faculty/staff NEWS

James Allert, assistant professor, Department of Computer Science, authored an introductory textbook in computer science, Programming with Visual C++: Concepts and Projects, published February 2008 by Course Technology/Cengage Learning, 735 p.

Jay Austin, assistant professor, Department of Physics and Large Lakes Observatory, was lead author on one and co-author on three other presentations at the winter meeting of the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography, in March 2008. Austin also gave a dinner talk to the annual meeting of the Minnesota Association for Justice in February, gave an invited panel talk to the annual meeting of the Great Lakes Research Consortium in Syracuse, NY in March, and gave an invited talk at a workshop entitled “Adapting to Climate Change? Challenges and Opportunities” in Thunder Bay, Ontario in March.

Work by Gloria DeFilipps Brush, professor, Art and Design, has been accepted for the Online Digital Art Gallery D-ART 2008 for the 12th International Conference Information Visualisation iV 08, South Bank University London, England July 8-11, 2008 and the 5th International Conference “Computer Graphics, Imaging and Visualization” CGIV 08 Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) Penang, Malaysia, 25-28 August, 2008. The gallery will be uploaded on the server in London to accompany the events and will remain until the next year’s conferences. The committee selecting her work included: Anna Ursyn, UNC, CO; Andrea Polli, Hunter College, NYC; Marla Schwappe, RIT, NY; Ying Tan, University of Oregon; Dena Elisabeth Eber, Bowling Green State University, OH; and LiQin Tan, Rutgers University.

Dalibor Froncek, professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, developed a method for scheduling police officer shifts for Superior Police Department.

Vicki Hansen, professor, Department of Geological Sciences, was the featured scientist for Minnesota Sea Grant’s “Ask A Scientist” Program in March. The title of the evening inquiry was “Did a Comet Crack the Earth?” and presentations were made on March 4 at the Blue Water Café in Grand Marais, and on March 5 at the Amazing Grace Café in Duluth.

Hansen and geological sciences graduate students Emily Bjonnes and Bhairavi Shankar presented two talks and two posters at the 39th International Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston in March 2008. Hansen also served as a session chair at the conference. The presentations and accompanied published abstracts are as follows:

Hansen V.L., *Tharalson E.R., *McDaniel K.M., *Cole K.L., and *Goodge B.H., authored “2008, The Coronae Conundrum: Results from Detailed Geologic Mapping of Agnesi Quadrangle”, at Venus: Lunar and Planetary Science Conference XXIX.

Hansen presented the poster. NOTE: Erik Tharalson is past UMD undergraduate; Kelly McDaniel is past UMD graduate student; Keri Cole is current UMD undergraduate student and Berit Goodge is a student at Ordean Middle School.

Hansen, V.L. and López, I., authored “2008, Venus: No Catastrophic Resurfacing, No Plate Tectonics, But a Rich Ancient History? Results from Global Ribbon Tessera Terrain Mapping.” Hansen presented the talk.

Bjonnes, E.E., Hansen V.L. and John Swenson, associate professor, Department of Geological Sciences, authored “2008, Results of Equilibrium Resurfacing Monte Carlo Models on Venus”. Bjonnes presented the talk.

Shankar B. and Hansen V.L., “2008, Preliminary Global Survey of Circular Lows, A Subset of Venusian.” Shankar presented the poster.

The second UMD NATSRL research workshop on traffic system management was held at the Mn/DOT Metro District conference room on Friday, March 14. A total of 13 Mn/DOT engineers in the area of traffic operations and freeway design attended this workshop, where Eil Kwon, NATSRL director, presented and facilitated the discussions on the theory for traffic flow analysis. This workshop is a part of the NATSRL outreach activities. The first NATSRL workshop on traffic system management was held on February 15 at the Mn/DOT metro district.

Jim Miller, assistant professor, Department of Geological Sciences, participated in the COSEE-Great Lakes (Centers for Ocean Science Education Excellence) on-line workshop “The Great Lakes Rock!” which ran from January 27 - February 8. He gave a 40-minute on-line lecture on general geologic processes and replied to over 40 on-line questions from K-12 science teachers.

Miller also gave presentations on the Precambrian field camp being offered at UMD and on the Precambrian geology of the Lake Superior region to students and faculty at two different locales: the Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences at Tulane University, New Orleans, LA on February 21-22 and at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls on February 27.

Miller also gave a Department of Geological Sciences seminar on Feb. 28 entitled: “The Inaugural Season of the Precambrian Field Camp - Successes, Challenges, and Successes.”

Ted Pedersen, associate professor, Department of Computer Science, and Anagha Kulkarni (MS 2006, Department of Computer Science) recently published an article in the Journal of Intelligent Systems (vol. 17, 2008) entitled “Name Discrimination and E-mail Clustering Using Unsupervised Clustering of Similar Concepts.” Pedersen is also a co-advisor to Ph.D. student Bridget Thomson-McInnes, who has been accepted into the Research Participation Program at the National Library of Medicine (NLM), which is part of the National Institute of Health (NIH). Bridget will be spending March through September at NLM in Bethesda, MD. She has a BS and MS in Computer Science from UMD and is currently a PhD student in the Twin Cities, where she is also advised by John Carlis (UMTC).

Undergraduate student Ryan Bowlds, who works on the driver sleepiness detection project with Xun Yu, assistant professor, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, just won the ITS MN Undergraduate Student Award from the Intelligent Transportation Society of Minnesota. This competition was open to all undergraduate students in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Iowa.

NRRI NEWS

Subhash Basak and collaborators gave the following presentations on their research on computational toxicology at the Joint Midwest Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry and Northland Society of Toxicology meeting, March 31 to April 2.

1) “Use of Chemodescriptors and Proteomics-based Biodescriptors in Predicting Toxicity of Chemicals,” authored jointly by Basak, D. M. Hawkins (School of Statistics, U of MN TC campus), J.J. Kraker (University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire), K.T. Geiss (Air Force Research Laboratory, Dayton, OH) and, F.A.Witzmann (Indiana University and Purdue University).

2) “Prediction of Biological Partition Coefficients: Calculated Molecular Descriptors vs. Experimentally Determined Properties,” authored jointly by Denise Mills, Basak, Brian Gute, Moiz M. Mumtaz (Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, GA).

3) “QSAR Approach to Modeling Membrane Permeability,” authored by Gute, Jim Riviere (College of Veterinary Medicine, North Carolina State University), Ronald E. Baynes ( College of Veterinary Medicine, North Carolina State University), and Basak.

Julie Oreskovich co-presented with Dale Cartwright of DNR Lands and Minerals: “Mapping Underground Mine Workings on the Mesabi Iron Range, Minnesota,” at the seventh Biennial Meeting of the Interstate Technical Group on Abandoned Underground Mines (ITGAUM) in Kansas City, Mar. 25-27. ITGAUM formed as a result of the I-70 interstate collapse in Ohio in 1995. Members are state Departments of Transportation and state agencies that oversee abandoned underground mines.

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