A novel method developed at the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis at UT helps determine which patients will benefit from transplantation.

The topic of the underreported dangers of overdosing on acetaminophen has received ample attention following recent in-depth investigation by the radio program “This American Life” and public-interest journalism organization ProPublica.

There is a chemical antidote to acetaminophen poisoning, but it is effective only if administered within eight hours of an overdose. If liver damage is severe enough and the antidote is not administered early enough, the only lifesaving treatment is liver transplantation.

However, determining which patients need a transplant and which will recover is a major challenge in treating patients with acetaminophen overdose.

Chris Remien, a postdoctoral researcher at NIMBioS, and his research partners have developed a novel method to determine which patients will benefit from liver transplant in these instances. Rather than relying on purely statistical methods, Remien’s method is based on a dynamic model of acetaminophen metabolism and cellular damage.

In addition to making predictions on the need for a transplant, the model also defines a limit to how much acetaminophen someone can take over time before it causes liver damage.

“There is a simple threshold in the model because of how the liver processes acetaminophen, so that there is either very little liver damage or rapid damage, which may explain why patients who chronically overuse acetaminophen can eventually develop rapid liver damage,” Remien said.

The model has shown promise in a set of fifty-three patients from the University of Utah, but it still needs to be validated in a larger multicenter study before it can be used by physicians.

“We are currently collecting more data and collaborating with other groups in order to validate our method,” Remien said.

Collaborating on the project are Norman Sussman, associate professor of surgery at Baylor College of Medicine, and Fred Adler, professor of mathematics and biology at the University of Utah.

For more information about Remien’s model, view a video of his seminar talk at bit.ly/186aQbr.

The National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis brings together researchers from around the world to collaborate across disciplinary boundaries to investigate solutions to basic and applied problems in the life sciences.

To learn more, visit nimbios.org.

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CONTACT:

Catherine Crawley (865-974-9350, ccrawley@nimbios.org)

Whitney Heins (865-974-5460, wheins@utk.edu)

The effort was spearheaded by the Association of American Universities and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities.

“At UT, we are doing great research that impacts people’s lives—but we could be doing so much more,” Cheek said. “Additional funding for research is directly linked to problem solving and job creation.”

UT is faring better than many other major public research universities, having seen a decline of only 2.7 percent in new research awards in last year ($162.7 million) compared to the previous year ($167 million), but further reductions are expected as sequestration gradually impacts the discretionary budgets of the federal agencies that primarily fund the university.

Cheek serves on the board of directors for the APLU; as chair of the group’s Commission on Food, Environment, and Renewable Resources; and as a member of the APLU Presidential Advisory Committee on Energy.

In the letter to Obama and the Congress, the universities’ leaders write:

“The combination of eroding federal investments in research and higher education, additional cuts due to sequestration, and the enormous resources other nations are pouring into these areas is creating a new kind of deficit for the United States: an innovation deficit.

“Ignoring the innovation deficit will have serious consequences: a less prepared, less highly skilled U.S. workforce, fewer U.S.-based scientific and technological breakthroughs, fewer U.S.-based patents, and fewer U.S. start-ups, products, and jobs.”

Other countries have become more competitive because they have increased their research investments and increased the number of science and engineering graduates they produce.

The letter concludes with this plea: “We call upon you to reject unsound budget cuts and recommit to strong and sustained investments in research and education. Only then can we ensure that our nation’s promise of a better tomorrow endures.”

To read the whole letter, see innovationdeficit.org.

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C O N T A C T :

Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, ablakely@utk.edu)

Five students have received 2013 NSF Graduate Research Fellowships. The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees.

The recipients are:

• Lauren Breza, a doctoral candidate in ecology and evolutionary biology, from Tallahassee, Florida. She is exploring how sustainable land use practices influence carbon emissions within the ecosystem. Breza received her undergraduate degree in ecology and evolutionary biology from UT.

• Madelyn Crawford, a senior graduating this spring with a degree in honors biochemistry and cellular and molecular biology, from Knoxville. Crawford plans to examine the effect of microbes that live in mammals’ guts on the function of the hosts’ immune systems. She will be enrolled in the immunology and molecular pathogenesis PhD program at Emory University.

• Rachel Forvargue, a doctoral candidate in ecology and evolutionary biology, from Harrisonburg, Virginia. Her research will inform policies and strategies for natural resource management for the marine protected areas on the Great Barrier Reef system. She received her bachelor’s degree in chemistry at the College of William and Mary.

