Kudos

The National Academy of Sciences has appointed UB economist Isaac Ehrlich to its Panel on the Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration.

The panel will examine — among many other relevant issues — the implications of immigration on long-term economic growth, as well as the role of human capital in strengthening productivity, fostering structural change and encouraging economic growth and development.

“The panel is comprised of top economists, demographers and fiscal experts from leading academic and research institutions in the U.S.,” Ehrlich says. “The goal of the project is to lay the basis for a more informed and fact-based discussion of the issues surrounding current immigration into the U.S. among a wide range of audiences from policymakers to the general public.”

A SUNY Distinguished Professor, Ehrlich is chair of the Department of Economics, College of Arts and Sciences, and a faculty member in the Department of Finance and Managerial Economics in the School of Management.

His research focuses on the role of human capital and social institutions as direct facilitators of economic growth.

He has presented a thesis crediting the rise of the U.S. as an economic superpower, overtaking the United Kingdom and other European countries, in large measure to its relatively faster human capital formation.

Ehrlich also serves as the Melvin H. Baker Professor of American Enterprise in the School of Management and director of the Center of Excellence on Human Capital, Technology Transfer, and Economic Growth and Development. His professional affiliations include appointments as a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and Honorary Professor at the University of Orleans, France.

He also is the founder and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Human Capital, which is published by the University of Chicago press and headquartered at the Center of Excellence on Human Capital, Technology Transfer, and Economic Growth and Development.

Ehrlich is the author of 80 original and reprinted articles in major refereed journals and collections, including two books. He has been supported by numerous grants from the National Science Foundation and other federal and state agencies, including a major U.S. Agency for International Development grant to study economic development and the role of free enterprise in economic development, and the prestigious NYSTAR award for faculty development.

Youfa Wang, professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Environmental Health, School of Public Health and Health Professions, has been elected secretary/treasurer of The Obesity Society’s (TOS) Pediatric Obesity Section for 2014-15.

He will become the section’s chair-elect in 2015-16 and then chair in 2016-17.

TOS is the leading scientific society dedicated to the study of obesity. Since 1982, it has encouraged research on the causes and treatment of obesity, and kept the medical community and public informed of advances in the field.

Wang also co-chaired the childhood hypertension session at the combined 16th International Symposium of Hypertension and Related Disease and  2014 Chinese Hypertension Meeting held in Shanghai, China, last fall. At the meeting, he delivered a talk, “Tracking of blood pressure from childhood to adulthood: The benefit of childhood obesity prevention programs.”

Alan Hutson, a researcher at UB and Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI), has been chosen to serve as a statistical reviewer for 2014 grant proposals submitted to the U.S. Department of Defense’s Clinical and Rehabilitative Medicine Transplantation Research Program (CRMRP).

The program was developed to assist the treatment of U.S. soldiers injured in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom.

This year, CRMRP will award $15 million to groundbreaking, scientific research proposals that support the execution of complex limb and face replacements.

Hutson, professor and chair of the Department of Biostatistics in UB’s School of Public Health and Health Professions, and chair of the Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics at RPCI, specializes and publishes in the areas of bioinformatics, clinical trials, computational methods and order statistics. A UB faculty member since 2002, he is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and has received more than $7 million in research funding since 2010.

The CRMRP supports innovative research that fosters new directions for, and addresses neglected issues in, the field of reconstructive transplantation research, specifically vascular composite allotransplantation (VCA)-focused research.

 VCA refers to the transplantation of multiple tissues, such as muscle, bone, nerve and skin, as a functional unit (e.g., a hand or face) from a deceased donor to a recipient with a severe injury.

Chi Zhou, assistant professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, was one of 11 young faculty members to receive the “2015 Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award” from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME).

The award is conferred “in recognition of significant achievements and leadership in the field of manufacturing engineering as a young engineer.”

Zhou joined the UB Engineering faculty in 2013. His research focuses on transformative additive manufacturing technologies that leverage modeling, optimization and simulation tools. His work has the potential to improve quality of life for people through such applications as creation of living tissues and organs, as well as supporting economic growth by allowing mass customization with substantially shortened product life cycle and reduced cost.

He received his PhD in industrial and systems engineering from the University of Southern California in 2012.