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Gill named MAC Coach of the Year
GILL
Head football coach Turner Gill has been named the Mid-American Conference Coach of the Year. Gill led the Bulls to five wins in 2007—the most in its Division I-A history. UB finished with a 5-3 conference record, including a 4-2 mark in the MAC East Division to claim a share of the regular season title. Prior to the 2007 campaign, UB had won eight MAC games total in the previous eight years.
Campaign reminder
UB's Campaign for the Community stands at 75 percent of its goal, with $689,752 raised from 2,775 donors as of Wednesday.
The 2,249 members of the university community who have not responded by returning their campaign form are reminded to please do so as soon as possible.
Campus Dining cash locations are offering members of the university community another opportunity to donate to the campaign, which has the theme “One University, One Community, One World," through a “Round Up for SEFA” option in which customers can donate their change on purchases up to the next dollar level.
Ontology for the intelligence community
Ontologies for use in intelligence analysis is the topic of the second international conference organized by UB’s National Center for Ontological Research (NCOR), currently under way in Columbia, Md.
The conference, entitled “Ontology for the Intelligence Community: Toward Effective Exploitation and Integration of Intelligence Resources,” has brought together intelligence analysts and scholars from universities, research centers, government agencies and industries from throughout the U.S., Canada, England, Germany and Japan.
Barry Smith, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Julian Park Professor of Philosophy at UB who directs NCOR-Buffalo, notes that the increasing volume, variety and velocity of intelligence analysis in the post-9/11 era has produced new approaches to data and information. Tools and theories are being created that can help intelligence analysts respond more effectively to fast-evolving threats—to identify religious, family and tribal networks, and to track people, weapons, money and drugs as they take on different forms in moving from one place to the next, Smith said.
But computers are faced with the challenge of dealing with ever-increasing quantities of data, as well as information of ever-more complex and varied sorts, he said. Ontologies are one response to this challenge, he added, providing semantically powerful consensus vocabularies and classifications so that heterogeneous data can be integrated and searched in useful ways.
In addition to specialist sessions and a panel on the OWL ontology language of the Semantic Web, the conference will feature four plenary talks, one of which will be delivered by Werner Ceusters, professor of psychiatry and director of the Ontology Research Group in UB's New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences. Ceusters’ talk will describe the referent tracking software currently being developed by the Ontology Research Group.
Other plenary speakers are Steven Robertshaw of the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, who will discuss why both philosophical and computational approaches to ontologies are needed by the intelligence community; Todd Hughes of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), who will address data integration systems with in-built learning capabilities; and David C. Roberts, chief data architect for the Central Intelligence Agency, who will speak about intelligence and the Semantic Imperative.
Click here for more information about NCOR-Buffalo and the conference.
Gift to support doctoral students
Emeritus Professor Robert F. Berner, who had a 36-year career at UB, will support the work of doctoral candidates in the School of Management through an endowed gift. He also is supporting the Graduate School of Education in honor of his late wife, Ruth L. Berner, who did graduate work there, and Millard Fillmore College, where he served as dean for more than 20 years.
“I enjoyed my teaching career at UB, and it gives me great pleasure to be able to provide this gift to the School of Management in support of doctoral students who are engaged in important research and preparing dissertations,” said Berner.
Thanking Berner for his gift, John M. Thomas, dean of the School of Management, added: “We are extremely grateful to Bob for his generosity and longtime commitment to the school. When someone who knows the university as well as he does makes a gift of this nature, it’s a wonderful endorsement of our programs. His gift will be most helpful in supporting the research mission of the school.”
Berner earned bachelor’s and MBA degrees from UB in 1939 and 1948, respectively. He received a doctorate from the University of Chicago.
B.J. Thomas to perform in CFA
The Center for the Arts will present “B.J. Thomas—Holiday Benefit Concert” at 8 p.m. Dec. 8 in the Mainstage theater in the CFA, North Campus.
Proceeds will benefit the Ronald McDonald House of Buffalo, which provides comfortable, affordable lodging for families when their children require specialized medical care at a Buffalo hospital.
With more than 70 million records sold, Thomas is the only artist to successfully move to the top of three music genres—popular, country and gospel—with 15 Top 40 pop hits, 10 Top 40 country hits, five Grammys, two Dove awards and 15 gold and platinum records.
Among his pop hits are "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," “The Eyes of a New York Woman," "Hooked on a Feeling," "It's Only Love” and "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head,” which was written for the motion picture “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
In 1976, he released the first of several gospel albums, "Home Where I Belong," which went platinum, making him the biggest contemporary Christian artist of the period.
Moving to country music, B.J. hit the Top 40 10 times with hits like "What Ever Happened To Old Fashioned Love," "New Looks From an Old Lover," and "The Whole World's in Love When You're Lonely." His country success led him to become the 60th member of the Grand Ole Opry on his 40th birthday.
Tickets for “B.J. Thomas—Holiday Benefit Concert” are $39 and $31, and are available at the CFA box office from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and at all Ticketmaster locations, including Ticketmaster.com.
For more information call 645-ARTS.