• Kelly Rooker, a doctoral candidate in mathematics, from Fredericksburg, Virginia. She is using mathematical models to discover when humans started coupling and uncover previously unseen evolution in early humans. She received her bachelor’s degree in biology and mathematics from Bridgewater College.

• Hannah Woo, a doctoral candidate in environmental engineering, from San Francisco, California. She is investigating how plant material broken down by ocean bacteria can be used to make cheaper biofuel. She received her bachelor’s degree in molecular environmental biology from the University of California, Berkeley.

Each will receive $30,000 over the next year along with a $10,500 cost-of-education allowance for tuition and fees and opportunities for international research and professional development.

Jeremy Blaschke, a graduate student in systematic biology; Brian Looney, a graduate student in ecology and evolutionary biology; Kathryn Massana, a graduate student in ecology and evolutionary biology; Emily Morin, a graduate student in mechanical, aerospace, and biomedical engineering; Quentin Read, a graduate student in ecology and evolutionary biology; Jordan Sawyer, a graduate student in mechanical, aerospace, and biomedical engineering; and Katlyn Stiles, a graduate student in anthropology, received honorable mentions.

The NSF’s fellowship program—the oldest graduate fellowship of its kind—aims to ensure the vitality of the human resource base of science and engineering in the United States. Past fellows include numerous Nobel Prize winners, U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, Google founder Sergey Brin, and Freakonomics co-author Steven Levitt.

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C O N T A C T:

Whitney Heins (865-974-5460, wheins@utk.edu)

Linda Kah and Jeffrey Moersch, associate professors in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, are an integral part of the NASA team working on the rover.

The Curiosity rover is looking for clues to whether the Martian surface has ever had an environment capable of evolving or potentially sustaining life. Critical evidence may include liquid or frozen water, organic compounds, or other chemical ingredients related to life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaUh7CO4Hdc

Kah, Moersch and the rest of the science team will soon begin selecting targets for the rover and helping choose which instruments will be used to examine Martian soils and sedimentary rocks.

“In particular, we will be examining sedimentary rocks that form Mount Sharp, which is a more than five-kilometer-high mountain within Gale Crater, the area the rover is exploring,” said Kah. “These rocks might serve as a time capsule of Mars’s transition from a warm, wet planet to a cold, dry one.”

Kah is part of a camera team that is searching for features within rocks that might provide clues to the role of fluids in the planet’s past. When combined with chemical measurements, these observations can help determine how life might have exploited surface environments.

“We like to pretend that the rover is like a field geologist with an analytical laboratory on her back,” said Kah. “Curiosity has a lot more capabilities than earlier rovers. The cameras and my scientific team act as the rover’s eyes and ears.”

Working from Pasadena, California, the team will guide the rover to collect soil material and powdered rock samples using its robotic arm to gather, filter and transfer them into the rover’s analytical system. Kah and other scientists will then use an instrument capable of detecting both organic molecules and the isotopic signatures often left in rocks by microbial metabolisms.

“Twice a day, data will be downlinked to specialists who will put it into a format that will be most accessible to the rest of the scientists,” said Kah. “Five teams will look at the data and use their expertise to decide the next targets and the most pertinent questions.”

Moersch is searching for hydrogen—another ingredient important for life—in the form of water, ice or hydrated minerals.

“Hydrogen is an interesting element because, geologically, it is only likely to be found in water and in hydrated minerals, such as gypsum or clays,” said Moersch. “Those types of minerals tell us about the history of the environment in that location and whether or not there was liquid water there, making it more hospitable for life.”

Moersch and the team will use the rover’s neutron detector—the same technology oil companies use to sniff out hydrocarbons in drill holes—to search for hydrogen-bearing materials and other geochemical anomalies in the Martian surface.

“If the neutron detector turns up something that is potentially interesting in a given location, we may choose to spend some additional time to investigate that location with the rover’s other instruments, including sampling the subsurface with a small drill,” said Moersch.

The process is painstakingly slow. The rover likely will cover only about 200 meters on a good day, and the mission will not conclude until at least 2014. Still, the scientists are certain their hard work will pay off.

“I expect that we will find evidence for the building blocks of life, although that is a far cry from actually finding evidence for life,” said Kah. “Personally, I am more excited by the opportunity to ask a whole set of higher-order questions about what the Martian surface was like and how it might have changed through time.”

The rocket launched from the Kennedy Space Center on November 26.

