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Executive MBA grad wins Panasci competition
Scott Carter, a 2002 graduate of the Executive MBA program, has won the $25,000 first-place prize in UB's third annual Panasci Entrepreneurial Competition, which awards seed money to UB students and recent alumni who devise and present the best plans for launch of a viable new business in Western New York.
Carter, a Buffalo resident, won for his plan for an educational software venture called First Tracks, which will help teachers and administrators monitor the reading progress of their students against national benchmarks established by the Department of Education in its "Reading First" literacy program.
Targeted to elementary schools across the country, First Tracks' Early Literacy program will provide school officials with a universally practical software tool that will simplify the reporting and analysis of their literacy programs.
Carter now will advance to the Southwest Business Plan Competition at Rice University in Houston to compete for first, second and third prizes of $15,000, $10,000 and $5,000, respectively.
The winner of the Southwest Business Plan Competition will move to the internationally renown MOOT CORP finals. Candidates there will compete for a $100,000 equity investment, which will be in the form of convertible debt and considered an early bridge loan.
The Panasci Competition's second-place prize of $15,000 was awarded to Yali Friedman of Toronto, a UB doctoral student in biochemistry. Freidman's proposed enterprise, thinkPharm, is an online database system that will provide timely competitive intelligence on the pharmaceutical industry, especially information about drug patent expiration dates. Potential clients include pharmaceutical companies, patent attorneys and stock market investors.
Carter and Friedman received their awards at the competition's final round, where they and four other teams of finalists publicly presented their business plans to panel of judges, which included representatives from Strategic Investment & Holdings, Inc., Harris Beach, LLP, M&T Investment Group, Rand Capital Corporation and Seed Capital Partners.
A total of 16 teams, composed of students and alumni from various academic units at UB, competed in this year's contest, which is organized by the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership in the School of Management.
The competition is funded by a $1 million endowment from School of Pharmacy alumnus Henry A. Panasci, Jr, chairman of the Cygnus Management Group of Syracuse and former CEO of Fays Inc. Panasci created the contest to encourage the entrepreneurial interests of UB students and alumni and to promote the development and launch of new businesses.
Baldy Center to host workshop
The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy in the UB Law School will present a workshop on "Law, Technology and Development" on Saturday in O'Brian Hall, North Campus.
The workshop, which has been organized by Sharmistha Bagchi-Sen, professor of geography, and Shubha Ghosh, professor of law, will examine the issues of disparity in development and the diffusion of technology as they relate to globalization.
Global differences in economic and social well-being, according to the workshop organizers, can be traced to differences in levels and spread of technology. Technology, in broad terms, acts as a cause for both improvements in well-being and decline in well-being. Needed technology often is inaccessible, while technologies for control of the workplace, devastation of the environment and the spread of economic and political propaganda spread readily.
The workshop will examine such questions as:
Is there a meaning to technology that is coherent?
How are the goals of development reached through technology?
What role do legal institutions play in matching the march of technology with the goals of development?
The workshop will be organized into four panels composed of internationally distinguished experts representing fields such as law, business and technology.
The panels will look at intellectual property rights, including intellectual property law as applied to the development and regulatory environment for the development and diffusion of technology, and globalization, including technology transfer, diffusion and dissemination from regional and global perspectives.
Presenters will be Daniele Archibugi, Italian National Research Council, Rome, Italy; Kevin Davis, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto; Lorraine A. Eden, Mays Business School, Texas A&M University; James Gathii, Albany Law School; Stuart Graham, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley; Ranjana D. Kadle, Hodgson Russ Attorneys, LLP, Buffalo; Zorina Khan, Department of Economics, Bowdoin College; Robin Paul Malloy, College of Law and Maxwell School of Citizenship, Syracuse University; Carlo Pietrobelli, Faculty of Law, University of Rome, Italy; Helen Lawton Smith, Centre for Local Economic Development, Coventry Business School & Oxford University, England; Susan Sell, Department of Political Science, George Washington University; Lawrence M. Sung, University of Maryland School of Law, and S. Visalakshi, National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies, New Delhi, India.
For more information, go to http://www.law.buffalo.edu/baldycenter/lawtechdev03.html, or contact the Baldy Center at 645-2102.
Health care disparities to be topic of conference
A conference addressing the issue of "AccessHealth: Collaborative Solutions for Health Care Disparities" will be held from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. April 4 in the Screening Room in the Center for the Arts, North Campus.
The conference is sponsored by a the SUNY Office of the Provost, the Office of the Vice President for Research at UB and the SUNY Conversations in the Disciplines".
The conference will address the social issues related to health disparities and the models available to eliminate those disparities, as well as collaborative research process within and across the health sciences, social sciences and the community. It is open to all UB faculty, clinicians, students, medical residents and others in the Western New York community.
Registration is $15 for students and medical residents, and $35 for all others. Lunch and breaks are included in the registration fee.
