Fulbright scholar grantees and Fulbright alumni from Europe and beyond are invited to the Academy’s Science Conference, to be held in Berlin, Germany on Saturday and Sunday, March 4-5, 2006. Others who have an interest in the Fulbright program are also welcome to attend, including hosts of current and past grantees. The conference language is English.

This will be the our first conference, and we expect some 150 people, including natural and social scientists, government officials, corporate executives, students, and retired professionals. One-third of the attendees will be Americans who are current Fulbright grantees in Europe. Most of the other attendees will be based in Europe, but we also expect guests from Africa, Asia, North America and elsewhere. See our website for a list of pre-registered attendees and special guests.

Designed for people in the natural and social sciences, engineering, technology, and medicine, and for those whose personal or business interests relate to those fields, the conference will create new international ties among alumni, current grantees, Fulbright hosts, and others interested in international exchange.

The German-US exchange program is the largest of the Fulbright exchanges, with over 600 grantees participating each year. Our conference will be held immediately prior to the 52nd Annual Fulbright Seminar, a program organized by the German-American Fulbright Commission. FAST Conference attendees will participate in the opening reception of the seminar, which brings hundreds of current grantees to Berlin for four days of tours, programs, and fun.

The Conference is being organized by FAST and is co-sponsored by the German-American Fulbright Commission, with additional financial and organizational support from other partners and sponsors. If you or your organization would like to be a sponsor of this or other FAST programs, please contact us at +1.207.799.3098.

If you would like to attend or present at the conference, please send a note to conf@FulbrightAcademy.org.

Next year will be the 60th Anniversary of the Fulbright Exchange Program. Over 260,000 people have visited other countries through the program, and hundreds of thousands of others have been influenced by the program.

Because of their international experiences, Fulbright grantees and their colleagues have been key actors in many of the important advances in science and technology during the last several decades. In order to document our role in these scientific innovations, the Fulbright Academy is creating a special website where grantees and others can post and share stories of how a Fulbright experience has influenced their personal and professional development.

This program was initiated through a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, as part of their program on the history of science and engineering. The broad goal of the Sloan program is “to develop and diffuse a new way of creating, accessing, and preserving the historical record of recent major technical and scientific events by using the Internet. Use of the web allows the actual participants in important technical events, for example, the invention of the computer mouse, to volunteer their own recollections.”

By gathering and disseminating these recollections, the Academy is achieving some of its goals, namely to facilitate international communication and understanding across various disciplines and to stimulate an interest in science and technology among students and the general public. Visitors to the site will be able to learn about the innovations, research and professional interests of Fulbright grantees from many countries.

The site will also be used to promote the work of individual grantees or collaborative groups. Even with the internet and international travel, the dissemination of information among countries and cultures is slow. Americans rarely hear of innovative work coming out of universities or businesses based in Latin America, Africa, or the Middle East. The Academy hopes to break down some of those barriers with this website. By recording the role of Fulbrighters in 60 years of innovation, we also will have an archive that helps demonstrate the effectiveness of the Fulbright exchanges.

The programs and databases for the website are being developed, and the site should be live by the end of the year. The initial partners in this project were the Fulbright Academy, the Sloan Foundation, the Center for History & New Media at George Mason University, and the Fulbright Archives at the University of Arkansas. Having secured the seed grant, the Academy is now seeking additional partners and funding, for example, to create an annual journal which will document the work done by grantees each year.

The Fulbright Academy organizes meetings around the world, typically in partnership with national commissions or local alumni groups.

Fulbright Forum in Antwerp, Belgium on September 19 or 20. The location for this forum has not been determined, but we anticipate participation from Fulbrighters in Belgium as well as the Netherlands.

Fulbright Forum in Rabat, Morocco on September 23. This event is part of ‘European Researchers’ Night,’ a pan-European event involving a wide range of scientific and research organizations – including museums, laboratories and academic institutions – hosting a variety of entertaining and fun events. The aim is to give the public, and in particular young people, the opportunity to meet researchers within the context of festive and ‘fun’ activities and to highlight the appeal of pursuing a research career.

Fulbright Forum in Cambridge, MA on October 6 & 8. This event will be in conjunction with the 15th Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony and the Prize Lecture. The “Ig Nobels” are awarded each year by the Annals of Improbable Research, to recognize scientists and scientific research that is fun, interesting, and unusual. Past winners have done research on topics such as the physics of hula hoops, “the effect of country music on suicide,” and “chickens prefer beautiful humans.” The prizes are awarded on Thursday by actual Nobel Laureates before an audience of 1,200 in Saunders Theater. FAST will have a small dinner prior to the prize ceremony, and we also will be at the prize lecture, which is on Saturday, October 8 at MIT. If interested, please RSVP immediately, as tickets for the Ceremony go on sale on August 5th, and they sell out quickly.