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C O N T A C T :

Whitney Heins (865-974-5460, wheins@utk.edu)

The Navy has identified the institute as a prime contractor for research and development support through SeaPort-e, the Navy’s electronic platform for acquiring support services in twenty-two areas including engineering, financial management, and program management.

UT’s National Defense Business Institute is one of 385 contractors selected to participate in the revolving contract, which will disperse as much as $5.3 billion over the next several years. The institute will be working with Navy operating commands and agencies and the United States Marine Corps.

“This is an important milestone in broadening NDBI’s capability to provide our research and analysis products and services to a larger defense department market,” said Dave Patterson, NDBI’s executive director. “We are grateful for the opportunity to provide a valuable service to the United States Navy and the nation.”

When asked what this means for the local Knoxville community, Patterson said, “Obviously, this increases our potential for hiring more analysts and staff, but equally important, this adds to the university’s value in supporting a crucial aspect of the US national security agenda.”

Established in 2008, NDBI is the first university-based institute focused on helping the Department of Defense, other government agencies, and the defense industry find innovative, practical solutions that improve the results of their acquisition and business management programs.

NDBI offers academic and research expertise through partnerships with the College of Business Administration and its Center for Executive Education, the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

To learn more about the National Defense Business Institute, visit http://www.ndbi.utk.edu.

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CONTACT:

Dave Patterson (865-974-1623, dpatterson@utk.edu)

Lola Alapo (865-974-3993, lola.alapo@tennessee.edu)

Deanna Sellnow and Brandi Frisby of the University of Kentucky will deliver the keynote address. They will speak on “Leaping Forward in Crisis Communication Research: Connecting with Audiences in a Rapidly Evolving Information Environment.”

The symposium will be held in the college auditorium (321 Communications), with the poster session located in the foyer outside the auditorium. All events during the symposium are free and open to the public.

“This year’s theme was selected because researchers continue to innovate and change as they develop approaches to studying communication and information,” said CCI Dean Mike Wirth. “The theme also reflects the fact that the symposium is being held on ‘leap day’ — Feb. 29.”

“Deanna Sellnow and Brandi Frisby are internationally recognized experts in risk and crisis communication,” Wirth said. “Given the increased number of crises which governments, corporations, and other organizations have to manage, the insights they provide should be of great interest to everyone who attends.”

The symposium begins at 8:00 a.m. with a continental breakfast in the CCI lobby, followed by research paper presentations in the auditorium on the topic of “Advertising Regulations and Research.”

The next paper presentation session begins at 9:30 a.m. on the topic of “Personal and Interpersonal Communication,” and the poster session begins at 10:30 a.m. in the lobby.

Another paper presentation session begins at 11:30 a.m. on the topic of “Issues in News Media.” Lunch begins at 12:30 p.m. in the Scripps Convergence Lab (402 Communications) and will feature the keynote address.

The afternoon paper session on the topic of “Social Media and Free Speech” begins at 2:15 p.m. in the CCI auditorium, and the closing comments and awards ceremony are set for 3:30 p.m. Awards will be given to the best paper by undergraduate students, the best paper by master’s students, the best collaborative paper by faculty and doctoral students, and the best poster.

For more information about the symposium program, call 865-974-6651 or visit utk.edu/go/bx.

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C O N T A C T :

Charles Primm (865-974-5180, charles.primm@tennessee.edu)

The ranking appears in the International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management and covers the 2008 to 2010 timeframe.

UT’s previous ranking for research productivity—published between 2005 and 2007—was fourth. Data has been collected since 1967.

The ranking, which evaluates research published in the area’s six leading journals, is formulated from a system that awards points to institutions based on the research productivity of its faculty. The researchers used a point system that awarded institutions one point for an article with one author, 0.5 points for an article with two authors, 0.33 points for articles with three authors, and so forth.

Of the twenty-seven premier institutions evaluated worldwide, only UT holds a top-ten ranking in five of the six journals.

“The ranking illustrates that the UT faculty and students are unsurpassed as the world’s most productive supply chain management and logistics researchers,” said Ted Stank, Bruce Chair of Excellence in UT’s Department of Marketing and Supply Chain Management. “Getting published in a premier journal is a difficult and demanding process. That makes this ranking even more prestigious to receive and an honor to be recognized.”

Schools from the United States, England, Scotland, Wales, Singapore, Australia, Taiwan, Denmark, Sweden, and Germany were represented on the list.

