Media Advisory: Members of the UB Community Will Discuss Their Participation in Haiti Relief Efforts in "UB Reaching Others: The January 2010 Haiti Earthquake"

One UB faculty member treated survivors on a U.S. Navy ship; another led engineers to assess the safety of structures in Port-au-Prince, while another used remote sensing technologies to help determine the extent of damage.

These and other members of the UB community who answered the call to help Haiti following the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake will provide an inside look at their experiences in a program, "UB Reaching Others: The January 2010 Haiti Earthquake," on Friday, March 26 from 1:30-3:30 p.m. in the Drama Theatre in the Center for the Arts, UB North Campus.

Lawrence Bone, MD, professor and chair in the Department of Orthopaedics, will discuss his experience with nine other members of the Orthopaedic Trauma Association who volunteered on the U.S. Navy hospital ship, Comfort, treating Haitian patients injured during the earthquake.

Pierre Fouche, Haitian-born doctoral candidate and Fulbright scholar in UB's Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering, will discuss his quest to acquire the civil engineering knowledge and skills to help his homeland rebuild with buildings and infrastructure better designed to withstand future earthquakes.

Chris Renschler, PhD, associate professor of geography and director of the Landscape-based Environmental System Analysis & Modeling (LESAM) Laboratory, will discuss his leadership of a multi-institutional team seeking to enhance disaster response and recovery through damage assessments of the earthquake acquired via airborne and satellite imagery.

Andre Filiatrault, PhD, professor of civil, structural and environmental engineering and director of MCEER, the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research, will report on his experience leading an international team of French-speaking structural engineers to assess the structural safety of hospitals, food warehouses and other structures critical to the immediate relief effort in Port-au-Prince.

Stephen Dunnett, UB professor and vice provost for international education, will report on his office's efforts to assist Haitian students at UB, and discuss future international education initiatives involving Haiti and its recovery from this disaster.

The event is being sponsored by UB's Office of the Vice President for External Affairs, MCEER and the UB 2020 strategic strength Extreme Events: Mitigation and Response.

For press arrangements, contact Ellen Goldbaum in UB University Communications at 645-4605 and onsite at 771-9255.