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Civic engagement strategic strength offers faculty fellowship program
The Civic Engagement and Public Policy strategic strength is sponsoring a fellowship program that will support faculty research addressing pressing social and/or policy issues in collaboration with local, national or global community partners.
In addition to advancing faculty research, the fellowship program is designed to help faculty members’ garner external funding for their work.
The research and scholarship should advance disciplinary knowledge, as well as contribute to public policy and to the community partner’s efforts in fostering the social and economic well being of its constituencies.
This scholarly expertise then will be disseminated and applied to advance the public good and inform public policy.
Proposals are being sought from full-time faculty members. Those who are designated “UB Civic Engagement Fellows” will receive a one-semester course replacement to enable them to make significant progress on their research and scholarship.
The Civic Engagement Faculty Advisory Committee is especially interested in supporting proposals that have the potential to evolve into larger studies that advance knowledge and will make a difference in the lives of external constituencies.
For more information about the fellowship program and to a download an application form, click here. The deadline for proposals is 2 p.m. Oct. 26 for course replacement in the spring 2010 semester.
Biostatistics sponsors lecture series
Eight prominent scientists from across the U.S. will participate in a yearlong Distinguished Scholars Lecture Series, beginning next week, presented by the Department of Biostatistics in the School of Public Health and Health Professions.
All lectures are free and open to the public.
The series will open with dual lectures Oct. 28 and Oct. 29 by Thomas R. Fleming, professor of biostatistics and statistics at the University of Washington-Seattle and a member of the Division of Public Health Sciences at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
Fleming’s Oct. 28 lecture, “Issues in Using Progression Free Survival When Evaluating Oncology Products,” is scheduled for 8 a.m. at Roswell Park Cancer Institute’s Hohn Lecture Hall.
The following day he will discuss “Clinical Trials: Discerning Hype from Substance” at 10:15 a.m. in 144 Farber Hall, South Campus.
The series will continue on Nov. 5 with a lecture by David Oakes, professor of biostatistics and computational biology at the University of Rochester and director of the university’s Biostatistics Centers of the Parkinson and Huntington Study Groups. Oakes will discuss “On the Role of Copula Models in Survival Analysis” at 4 p.m. in 182 Farber Hall.
The series’ fall keynote speaker, Raymond J. Carroll from Texas A&M University, will address the topic “Robust Powerful Methods for Understanding Gene-Gene and Gene-Environment Interactions” at 4 p.m. Nov. 17 in Butler Auditorium in Farber Hall.
Carroll, founding director of Texas A&M’s Center for Statistical Bioinformatics, is one of the world’s foremost experts on the statistical problems of measurement error, data transformation and non-constant variation, and more generally, on statistical regression modeling.
Randolph L. Carter, professor and associate chair of the Department of Biostatistics, is organizer of the series, which includes six additional presentations by distinguished young scholars in biostatistics.
The entire schedule of talks can be found on the department’s Web site by following the “Distinguished Scholars Lectures” link.
Bruns to present music of Mendelssohn
The Department of Music will celebrate the 200th anniversary of Felix Mendelssohn’s birth by presenting his organ music performed by critically acclaimed organist Jeremy Bruns in a concert at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 30 in Lippes Concert Hall in Slee Hall, North Campus.
As a church musician, Bruns has held positions in Buffalo, Boston and New York, including three years as associate organist at St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. A member of the American Guild of Organists, he has served as an executive committee member of the Boston chapter, and was a guest conductor for the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts.
Bruns studied with David Higgs at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, earning his master’s degree in performance and literature, and the Performer’s Certificate. He has won prizes in major competitions, including the 2003 Dallas International Organ Competition. He also was one of four North American finalists chosen to compete in the 1998 Calgary International Organ Festival and Competition, and was second-prize winner in the 1993 International J.S. Bach Organ Competition held at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Tickets for Bruns’ UB concert are $10 for general admission and $5 for UB faculty/staff/alumni/students and senior citizens. Tickets can be purchased at the Slee Hall box office, the Center for the Arts box office and at all Ticketmaster outlets, including Ticketmaster.com.
UB, RPCI initiate new degree program
UB and Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI) have received a $400,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education to establish a dual master’s degree program in the biology and systems of cancer with the University of Luxembourg and the Free University in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
The program is designed to address the shortage of young researchers in the fields of systems biology and cancer biology.
The European universities will receive similar grants in the amount of €400,000 from the European Union (EU).
Moray Campbell, associate professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics and director of graduate studies at RPCI, is coordinating the program for UB and RPCI.
The four-year program will train 48 students from the U.S. and the EU, combining studies in mathematics, computer science and cancer biology. The equal weighting of systems biology and cancer biology in the degree program is unprecedented: Other institutes offer master’s programs in cancer biology, but rarely, if at all, include systems biology components. The few systems biology master’s programs that exist do not touch on its applications to human health.
“We are delighted Roswell Park has been awarded this prestigious transatlantic grant to develop a truly unique graduate program in cancer biology that draws on the strengths in research and teaching of RPCI and its European partners,” says Stephen Dunnett, UB vice provost for international education. “Students in this program will benefit greatly from this distinctive, tri-national research and training program, and Roswell will build upon its extensive collaborations with leading research institutions around the world.”
Added Arthur M. Michalek, dean of the Roswell Park Graduate Division at UB: “Roswell Park Cancer Institute has a long tradition of international outreach. While this new program will certainly allow us to continue this tradition, it also is unique in that it will afford our trainees an opportunity to benefit from their exposure to other scientific approaches and cultures in a program that is one-of-a-kind.”
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