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C O N T A C T :

Cindy Raines (865-974-4359, craines1@utk.edu)

Starting in the 2012-2013 academic year, the center will offer four faculty research fellowships to UT faculty members and two dissertation-completion fellowships to UT graduate students.

Thomas J. Heffernan, the Kenneth Curry Professor in the Humanities and interim director of the center, said this is a step that was long overdue.

“All of our national peer universities have similar humanities centers,” he said. “As we work toward making UT a Top 25 university, we simply must offer greater support for research into the humanities.”

The need for greater funding for humanities research extends to the national level, Heffernan said. “The National Endowment for the Humanities has a $170 million budget, which must also be spent on maintaining museums and historical homes, in addition to funding humanities research projects. Meantime, the National Science Foundation has a $6.8 billion annual budget. So there’s a lot of ground to cover.”

The center will be a place of collaborative research, Heffernan said. Faculty and student fellows will receive funding for a year of extended research and writing time, as well as private offices and a collaborative work space. With additional funding, Heffernan said, the center will expand to six faculty fellows and will offer support for undergraduate research.

“We want to provide faculty and students with resources, a place, and time to pursue scholarly interests and bring projects to fruition,” Heffernan said.

The center received $700,000 in start-up funding from the College of Arts and Sciences, and additional support from the Office of the Provost and the Office of Research.

The goal, Heffernan said, is to raise $6.5 million in five years through a combination of grants earned by participating faculty and donations to the program and the college, and to become completely self-sustaining in seven years.

One of the requirements for faculty and students applying for a fellowship is to have a track record of seeking additional national funding.

“We ask the applicants to have applied for national funding because we want to help them develop a national profile,” Heffernan said. “Instead of looking inward toward their departmental colleagues, we want them looking outward to their peers across the US and around the world.”

During the year, fellows will hold a series of interdisciplinary seminars that will be open to the public.

The center will officially open in fall 2012 with a kickoff address by Kwame Anthony Appiah, an internationally renowned professor of philosophy at Princeton University. Appiah also will lecture to undergraduate students in the humanities.

For more information on the University of Tennessee Humanities Center, visit http://uthumanitiesctr.utk.edu.

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Contact:

Thomas J. Heffernan (865-974-6968, theff@utk.edu)

Charles Primm (865-974-5180, charles.primm@tennessee.edu)

Linda Kah and Jeffrey Moersch, associate professors of earth and planetary sciences, are an integral part of a NASA team working on the Curiosity rover, which launched from the Kennedy Space Center on November 26 and is now hurtling toward the Red Planet.

Linda Kah in the field in southern Utah.

Curiosity is not scheduled to land until August 6, 2012. When it does, it will search for clues to whether the planet has ever had an environment capable of sustaining life, such as liquid or frozen water, organic compounds, and other chemical ingredients related to life.

Kah, Moersch, and the rest of the science team will select targets for the rover to investigate each day and choose which instruments will examine modern Martian soils and inspect sedimentary rocks that might serve as a time capsule of Mars’ transition from a warm, wet planet to a cold, dry one.

“The Curiosity has a lot of cutting-edge technology for us to conduct our work,” said Kah. “It is like a field geologist with an analytical laboratory on her back.”

Kah is part of a camera team that will search for rocks with features that might indicate the presence of microbial life in the planet’s past. The rover will collect soil material and powdered rock samples using its robotic arm to gather, strain, and transfer them into the rover’s analytical system. Kah will then use an instrument capable of detecting both organic molecules and the isotopic signatures often left in rocks by microbial metabolisms.

Kah has studied the role of microbial life in the formation of some of Earth’s earliest rocks in such remote places as the West African Sahara desert and Arctic Canada.

“For years, I have used the same set of observations that Curiosity will be making to investigate ancient rocks,” said Kah, who has been a co-investigator on the mission for seven years. ‘”I will be looking for microscopic details visible in layers of rock, unusual assemblages of minerals, and the chemistry of both mineral and organic material to decipher clues to the presence of life, but this time I will be doing it on Mars.”

Moersch in front of a full scale model of Curiosity at a conference in France in October.

Moersch is searching for hydrogen—another ingredient important for life—in the form of water or clay and sulfate minerals. He and the team will use the rover’s neutron detector, the same technology oil companies use to sniff out hydrocarbons for drilling holes, to search for hydrogen-bearing materials and other geochemical anomalies in the Martian surface.

