of Nursing and Public
Health at the University of Iowa. The University of Iowa paid for
the publishing. Before accepting the Fulbright Scholarship to Otero,
Dr. Kriskova served as a senior advisor in the Ministry of Health of
the Slovak Republic. In her position she worked to further the
education of health care providers. For more
information.
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientist Dr. Samuel N.
Luoma was awarded the a Fulbright last year write a book on the
link between environmental science and policy. Dr. Luoma conducts
research on the bioavailability and effects of pollutants in aquatic
environments and develops better ways to merge environmental science
and policy. Dr. Philip Rainbow, Director of Zoology at the British
Natural History Museum, is the co-author of the book. For
more information.
Dr. Paul Robbins, an Associate Professor of Geography at
Ohio State University, has a new book: Political Ecology: A
Critical Introduction. This text presents a critical survey in
an interdisciplinary area of research which connects politics and
economy to problems of environmental control and ecological change.
It will be released by Blackwell Publishing this summer. Dr. Robbins
is the author of numerous articles exploring the relationships
between power, knowledge, and environmental change. For
more information.
Giving your book to the
Academy. »
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Some New Members of the Academy |
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| Roger Graham Barry is the Director of
the National Snow and Ice Data Center and a professor of geography
at the University of Colorado at Boulder. [This center provides much
of the excellent evidence used by Sir David and others to
demonstrate climate change to the public and to government
officials. - Ed] Dr. Barry went on a Fulbright in 2001 to lecture on
Cryosphere-Climate Interactions at Moscow State University in
Russia. He is co-author of the 1998 reference book, Atmosphere,
Weather and Climate. For more
information.
Dr. Dick Winchell is a professor of urban and regional
planning at Eastern Washington University. "Planning is the
profession which deals with problem-solving and community change. It
represents an ongoing effort to create a better world through active
participation in community development. Planners occupy the
interface between social and economic theory and the actual change
within communities." He is a Fulbrighter and has hosted
Fulbrighters, such as Samson Fadare, a Senior Lecturer from the
Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Obafemi Awolowo
University in Ile-Ife, Nigeria. For more
information.
Dr. Keith Crandall is a professor in the Department of
Integrative Biology at Brigham Young University. His interest is
phylogenetics (theoretical and empirical), population genetics,
crustacean systematics, visual pigment evolution, molecular
evolution, conservation genetics, biodiversity, and bacterial
genetics. He went on a Fulbright in 2001 as a distinguished lecturer
and researcher, focusing on "Using Phylogenies to Detect
Recombination: Testing the Old and Creating the New with
Applications in Infectious Disease." For
more information
Dr. Richard Heckman is also in the Department of
Integrative Biology at Brigham Young. His particular research
interests are fish diseases (protozoan and helminth);
histo-pathology; electron microscopy (SEM and TEM); and aquaculture.
In 2003 he went on a Fulbright to Ain Shams University in Cairo,
Egypt to study Fish Diseases and Aquaculture in the Nile River and
the Nile River Delta.
Other Fulbrighter
profiles »
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Academy Membership & Sponsors |
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| The Fulbright Academy of Science &
Technology uses the expertise of our network of Fulbrighters and
leaders in science to address critical problems in education,
scientific innovation and economic development. Our database has
over 10,000 international Fulbrighters and scientists.
We are pleased to announce that the Singapore Agency for Science,
Technology and Research (A*STAR) is a partial sponsor for our electronic
news bulletin. We are seeking additional sponsors for this and other
programs.
While projects may be funded by organizations and foundations who
share our mission, membership income is an important part of our
annual budget. Membership renewal notices were sent to members in
February. If you are not yet a member, please consider joining the
Academy.
Please join the
Academy »
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