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Maher to close 2009-10 speakers series
The 2009-10 Distinguished Speakers Series will close with a lecture by political satirist and author Bill Maher at 8 p.m. April 24 in Alumni Arena, North Campus.
Maher is host of the Emmy-nominated HBO series “Real Time with Bill Maher,” which features interviews and panel discussions of current events with national figures in entertainment, politics and journalism.
Before joining HBO, he hosted the popular and controversial ABC program “Politically Incorrect.”
Maher is the author of four best-selling books, including “New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer,” and he wrote and starred in the 2008 comedy/documentary “Religulous,” which satirizes organized religion and religious belief.
Tickets for the lecture are available at the Alumni Arena box office, Tickets.com and all Tops Friendly Markets.
UB to host LGBT conference
For the first time in its 15-year history, UB is hosting the 2010 Northeast Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) Conference, to be held April 16-18 on the North Campus.
More than 400 high school and college students throughout the Northeastern U.S. and southern Ontario are expected to attend the conference, the theme of which is “Sh(out): Celebrating Self, Creating Community.”
The conference’s mission is to unite the diverse LGBTQ community through education, activism and networking. UB’s Wellness Education Services, which supports and educates UB students about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and ally issues, will coordinate the conference.
The event will feature programs, presentations and speakers on a wide variety of topics related to the LGBTQ community, including gender-neutral housing, transgender inclusion, faith and sexuality, political activism, international perspectives and multicultural issues.
The featured speaker will be Alex Sanchez, author of “Rainbow Boys,” named “Best Book for Young Adults” by the American Library Association in 2002.
For more information, click here.
Sustainability emphasis of exhibit
The public is largely unaware of an important movement among artists of all stripes advocating for sustainable agriculture, products and services. UB students and faculty members in the departments of Visual Studies, Media Study, Architecture, and Urban and Regional Planning are among those deeply involved in this movement.
This emphasis will be highlighted in “Design Issues,” a free public exhibition of work by seniors in the Communication Design Program in the Department of Visual Studies. The show, in the Visual Studies Department Gallery, Room B45 in the basement of the Center for the Arts, North Campus, opened on April 14 and will run through April 24. Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
Based on recent theories regarding simplicity in design and its effect on consumer behavior, students focused on how simple steps can lead to wider social change. Projects include illustrated prototypes for sustainable products and services, and public campaigns and grass-roots initiatives that advocate for more sustainable, healthier lifestyles and environments realized through community gardens, organic food networks, creative reuse and more.
The exhibitors, who worked under the direction of Stephanie Rothenberg, associate professor of visual studies, are Shane Alexander, Caressa Arcara, Robert Avery, Patrick Branigan, Waichan Chan, Allison Chefec, Kelsey Cook, Sean Dimmer, Scott Ferris, Calieb Fisher, Miles Fonda, Melissa Infantino, Brandon Koek, Sarah Kuehl, Anna Leone, Michael Phillips, Danielle Simon, David Vaccaro, Robert Weishaupt and Jeannette Wiley.
‘Smart grid’ focus of workshop
Directed Energy, UB’s clean-energy business-incubator program, will host “Smart Grid Opportunities,” a half-day workshop designed to help businesses and researchers better comprehend technical advancements and business opportunities related to efforts to revamp the electrical grid.
It will take place from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. April 21 in the Buffalo/Niagara Marriott, 1340 Millersport Highway. The program is co-hosted by Hodgson Russ LLP.
The keynote speaker will be Robert B. Catell, chair of the New York State Smart Grid Consortium, the New York State Foundation for Science, Technology and Innovation (NYSTAR) and the Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center at Stony Brook University. Catell will discuss “The New York State Smart Grid Consortium: Mission, Roadmap, Challenges and Opportunities.”
The workshop is the first in a series of four to be held in 2010, part of Directed Energy’s effort to support a clean-energy technical and business cluster in Western New York.
“The Business of Energy series has several objectives,” says Martin Casstevens, director of Directed Energy and business-formation and commercialization manager for UB’s Office of Science, Technology and Economic Outreach (STOR). “Technical businesses will have an opportunity to learn about and explore new business opportunities. Academics will hear prominent speakers identify ongoing technical challenges requiring additional research. The series also provides businesspeople and academics with a valuable networking session.”
Lecture to explore gender and computing
“Gender and Computing” will be the topic of the next lecture in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering’s Distinguished Speakers Series, to be take place at 3:30 p.m. April 22 in 120 Clemens Hall, North Campus.
The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be delivered by Maria Klawe, president of Harvey Mudd College and a former dean of engineering and professor of computer science at Princeton University.