“If the neutron detector turns up something that is potentially interesting in a given location, we may choose to spend some additional time to investigate that location with the rover’s other instruments, including sampling the subsurface with a small drill,” said Moersch, who worked on five previous missions to Mars, including the Spirit and Opportunity rovers.

The process is painstakingly slow. The rover likely will cover only a few hundred meters on a good day, and the mission will not conclude until at least 2014. Still the scientists are certain their hard work will pay off.

“I expect that we will find evidence for the building blocks of life, although that is a far cry from actually finding evidence for life,” said Kah. “Personally, I am more excited by the opportunity to ask a whole set of higher-order questions about what the Martian surface was like and how it might have changed through time.”

Kah and Moersch are available for interviews.

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C O N T A C T :

Whitney Heins (865-974-5460, wheins@utk.edu)

H. Edward Seidel, physics and astronomy and computer science professor at Louisiana State University, and assistant director for mathematical and physical sciences at the National Science Foundation, will speak from 10:30 a.m. to noon on Wednesday, October 19, in the Toyota Auditorium in the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy.

Seidel has worked at LSU since 2003 and the NSF since 2008. From 2003 to 2008, Seidel was the founding director of the LSU Center for Computation and Technology, a university-wide interdisciplinary academic and research unit. He also served as the first chief scientist for the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative, a fiber optics network which connects the state’s six research universities and two medical centers. From 1995 to 1996, Seidel served as the professor and head of numerical relativity and eScience research groups at the Albert Einstein Institute in Potsdam, Germany. Before that, Seidel was an associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Illinois.

Seidel has a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physics from the College of William and Mary, a master’s degree in physics from the University of Pennsylvania, and a doctorate in relativistic astrophysics from Yale University.

Four other candidates for this position have already visited campus and held public forums. They include Timothy Killeen, Lyall Research Professor at the University of Colorado and assistant director for geosciences at the National Science Foundation; Michael Pazzani, vice president for research and graduate professional education at Rutgers University; David Norton, associate dean for research and graduate programs for the College of Engineering at the University of Florida; and Robert Scott, associate vice president for research at the University of Georgia.

For information on the candidates and to provide feedback, visit http://chancellor.utk.edu/interviews/research/.

The hour-long panel discussion begins at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, October 18, in the Carolyn P. Brown Memorial University Center Auditorium.

Life of the Mind is a common reading experience that gives first-year students their initial taste of academic life at UT Knoxville. This year, for the first time, Life of the Mind is part of FYS 100, a zero-credit, satisfactory/no-credit course required for all first-year students.

This year’s book is The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot, an award-winning science writer. It’s the story of an African American woman whose cervical cancer cells, taken during a biopsy and cultured without her knowledge or permission in the 1950s, have been integral in developing the polio vaccine, unlocking secrets of cancer and viruses, helping understand the effects of the atom bomb and contributing to the development of in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping. The cells are known as HeLa, a name derived from the initial letters of her first and last names.

Students were required to attend at least one of the four panel discussions to fulfill FYS 100 requirements.

During this panel discussion, first-year students will hear from several undergraduates currently active in research at UT, including some students who work with HeLa cells. The student-researchers will describe the work they are doing, how their ideas evolved into their, research and how they found their faculty research mentors.

The October 18 panel will be moderated by undergraduate faculty research mentor Mark Littmann, professor of journalism and electronic media and Hill Chair of Excellence in Science Writing. Also featured will be Sharon Pound, from the Office of Research, who will talk about how the office can help students find research opportunities.

Undergraduate researchers who will sit on the panel include:

• Madelyn Crawford, junior in biological science, who works in a microbiology lab, researching the structure-function of a protein. Crawford is a Haslam Scholar and is on the editorial review board for Pursuit: The Journal of Undergraduate Research.
• Melissa Lee, a Haslam Scholar sophomore in biological sciences, who is studying the circadian rhythm in Professor Rebecca Prosser’s research lab.
• Eric Martin, senior in engineering physics, who is studying a thermoelectric material using soft x-ray spectroscopy to explore how the material converts heat to electricity. Martin is the recipient of two physics department fellowships and a Chancellor’s Honors research grant.
• Marybeth Parker, senior in materials science and engineering, who is conducting research with a focus on Maus’s Salt, which exhibits magnetic frustration and defects that have interesting qualities. Parker is engaged with ORNL through its Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship.
• Mark Remec, a Haslam Scholar sophomore in mathematics and biochemistry, cellular and molecular biology, who is conducting biophysical research with Associate Professor Elias Fernandez.
• Ryan Rickels, senior in biological sciences, who is doing HeLa cell research.
• Mark Walker, senior in nuclear engineering, who is involved in research at ORNL, and has interned with the US Department of Energy in Washington, DC. Walker’s research involves nuclear safeguards, and he hopes to pursue policy development in nuclear security. He is a Haslam Scholar and a recipient of the Goldwater Foundation Scholarship.

