Kudos

Campus Dining and Shops (CDS) received the Sustainable Business Award at the 2013 WNY Earth Day Awards presented on Earth Day—April 22—as part of the event to officially open UB’s Solar Strand.

The Sustainable Business Award is given to the enterprise that demonstrated the most significant impact on behalf of its clients or by changing its internal operations or business model to advance the goals of triple bottom-line thinking—people, planet and profit.

 CDS’ winning entry detailed the design and construction of Crossroads Culinary Center as a LEED silver-certified building and the objectives of local construction, local food and materials purchasing, and on-site food-waste composting.

The 2013 WNY Earth Day Awards were sponsored by Ecology and Environment Inc.; entries were reviewed by a panel of five judges representing a cross section of experts from business, academia and nongovernmental organizations.

Michael Cain, vice president for health sciences and dean of the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, has been appointed to the board of directors of HEALTHeLINK. HEALTHeLINKis a collaborative consortium established to develop a privacy-protected, community-bases system for health care providers and consumers to electronically share important medical and clinical information more efficiently.

Two doctoral students in the interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Evolution, Ecology and Behavior have received National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grants.

Balasubramaniam Krishna Natarajan received a $24,053 grant for “Variation in Macaque Hierarchical Steepness from Socioecological and Biological Markets Perspectives. Carol Berman, professor of anthropology, serves as Natarajan’s adviser.

Shelby McIlroy received a $18,624 grant for “Mechanisms and consequences of flexibility in mutualistic relationships.” Mary Alice Coffroth, professor of geology, serves as McIlroy’s adviser.

Howard Lasker, professor of geology and director of the Graduate Program in Evolution, Ecology and Behavior, notes that these grants are “quite competitive and having two students receive them is quite a feather in our cap.”

And while the adviser is always listed as the principal investigator on these awards and the student as the co-PI, the grants are written by and for the graduate student, Lasker adds.

McIlroy received a Presidential Fellowship from UB and Natarajan recently was awarded a College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Fellowship.

Rep. Brian Higgins issued a proclamation in the House of Representatives on March 21 honoring Thomas C. Rosenthal, chair of the Department of Family Medicine for 20 years, upon his retirement from UB.