The Fulbright Academy of Science & Technology (FAST) is an international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging Fulbright scholars and other leaders in partnerships that advance science and society. Membership is open to Fulbright scholars, hosts and friends and to institutions having an interest in our work.

The "International Fulbright Science and Technology Award" provides funds to students for PhD study at U.S. institutions in science, technology or engineering. It is a new grant program initiated last year by the Fulbright Exchange Program.

Eligible fields of study for the International Fulbright Science and Technology Award include: aeronautics, astronomy, biology, chemistry, energy, engineering, environmental science, geology, information science, materials science, math, neuroscience, oceanography and physics.

The award includes placement of students and covers tuition of the first 3 years of study and research. Grantees will also receive a stipend and allowances for books and equipments, travel, research, conferences, besides a health and accident insurance.

In the first round which was conducted last year, the recipients come from Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus, Egypt, Estonia, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Lebanon, Nepal, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, South Korea, St. Lucia, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda and Venezuela. Forty-four percent of the winners of the new Fulbright scholarship were women.

Approximately 25 awards will be given worldwide to candidates who demonstrate unique aptitude and innovation in scientific fields. The application deadlines differ by country (it ranges from April to June), and so please contact the local embassy or commission for details.

There is now a limit of two Fulbright Scholar experiences per lifetime, with a five-year time span between grants (except those grants of less than two months). The J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, which sets guidelines for the Fulbright Exchange Program, also adopted a policy giving preference to first-time grantees.

The limit of two is for participants in the traditional “Scholars” program, which is administered in the US by CIES. The “Senior Specialists Program” will count as half of a regular Fulbright Scholarship (SSP is exchanges of 2-10 weeks). Thus, a person can receive two regular length Scholar grants, or one Scholar and two SSP grants. This will not limit your ability to HOST visiting Fulbrighters, and so your affiliation with the program can continue. Also note that grants awarded through some programs may not count. A person who had a Fulbright grant through the student exchange program would still be eligible for two “Scholar” grants later in life. Some Bi-national Fulbright Commissions administer exchanges funded through other sources, so those grants may not count either. Contact CIES or your national Commission for details.

Dr. Jacek Nieckula, a member and participant in the Fulbright Academy’s 2006 research conference in Berlin, is the newly elected President of the Board of Directors for a newly formed association in Poland for alumni of all US government exchange programs. On April 17th, 2007, the U.S. Ambassador to Poland, Victor Ashe, hosted a reception in Warsaw for some 300 guests, primarily alumni of US government exchange programs, to celebrate the launch of the new association. Dr. Nieckula was a Fulbrighter at MIT in Cambridge in the early 1990s, working on application of artificial intelligence to quality management, and he is currently at the Polish Academy of Sciences’ Systems Research Institute in Warsaw.

More than 250 people, including Fulbright alumni and current U.S. and Icelandic Fulbright grantees, attended a reception February 23, 2007, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Fulbright Program in Iceland. Keynote speaker Harriet Mayor Fulbright described the origins of the educational exchange program and the vision of her late husband, Senator J. William Fulbright, who drafted the legislation which established the program. Mrs. Fulbright is a charter member of the Fulbright Academy and is a supporter of our work.

Since 2006, FAST has been working on a program relating to digital libraries (such as the January workshop in Morocco sponsored by Morocco, UNESCO, US-NSF, Thomson and others). As a result, we were pleased to hear that Dr. Cherrell Shelley Robinson, a 1984 Fulbright alumna from Jamaica, was awarded the “Distinguished Librarian of the Year Award 2006” from the Library and Information Association of Jamaica. The award is in recognition for excellence in librarianship, specifically as it advances the objectives and mission of the recipient's organization or institution. Robinson works as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Library and Information Studies at the University of the West Indies, and has been particularly active in developing school libraries across the island of Jamaica. In recognition of this award, she has been given a complimentary membership in the Fulbright Academy.

The Australian Fulbright Commission profiled two alumni in their March newsletter - Dr. Jeffrey Looi, Deputy Head of Psychological Medicine at Australian National University's Medical School and Tim Hopper, a research scientist with Schlumberger. In 2004, Dr. Looi was at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine, working on a mechanism to study changes in brain white matter of persons who had suffered a stroke. In 2004, Mr. Hopper was at the University of Pennsylvania studying bone architecture using MRI technology, and he is now seeking to apply those imaging and sensing techniques to the study of underground oil reservoirs.

If you know of other Fulbrighters who have received distinguished awards from their professional associations, please send an email to info@FulbrightAcademy.org. That way, we can further recognize them by announcing it in our newsletter and by awarding them a complimentary membership. If you have an update for the newsletter, please send it to the same address.

The fourth book in a series that is partially sponsored by FAST has been published. “Beyond Boundaries: Reflections of Indian and US Scholars” contains more than 60 essays written by alumni from a variety of professional backgrounds. Although the title refers to “scholars,” many are no longer in the academic community – among others, they work for the Indian National Institute for the Hearing Handicapped, the Indian Forest Service, the Indian Police Service, and the Birla Industrial & Technological Museum.

The book also includes US contributors. One contributor is Dr. Philip Harris, a Fulbright professor in India during 1962-63, who conceived of the need for a book to help professionals and managers going abroad. In 1978, he teamed up with Dr. Robert T. Moran to write “Managing Cultural Differences” which is now in a 7th edition. Called a classic by the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, it is used in over 400 universities and colleges worldwide. The first part is on culture general, and the second unit on doing business in various cultures overseas. Dr. Harris has also co-authored Multicultural Law Enforcement now going into a 4th edition.