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C O N T A C T :

Stephanie Dixon (865-974-2125, sdixon7@utk.edu)

Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, ablakely@utk.edu)

Pursuit is now accepting submissions for the Fall 2011 issue. The deadline for submissions is Tuesday, May 31, for priority consideration, and Thursday, June 30, for all other submissions. Submissions may be made through the Pursuit website at http://trace.tennessee.edu/pursuit/.

The journal is edited and reviewed by UT undergraduate students. Seniors graduating in May 2011 are eligible to submit articles. Copies of the Spring 2011 issue are available by request by calling 974-2187 or e-mailing spound@utk.edu.

Hamparsum Bozdogan, Toby & Brenda McKenzie Professor in business in the Department of Statistics, Operations, and Management Science, delivered one of the invited lectures at the prestigious International Conference of the Turkish Statistical Association April 29-30 in Antalya, Turkey. The title of his invited talk was “Robust and Misspecification Resistant Model Selection in Regression Models with Information Complexity and the Genetic Algorithm.” He was one of the six invited speakers from the U.S., Japan, and Portugal. The conference was attended by 400 participants. For more information on the conference, click here.

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Associate Professor of Psychology Todd Freeberg has received a Fulbright Scholar grant to teach and do research at Daugavpils University in Latvia for the spring semester 2012. The award states Freeberg will spend five months at the Institute of Systematic Biology at Daugavpils University. Freeberg plans to teach a course in animal communication and further develop research collaboration with a colleague there. Freeberg’s research focuses on understanding the evolution of vocal complexity in a variety of northern European ‘Paridae’ species, which are birds closely related to our local chickadees and titmice. An official announcement of Fulbright Scholar grants will be made in the fall.

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Jeffrey Kovac, professor in the Department of Chemistry and president of the UT Knoxville chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, has been appointed to the national Committee of Judges for the Phi Beta Kappa Book Awards in Science. One of a committee of five, Kovac will serve from 2011 until 2013. The committee judges book entries that advance a scholarly interpretation of the natural sciences and mathematics. The winner of the annual award receives a $10,000 prize.

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School of Art Associate Professor Amy Neff has been invited to present a public lecture at the Courtauld Institute of Art, the premier British center for studies in art history, at the University of London. Her lecture, “‘Visual Forms of Franciscan Pastoral Care: The Humble Man’s Wedding at Cana,” will take place on June 7. The Franciscan Order is often credited with introducing a new spirituality that encouraged a new humanism in late medieval art and culture. Her paper examines a specific case-study, in which the Franciscan contribution to the visual arts can be more rigorously evaluated. At the Courtauld, Neff also will meet with graduate students, speaking on her research-in-progress.

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Dan Roberts, professor of biochemistry and cellular and molecular biology, was honored in February with an award from the Tennessee Junior Science and Humanities Symposium acknowledging his efforts to foster pre-collegiate research and science education throughout Tennessee. The award was presented as part of the annual Tennessee Junior Science and Humanities Symposium (TJSHS) held at UT Knoxville earlier this semester. Hap McSween, interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, presented the award to Roberts and thanked him for his service as director of the TJSHS for four years (2007-2010) and for his service as chair of the scientific and educational component of the program in 2011, which involved chairing the panel of faculty who judged the students’ research papers and selected the award winners.

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Peter Tsai, research associate professor at UT’s Textiles and Nonwovens Development Center, has received the Fellow Member Award for 2011 by the American Filtration and Separations Society. The award honors individuals who have made superior contributions to the field. Tsai is an internationally recognized expert in filtration media. In 2006 he won UT’s Wheeley Award for excellence in technology transfer, and in 2009 he was recognized by the UT Research Foundation for the positive impact on society of the licensing of his technologies.

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Aleydis Van de Moortel, Lindsay Young Associate Professor of Classics, accepted an invitation from the University of Heidelberg to give a keynote lecture at the international conference, “‘Minoans’ and Others: Tracing Networks and Interaction in the Aegean,” in Heidelberg, Germany, in March. Van de Moortel spoke on the Middle Bronze Age boat she discovered at Mitrou, the important excavation in mainland Greece, which she directs under the join sponsorship of the University of Tennessee, and the Greek Archaeological Service.