Fulbright Forum in St. Louis, MO in February 2006. As in past years, FAST will organize a program during the AAAS Annual Meeting. The meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) are perhaps the largest multi-disciplinary gathering of scientists in the world.

Forums are typically held in conjunction with other meetings or in partnership with universities, research organizations, or Fulbright alumni groups. We welcome requests from member and non-member institutions to serve as hosts for a Forum. If you would like to be a sponsor or a partner in organizing a forum on a topic of particular interest to you or your organization, please contact the Academy.

In addition to being a network for individuals, the Fulbright Academy also has relationships with institutions in the United States and abroad. Businesses, universities, agencies, and other institutions play a key role in international exchange and scientific innovation. They are potential employers for the thousands of current grantees who each year are looking for a job at the conclusion of their scholarship, and they are the institutional homes of thousands of candidates, grantees, and alumni.

Institutions are also extremely involved in managing and funding the exchanges. There are Fulbright advisors at colleges and universities around the world, and in some countries the business community is underwriting costs for individual grantees.

Selected Institutional Members & Organizational Partners -- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation -- Azusa Pacific University -- Atlanta Technical College -- Brigham Young University -- Fulbright Alumni, eV. -- George Mason University -- German-American Fulbright Commission -- Indiana University, Bloomington -- Monsanto Corporation -- Moroccan Fulbright Alumni Association -- Singapore Agency for Science Technology & Research -- State of Maine -- University of Arkansas -- University of New Hampshire -- University of Wisconsin-Lacosse

Dr. Marianne Hattar is chair of the PhD program and professor in the School of Nursing at Azusa Pacific University in Azusa, CA. In 2002, she did research on physical and mental health status, perceived stress and mood states among urban employed and unemployed women in Amman, Jordan.

Dr. Mihai Popa is a University Lecturer in the Faculty of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Bucharest. He was at the Florida Museum of Natural History in 2001, comparing US and Romanian flora from the Middle Cretaceous period (80-110 million years ago).

Dr. Salim Elwazani is associate professor of architecture and environmental design studies at Bowling Green State University. His Fulbright was in the Middle East in 2001 to assist with a curriculum review of architectural teaching at the University of Bahrain in Manama.

Dr. Larisa Mikhaylova from the Journalism Department at Moscow State University is currently in the US on a Fulbright. She is at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, researching the role of science fiction and science fiction characters in American society. She also serves as editor of the quarterly Russian science fiction magazine Supernova.

Dr. Bernadette Russell, Dean of the School of Continuing Education at Marywood University, Scranton, PA, was a Fulbright grantee to Germany in 1997.

Dr. Julio Cesar Cruz Jibaja worked as an educator and doctor in the US, specializing in respiratory physiology and anaesthesiology. His Fulbright was to his home country of Peru in 2002. He now lives in Peru and serves as president of the Center for Teaching, Research and Services, an educational program supported by a Peruvian-American Medical Association endowment fund.

Mr. William Flanigan, Chair of Manufacturing and Industrial Technology at the Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana campus in Indianapolis. Ivy Tech is the second-largest post-secondary institution in Indiana, serving over 95,000 students at 23 campuses.

Dr. Sara Schweitzer is an associate professor at the University of Georgia’s Warnell School of Forest Resources. Her Fulbright in 2002 was a study of conservation and management of wildlife populations in Bulgaria.

Mr. Dan Drollette, Jr, is a freelance writer for magazines and journals such as Natural History, Science, Scientific American, Australian Geographic, International Wildlife, ABCNewsOnline, Discovery Channel Online, Newsday, and others. His Fulbright took him to Australia in 1996.

Dr. Edward Cherian is Chair of the Management Science Department and Professor of Information Systems at George Washington University. In 1999, he lectured at the American University of Armenia on industrial engineering, engineering management, and management information systems.

The Fulbright Academy is an independent non-profit organization that serves scientists, executives, and scholars worldwide. We receive organizational and financial support from institutional and individual members, selected Fulbright alumni groups and commissions, corporations, foundations, and other entities interested in developing an international network of leaders in science and technology. We are not affiliated with the Fulbright Association (US), the US State Department, or the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.

The Fulbright Academy of Science & Technology uses the expertise of our network of Fulbright alumni and other leaders in science to address critical problems in education, scientific innovation and economic development. We interact with thousands of Fulbrighters and scientists around the world.

Academy projects are funded by contracts, grants, and donations from those who share our mission. Membership income is an important part of our annual budget; if you or your institution are not a member, please consider joining today.