In her talk, Klawe will examine how girls and women differ from boys and men in their use of and attitudes toward computing technology, and how this affects career choices and technology design. She will discuss why fewer women than men pursue careers in computing and best practices for increasing and retaining the number of women in the field.
Musicologist Taruskin to speak
The UB Department of Music and the Ziegele Chair in Music will sponsor a lecture by the award-winning author, critic and performer Richard Taruskin at 4 p.m. April 22 in Baird Recital Hall, 250 Baird Hall, North Campus.
The talk, which is free and open to the public, is titled “Did Somebody Say Censorship?” It will include audio and visual illustrations.
Professor of music at the University of California-Berkeley, Taruskin is the author of several influential books on music performance and music history, including “Text and Act,” “Defining Russia Musically,” “The Danger of Music” and the monumental six-volume “Oxford History of Western Music,” for which he was dubbed “the Wittgenstein of musicology” by the New York Times’ literary supplement.
Controversial, provocative and often amusing, Taruskin has been published regularly in the pages of The New York Times and The New Republic, earning him a reputation as “America’s public musicologist.”
Epidemiologist to present Graham lecture
Robert Wallace, Irene Ensminger Stecher Professor of Epidemiology and
Internal Medicine at the University of Iowa and director of the university's Center on Aging, will present UB’s 2010 Saxon Graham Lecture at noon April 16 in 144 Farber Hall, South Campus.
The title of his talk is “What Can Evolution Teach Us About Prevention?” The lecture, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, part of the School of Public Health and Health Professions.
It is named in honor of Graham, an accomplished epidemiologist who served as chair of the UB Department of Social and Preventive Medicine from 1981-91. He is best known for his important contributions to the understanding of the impact of diet on cancer, many of which were based on studying dietary habits of Western New Yorkers.
Wallace received his MD degree from Northwestern University in 1967 and earned a master’s degree in epidemiology from UB in 1972 while on an assignment at the university for the then-Centers for Disease Control.
He has conducted extensive research in clinical and population epidemiology, with a focus on the causes and prevention of disabling conditions among older persons, including fracture, cancer and coronary disease.
He is site principal investigator for the University of Iowa’s Women's Health Initiative clinical center, a national intervention trial exploring the prevention of breast and colon cancer and coronary disease. UB is one of the WHI’s Vanguard Clinic Centers.
Showcase to present choreographers’ work
The Department of Theatre and Dance will present Emerging Choreographers Showcase April 23 and April 24 in the Black Box Theatre in the Center for the Arts, North Campus.
Performance times are 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
Thirteen new dance works by invited, advanced-level UB choreography students will premiere at the showcase. The concert, directed by Anne Burnidge, assistant professor of theatre and dance, includes pieces by Nicole Benoit, Rebekah Brown, Ashley Currey, Laura Crowe, Hilary Freeland, Elliott Keller, Nicole Klerer, Kelly Metcalfe, Laura Neese, Samuel Robbins, Sara Senecal, Brittany Sprung and James Walters, with lighting design by UB dance majors Keri Leonard and Angela Siler.
The works represent a spectrum of contemporary dance genres, ranging from modern partnering to contemporary jazz to an exploration of contemporary music theater dance. The choreographers were inspired by breath, flight, destiny, abandonment, causality, intertwining movement, space, Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” and an original musical composition by Nathan Youmans.
Tickets for Emerging Choreographers Showcase are $10 and are available at the CFA box office and at all Ticketmaster outlets, including Ticketmaster.com.
For more information, call 645-2787.
Nobel Prize winner to give Rustgi Lecture
William D. Phillips, 1997 Nobel Laureate in Physics who is renowned for the spectacular demonstrations that accompany his lectures, will deliver the 16th annual Moti Lal Rustgi Lecture at 5 p.m. April 23 in 225 Natural Sciences Complex, North Campus.
Phillips’ topic will be “Time, Einstein and the Coolest Stuff in the
Universe.” High school students and members of the general public interested in science and technology are invited to attend.
The Rustgi lecture, presented by the Department of Physics, College of Arts and Sciences, will be free and open to the public. The annual lecture is held to honor Moti Lal Rustgi, professor of physics at UB from 1966-92.
A Distinguished University Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland, Phillips shared the Nobel Prize with Steven Chu, who currently serves as secretary of energy in the Obama Administration. They were awarded the Nobel Prize for developing methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.
In addition to his faculty post at Maryland, Phillips leads the Laser Cooling and Trapping Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and several other national and international scientific societies.
For more information, call the Department of Physics at 645-2017 or email ubphysics@buffalo.edu.
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