Registration materials are available at http://www.smbs.buffalo.edu/ethnicamerican.
Keynote speakers at the conference will be Kevin Fiscella, associate professor in the departments of Family and Community and Preventative Medicine at the University of Rochester; Doriane C. Miller, senior director of quality and clinical research for the Health Research and Educational Trust of the American Hospital Association, and Mark A. Nichter, a professor in the departments of Anthropology and Family and Community Medicine at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
For further information, contact Patricia Sarchet at 829-3869 or sarchet@buffalo.edu.
LiTgloss adds texts
LiTgloss, the unique online translation tool developed by the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, has added several new texts to its repertoire of literary works, all of which are annotated with semantic and syntactic explanations, grammar and vocabulary cues for ease of translation, and sometimes with recordings of the text.
The new works are Goethe's "Wilkommen und Abschied," Thomas Mann's "Toneo Kroeger," a Hungarian text about "King Mátyás" and Letter XXIX of Montesquieu's "Lettres persanes," in which an 18th-century Frenchman pretending to be Persian explains the function of church officials, religious wars, heretics, dispensations and executions.
Currently under construction are Flaubert's "Saint Julien l'hospitalier," which is full of castles, medieval armor and wild animals, and two Hindi texts.
Volunteers are needed to annotate texts in Hebrew, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese and other world languages.
The new texts and other selections may be found at http://wings.buffalo.edu/litgloss.
Civil liberties to be topic of lecture
Jean AbiNader, managing director and chief operating officer of the Arab American Institute in Washington, D.C., will discuss "Arab Americans: At the Edge of the National Security Debate" during the fifth installment of the "Global Perspectives: Seeing the World Differently" lecture series presented by the Council on International Studies and Programs and the Office of the Vice Provost for International Education.
The lecture, which is free of charge and open to the public, will be held at 7 p.m. April 3 in the Screening Room of the Center for the Arts, North Campus.
The "Global Perspectives" series was organized to address the need in the university community for access to a variety of perspectives on current international issues. The series also serves to highlight the increased importance of international education and exchange in the post-Sept. 11 world.
The lecture by AbiNader will focus on civil liberties in the post-9/11 era.
Since 9/11, Arab Americans have watched their dreams of being part of American society become subject to federal initiatives that create stress, fear and intimidation in the community, AbiNader says. No person, citizen, immigrant or visitor to the U.S. is immune from these new laws.
AbiNader will offer the Arab-American experience as a warning about the need to balance civil liberties with legitimate national-security concerns.
Leadership program scheduled
Some UB students will have the chance to see leadership in action on Wednesday when they take part in the 5th annual Leadership Experience and Achievement Program (L.E.A.P), sponsored by the Leadership Development Center.
Fifty-four students will be paired with 54 Western New York community/business leaders in a one-day program designed to expose the students to real-world leadership practices and provide them with a valuable perspective on personal leadership styles. The leaders will act as "mentors" and guide the students through a day of professional activities.
Among the mentors who will participate in the program are Douglas C. Bean, managing partner of Eric Mower and Associates; Aimee G. Brace, vice president of strategic redevelopment for the Catholic Health Systems; John P. Davanzo, president and CEO of Buffalo General Hospital; David Granville, executive director of the Buffalo Arts Commission; Tanya Perrin Johnson, CEO of YWCA of Western New York; Jodi Johnston, reporter for WGRZ-TV, Channel 2; Frank Polino, senior vice president and chief information officer for First Niagara Bank; James Pitts, president of the Buffalo Common Council, and Antoine Thompson, Masten District councilmember.
"Through this experience the student will learn leadership techniques in a 'real-world' situation," says Frank J. Ciccia, director of the Leadership Development Center. "The program also can benefit the Buffalo-Niagara region in that the contacts these students make could encourage them to stay in the area after they graduate."
The day will begin with students reporting to their mentor's office by 8:30 a.m. The program will conclude with a reception for students and mentors from 4:30-6 p.m. in Jacobs Executive Development Center, Delaware Avenue and North Street, Buffalo.
For more information about the program, contact Ciccia at 645-6469, ext. 118, or at ciccia@buffalo.edu.
Student bands to perform
"Spectacle of Sound," a fund-raising concert featuring the five UB student instrument ensembles, will be held at 8 p.m. April 11 in Slee Concert Hall, North Campus.
The concert will be presented by the Kappa Eta Chapter of Kappa Kappa Psi, the national honorary band fraternity.
Performing will be the UB Jazz Band/Combo, the Flute Ensemble, Percussion Ensemble, Concert Band and Pep Band. Each ensemble will preview selections from its individual concert repertoire that will be presented in the weeks following the spectacle.
Kappa Kappa Psi will host a reception in B1 Slee following the concert.
Tickets are $10 and may be purchased the night of the concert or reserved by calling 645-9189 or by visiting http://wings.buffalo.edu/students/greeks/kkp. All proceeds will benefit the ensembles.