Barbara Heath, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is conducting the study, which will identify and excavate the Wingos site on the historic Poplar Forest property in Bedford County and Indian Camp in Powhatan County.

Excavation has been completed at North Hill, a nearby site at the Poplar Forest National Historic Landmark, which is on the National Register for Historic Properties.

The study is intended to characterize and compare the households of the 18th-century slave community that existed at the three sites.

The NEH and the Virginia Department of Historic Resources have found that the study may have an adverse effect on the historic properties, and the university has proposed measures to mitigate or minimize the adverse effects.

The public may submit comments or questions to the NEH at gencounsel@neh.gov by Monday, April 18.

For the full text of the public disclosure, click here (pdf).

Attracting and retaining exceptional faculty and staff will help us get there. UT faculty earned 10 of the most highly prized awards in academia in 2010, including fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Academies.

To highlight the campus’s top priorities, Tennessee Today is featuring stories about faculty and staff whose work is already helping UT Knoxville reach the goal. Professor Shih-Lung Shaw is a researcher in the rapidly changing field of geographic information science, which analyzes geographic data and other information about human movement and transportation. This work helps to develop solutions for problems like traffic congestion and the spread of infectious diseases. Read more here.

Strengthening our capacity and productivity in research, scholarship and creative activity is key to getting us there.

To highlight UT Knoxville’s priorities in reaching this goal, Tennessee Today is featuring stories about faculty and staff whose work is helping to advance the campus along its journey. Governor’s chair professor Frank Loeffler is leading the field of bioremediation — the use of microbes and other organisms to decontaminate polluted water and other damaged aspects of the environment. Read more here.

From: Sally J. McMillan, Vice Provost for Academic Affairs

Subject: 129 Seminar Proposals for Fall 2011

First-year students and faculty members agree: FYS 129 seminars are a change from ordinary. Students enjoy small-group learning while transitioning to college. Professors enjoy engaging with students on topics of mutual interest while receiving $1,500 for research support.

These one-credit courses are offered on a satisfactory/no credit basis, with enrollment capped at 18 students. You may adapt your teaching specialty to this format or develop a freshman experience in an area of expertise that you rarely, if ever, teach. Focus on making it fun for both you and your students.

If you are looking for ideas, consider topics that are consistent with the Ready for the World initiative. Or think about building on themes from this year’s Life of the Mind book: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Topics include health, race relations, poverty, science, and more. Read a review here.

You might be concerned about interacting with students who are notoriously both highly intelligent and digitally distracted. Consider including practices such as inquiry-based problem solving, service learning, and peer-to-peer learning. Many successful seminars engage students in areas related to a faculty member’s research.

My office will actively recruit students for all FYS 129 sessions with the goal of filling all sections. We will consider offering some sections with less than 18 students if we can afford to do so. If you are willing to teach without the research support, we can consider offering smaller sections when there are no financial constraints.

To submit a 129 seminar proposal, or for more information on the seminars, please visit the Freshman Seminar website at http://www.utk.edu/freshmanseminar. The deadline for seminar submissions is April 8, 2011.

If you have any questions, please contact Michelle Gilbert at 974-0684 or send an email to froshsem@utk.edu.

Thank you in advance for submitting a proposal!

Called the UTK/ORNL Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education (CIRE), the new venture will train scientists to take on the world’s most challenging energy problems by working with teams of researchers to make scientific breakthroughs that could become thriving business enterprises. When it officially opens in August, it will offer one of the country’s first interdisciplinary doctoral degrees in energy science and engineering which will educate students in energy-related fields that are increasingly important to the state, country and world, said CIRE Director Lee Riedinger, also a

Last month, the Tennessee Higher Education Commission approved the academic program and energy science degree.

UT Knoxville Chancellor Jimmy Cheek said that CIRE will play a key role in transforming the energy industry in our country and the world, as well as the state and local economies.

“Our state, nation and world are at the precipice of an energy crisis, and our university should be a leader in supplying students who can help solve this crisis. By combining the educational resources of our comprehensive research university and the research capabilities of the major national laboratory, we are aligning these talented, young scientists with the necessary tools to provide cutting-edge research to solve this energy dilemma,” Cheek said.