The other books in the series are “Ambassadors of Peace: Experiences of Pakistani and US Exchange Scholars”, “Similarity in Diversity: Reflections of Malaysians and American Exchange Scholars” and “Experiencing America: Through the Eyes of Visiting Fulbright Scholars.” The four books were edited by FAST member Zeeshan-ul-hassan Usmani in collaboration with other Fulbright scholars, and two of the books include a forward by the executive director of the Fulbright Commission for that country – Jane Schukoske for India and Donald McCloud for Malaysia. Zeeshan is a current grantee working toward a PhD in computer science at Florida Institute of Technology. All four books are available through Barnes & Noble (www.bn.com) or Amazon.com - search for "Zeeshan-ul-hassan Usmani" and you will find them all.

The series will be expanded to include additional countries, and FAST is accepting proposals from members or institutions who would like to be involved.

Our 2008 Annual Research Conference will be held in Boston on February 14-17. The conference theme is "Science & Technology from a Fulbright Perspective."

We are currently seeking proposals for panels and tours. You can suggest just a topic area or a whole panel, including likely speakers. We are also seeking volunteers to help with these proposed tours:

• Know something about deaf culture - help with our tour of the National Braille Press.
• Interested in the science of baseball - get involved in a tour of nearby Fenway Park
• Music and acoustics - we can visit Symphony Hall, home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Our conference coincides with the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, so the attendees can interact with thousands of scientists from around the world.

The following institutional members or partners sent faculty, students, staff or alumni to one of our two winter programs, held in Panama and Morocco. We hope that you will be involved in an upcoming event.

• American Association for the Advancement of Science • American Institute of Maghrib Studies • Azusa Pacific University • Hope for a Healthier Humanity • Indiana State University • Indiana University – Bloomington • Moroccan Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research • Nebraska Institute of Forensic Sciences • SalesForce.com Foundation • Simmons College • Singapore Agency for Science Technology & Research • Thomson Scientific • Tufts University • UNESCO • University of Nebraska, Lincoln • University of Chicago • University of Pittsburgh • University of South Florida • US Civilian Research & Development Foundation • US Library of Congress • US National Science Foundation

The European School of Management & Technology in Berlin is one of our members, and attendees at our 2006 research conference in Berlin had the opportunity to visit the school and hear about their programs. The students in the ESMT full-time MBA program represent more than 20 nationalities. Dr. Olaf Plötner heads the schools’ Practice Group on Technology-Based Industries and is the editor of the forthcoming book on Bringing Technology to Market. As part of their corporate management training and executive MBA program, ESMT offers numerous short courses in Berlin and elsewhere.

Tufts University is home to the United States Department of Agriculture’s Laboratory for Nutrition and Vision Research. The lab is directed by Fulbright scholar and FAST member Dr. Allen Taylor, who has been involved in research teams to reduce blindness in India, Holland, Australia, Israel and China. Dr. Taylor has twenty-two years’ experience successfully building and managing international, interdisciplinary and collaborative scientific programs. As an example, he is also director of STEP-GTP: Science Training Encouraging Peace – Graduate Training Program, an initiative that links Palestinian and Israeli graduate students or clinicians. STEP-GTP is administered through the offices of the International Nutrition Foundation, which is also based at Tufts. In addition to Dr. Taylor, the nine-member STEP steering committee includes a second Fulbrighter – Dr. Aaron Ciechanover of Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, and Nobel Co-Laureate in Chemistry in 2004 for discoveries relating to protein degradation.

STEP is open to students who want to pursue advanced study in one of the following fields: nutrition, genetics (especially genetic counseling), clinical biochemistry, ophthalmology, diabetology, and health communication. Pairs of students (one Palestinian, and one Israeli) with matching academic interests train at the same time in the same educational institutions – either in Palestine, Israel or in the US, and each semester, the STEP-GTP fellows are required to give a joint presentation to students, faculty and the public. The costs of tuition and a stipend for living expenses are provided by STEP-GTP for each participating student, and the result is trained specialists with strong professional ties with scientists from very different cultural and religious backgrounds.

Syracuse University is developing a faculty exchange program with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), also known as North Korea. Syracuse University (SU) and The Korea Society (TKS), with the collaboration and support of the Korean Fulbright Commission, have proposed a program to bring five or six DPRK junior faculty members annually to Syracuse. The AAAS and the US Civilian Research & Development Foundation are also involved (both are also institutional members of FAST). Each cohort would spend three months at Syracuse as non-degree junior faculty research/ leadership fellows beginning with the 2007-8 academic year. The initial DPRK scholars would focus on digital libraries and museums. This focus is particularly interesting for FAST because we have a growing network in this area as a result of our recent NSF-sponsored workshop in Morocco on digital libraries for North Africa/the Maghreb.

The Fulbright Academy was started in 2003 by people like you. We have individual and institutional members in some 50 countries and nearly every US state.

FAST is a non-profit 501-c-3 membership-based organization that serves scientists, executives, and scholars worldwide. Our sponsors and supporters include individual and institutional members such as universities, corporations, government agencies and foundations. The Fulbright Academy is not affiliated with the US State Department, the US Fulbright Association or the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.

Institutions in the US and elsewhere are collaborating with the Academy on projects and programs. These collaborations typically are funded by a grant or contract from a foundation or agency. FAST is independently funded, and so your support is very important to us.