May 2008

Congratulations to these members of the UT community!

Brian Kiel (Jackson School of Geosciences) recently was awarded a National Science Foundation fellowship.

Stephen Balut (School of Architecture) has been selected to participate in the 2008 Hart Howerton Fellowship Program. This program combines a working internship with a travel/research benefit. Balut's travel proposal will lead him to Africa.

Makiko Okamoto (Aerospace Engineering) was awarded a Zonta International Amelia Earhart Fellowship for the 2008-2009 academic year.

Christina Murphey (School of Nursing, portfolio in Women's and Gender Studies) was selected as one of several Texas nurses as a Texas Nurses Association Future Leader.

Benjamin Herndon (Management) and Michael Luchs (Marketing) were awarded the 2007-08 Fred Moore Assistant Instructor Award for Teaching Excellence by the McCombs School of Business.

Dan Birkholz (Assistant Professor of English) won a President's Associates Teaching Award.

Diane Davis (Associate Professor of Rhetoric) won a President's Associates Teaching Award.

Hope Hasbrouck (Graduate Adviser and Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture) was chosen to receive the 2008 Rome Prize, one of the most highly regarded awards in the arts and humanities. The prize provides a $25,000 stipend and living accommodations for an 11-month fellowship at the Rome Academy in Rome, Italy.

E. Allen Emerson (Professor of Computer Sciences) was named one of three winners of the 2007 A.M. Turing Award, widely considered the most prestigious award in computing. The Tower was lighted orange in his honor.

Peter Stone (Associate Professor of Computer Sciences) has been awarded a 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship for his work on teams of mobile robots.

Message from the Dean

Dear Graduate Students,

The end of the school year provides a wonderful opportunity to recognize the achievements of outstanding individuals. Several members of the university's graduate community will be honored for their contributions to excellence in graduate education at various events.

The University Co-op will join with the Graduate School in honoring student recipients at an awards banquet on May 14. Due to the generosity of the University Co-op, the Graduate School will present a new top-level student recognition this year. The Outstanding Graduate Student Award will come with a $10,000 prize and the recipient will be selected from among the 12 student winners in the four student award categories.

I am pleased to announce the winners of this year's professional category awards.

• The 2008 Outstanding Graduate Alumnus Award goes to Hank Dittmar, a 1980 master's graduate of Community and Regional Planning. The $5,000 Hank Dittmar Fellowship has been awarded to Leah Hollstein, a doctoral student in Community and Regional Planning.
• The Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award winner is Dr. Anthony Woodbury, professor of Linguistics.
• The Outstanding Graduate Adviser Award recipient is Dr. Wayne Lesser, associate professor of English.
• The Outstanding Graduate Coordinator is Evelyn Porter, Graduate Program Coordinator for the Department of Sociology.

The first three will receive their awards at the Doctoral Convocation Ceremony on May 17 and Ms. Porter's award will be presented at a Graduate Coordinator Recognition Brunch on May 27.

Please extend your congratulations to all our winners and visit http://www.utexas.edu/ogs/awards/ for more information about our awards program.

I wish you a safe and happy summer.

Warm Regards,
Victoria E. Rodríguez
Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies

Everyday Excellence

Ingrid Haeckel is a Master of Arts student in the Department of Geography and the Environment at The University of Texas and a 2007-2008 Harrington Master's Fellow. Her research focuses on the Latin American Tropics. Read more >>

Spotlight on Faculty

Dr. Jacqueline Angel, Professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, studies trends in aging among the Mexican-American elderly population. One of her key findings is that the Mexican-American elderly population is half as likely as other aging populations in the United States to use nursing homes, despite suffering from higher rates of functional dependency than other ethnic groups. Read more >>

Graduate Research at Work

Lab-on-a-Chip allows for early cancer diagnosis

Dr. John T. McDevitt has created a nano-bio-chip that can be used to analyze a
patient's saliva for symptoms of a heart attack. Assisting him in his work are
Chemistry and Biochemistry graduate students Jesse Jokerst, Archana Ramanathan, and Shannon Weigum, as well as researchers from other institutions. The brilliance of this technology is that getting a result could take as little as fifteen minutes. Furthermore, because of its noninvasive procedure, the test could be administered without hospitalization. The nano-bio-chip enables the early diagnosis of cardiac disease, which is currently the leading cause of
death in the United States.

This technology does more than predict cardiac disease. Shannon Weigum explains: "There are two basic platforms for the nano-bio-chip sensor which are adapted to detect a variety of disease specific markers, or biomarkers. Often these biomarkers are found in bodily fluids, such as blood and saliva, or within the diseased cells themselves, as in the case of many cancers."

Weigum, Ramanathan, and Jokerst work alongside Dr. McDevitt to develop the cellular nano-bio-chip sensory to detect and characterize biomarkers in various cancers. Weigum does this for oral cancer, the sixth most common cancer worldwide. In this case, cells brushed non-invasively from a sore on the mouth can be tested for a common sign of oral cancer by putting the sample on a lab-on-a-chip. The entire test takes ten minutes. Ramanathan's work involves utilizing the lab-on-a-chip nano-biosensor platform for early diagnosis of ovarian and breast cancer. This is done by developing tests for CA 125 and HER-2 (tumor markers in ovarian and breast cancer, respectively). Jokerst's role in the nano-bio-chip is the integration of nanometer-sized, fluorescent particles into the assembly as a signaling tool.

This sort of non-invasive early detection allows diagnoses in a fraction of the time it would normally take, thus allowing for early action and a higher chance of patient survival.

To read further on the nano-bio-chip:
http://www.utexas.edu/news/2008/04/16/nano_bio_chip/

Featured Graduate School Resource

Finding Summer Housing

Summer is often a time of renewing leases, looking at new housing possibilities, and moving on. Whether you are interested in finding a place for three months or for the following academic year, GradLife offers suggestions for finding a new house or apartment to rent. Some places to look include the University Apartments on Lake Austin Boulevard (with available shuttle service), Craig's List, and various agencies listed in GradLife:
http://www.utexas.edu/ogs/gradlife/living/housing.html

Getting a Life

Texas Beaches

Once you have laid aside final projects, finished the last bit of grading, and wrapped up school for the semester, a good idea might be to take a short trip to the beach. From Austin, you can drive to Port Aransas in four hours, and spend a long weekend lazing around the beach, fishing, surfing, sleeping, eating seafood at one of the local restaurants (especially good are The Crazy Cajun and The Venetian Hot Plate), and indulging in fudge and caramel from Winton's Island Candies. Whether you choose Port Aransas, Galveston, Padre Island, or Matagorda Bay, there is a Texas beach -- within a short distance -- that could provide a thoroughly relaxing start-to-summer weekend.

Job Opportunity

Writer needed

Texas Student Media is seeking graduate students with writing experience to write for Our Campus, a print publication that filled the void left when On Campus went exclusively online. They pay $40 for published articles (1,500-2,000 words), which are geared toward faculty and staff. Please contact Elena Watts at elenaw@mail.utexas.edu or 471-5887 for more information.