CIRE leaders are now beginning interviews to select graduate students for the program, after months of recruiting at some of the most prestigious universities in the nation, yielding candidates from the University of Virginia, the University of Michigan, Northwestern University, the California Institute of Technology, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, The Ohio State University and Purdue University, among others. The curriculum was developed with input from leaders of energy-related industries such as Chevron, DuPont, Siemens and Exxon Mobil.

Co-located at UT Knoxville and ORNL, the center focuses on six areas of research that address 10 of the grand challenges the country faces in the energy arena: nuclear energy, bioenergy and biofuels, renewable energy, energy conversion and storage, distributed energy and grid management, and environmental and climate sciences related to energy.

For instance, energy science and engineering graduates will be a source of talent in Tennessee in the continuing development of Nissan’s all-electric Leaf, the new Volunteer State Solar Initiative, as well as attracting pre-eminent new energy industries to the state. The regional and national scene is similarly in need of solutions to extreme energy-related problems which bring with them opportunities for economic development in the form of new businesses, new jobs and new careers.

“The program will prepare students to meet the needs of energy-related industries in the country and in the state,” said Riedinger. “There is overlap in CIRE’s coursework and the emphases of these expanding industries in Tennessee, so we will be producing Ph.D.s to work in research and development and in management in these industries.”

The CIRE program also will translate intellectual capital into financial capital by partnering with UT Knoxville’s College of Business Administration in developing and implementing business plans for students who want to take their ideas to market by partnering them with scientists with entrepreneurial experience.

CIRE is part of the Tennessee lawmakers’ landmark Complete College Tennessee Act passed a year ago to reform state higher education. CIRE’s role in reform is to enhance research for state economic development. Each graduate student brings with him or her research dollars and potential job opportunities aiding the local and state economies. The center will also be instrumental in helping UT Knoxville in its mission to become a Top 25 public research institution by increasing its number of doctoral students.

To read more detail about the program areas of focus and the center’s faculty, click here.

View of the Iron Age I Building A from Tell 'Ein Zippori.

KNOXVILLE — A University of Tennessee, Knoxville, archaeologist who excavates ancient villages in the Near East has received a grant to reshape the modern understanding of the region’s political, economic and social structure by studying its smallest rural settlements.

J.P. Dessel, a UT Knoxville historian who specializes in Bronze and Iron Age villages of ancient Israel, has received a $50,000 award from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) that will allow him to integrate his own research with other studies to show how rural villages affected the social landscape of ancient Israel, otherwise dominated by major cities like Jerusalem and Megiddo.

“I hope to rebuild our understanding of the biblical region from the village up,” Dessel said. “Most of what we know about the ancient Near East in the Bronze and Iron ages is the result of studying major urban areas, cities that represent the social and economic elites of the time.

“By looking at small settlements, I expect to show that rural villages were just as vibrant and dynamic as some of the city-states in their midst.”

Dessel’s research award marks the 10th in a string of NEH grants to UT faculty since 2004, putting UT Knoxville among the top seven institutions nationwide in the number of NEH grants during that period. Nationally only 7 percent of applicants received an NEH fellowship in 2010.

Dessel’s own excavations have focused on two tiny village sites near Nazareth — Tell el-Wawiat and Tell ‘Ein Zippori — that were occupied between 1550 and 1000 B.C.E., but his yearlong study will include a review of other archaeological data from village sites. His focus on a rural heartland will offer a contrast to urban-focused archaeology that emphasizes ancient texts and elite culture.

“This project will show that these villages were diverse and culturally complex entities rather than simple sites focused on agricultural production,” he said. “We’ll be able to understand the culture of the region against a backdrop of an extensive rural settlement that spanned both the late Bronze Age and the early Iron Age.”

Dessel, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona, joined the UT Knoxville faculty in 1999 as an assistant professor of Jewish and ancient Near Eastern history. In 2005 he was named Steinfeld Associate Professor of ancient Near Eastern archaeology and history. He serves jointly in the history department and the Steinfeld Program in Judaic Studies.

The success of UT Knoxville faculty in winning NEH research fellowships is part of an ongoing initiative to make the university one of the top 25 public institutions in the nation in both scientific research and humanities scholarship. Only Notre Dame, Michigan, Ohio State, Princeton, Harvard and Texas have won more NEH fellowships in the past seven years. The University of California, Irvine, and Washington University share the seventh ranking with UT Knoxville.

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C O N T A C T:

J.P. Dessel (865-974-9872, jdessel@utk.edu)

Bill Dockery (865-974-2187, dockeryb@utk.edu)