Around Brown

President Simmons accepts the 2011 Making A Difference for Women Award from the National Council for Research on Women (NCRW) and speaks on the importance of research on gender to society. NBC's News' Natalie Morales introduces Pembroke Center Director Kay Warren, who introduces President Simmons. Find out more about the NCRW at http://www.ncrw.org/

A group of mid-level career professionals took part in the inaugural class of the IE/Brown Executive MBA Program. This included a Creativity + Innovation Workshop led by Professors Richard Fishman and Ian Gonsher. These students explored a simple, yet powerful concept: Innovation is the art of creating value. So.. what is the value of a piece of paper?

Noted scholar Ronald Ferguson delivered the 2011 Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture at Brown University on Feb. 8, 2011. His talk, titled “Pursuing Excellence with Racial Equity: A Social Movement for the 21st Century,” focused on the racial achievement gap, which has been the focus of much of his research and writing for the last two decades. The Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture was established at Brown University in 1996, with former New York Mayor David Dinkins as the inaugural speaker.

Noted scholar Ronald Ferguson delivered the 2011 Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture at Brown University on Feb. 8, 2011. His talk, titled “Pursuing Excellence with Racial Equity: A Social Movement for the 21st Century,” focused on the racial achievement gap, which has been the focus of much of his research and writing for the last two decades. The Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture was established at Brown University in 1996, with former New York Mayor David Dinkins as the inaugural speaker.

On its way past the comet, the Deep Impact spacecraft flew through a storm of fluffy ice particles spewed out by carbon dioxide jets coming from the rough ends of the comet and through water vapor flowing from its smooth, middle portion as well as from the icy particles. Data and images from the fly-by shed new light on the nature of comets. Schultz and graduate student Brendan Hermalyn discuss what they saw.

After nearly seven years on campus, preeminent Ghanaian playwright Ama Ata Aidoo concludes her time on the Brown University faculty this month. As a long-term visiting professor of Africana studies and literary arts, Aidoo has left an impression on students, colleagues, and friends.

David Mumford, professor emeritus of applied mathematics at Brown, was awarded the National Medal of Science, the nation’s highest scientific honor.

Pakistan's terrible floods began in the summer of 2010, but their devastating effects continue. Although media coverage has dwindled, the crisis persists as over a million people remain displaced, many without reliable access to food or drinking water.

Professor and poet Michael S. Harper visited Jim Egan's ENGL0450 class, "Inventing America," to discuss his poetry, life, and influences.

A scientific team led by Brown University has produced the first detailed description of what lies below the surface at the Moon's poles. The soil and subsurface harbors water and an assortment of other compounds, including carbon dioxide, ammonia, free sodium, and, in a surprise, silver. The finding stems from a NASA mission that slammed a rocket into the Moon's south pole last fall. The collision threw debris into sunlight more than a half mile above the surface. Results are published in Science.

Geoffrey Kirkman, Deputy Director of the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, discusses the Global Conversation. The Global Conversation is a collaborative effort by faculty, students, and staff at discussing global issues in new and innovative ways. The goal is to change the way discourse around global issues is conducted.

Teaching, learning, and research are changing with the use of new technologies. The video examines the use of new technologies, like the Microsoft Surface, in the study of a panorama by Garibaldi, as well as the changing face of libraries in the 21st century.

Anthony Bogues, the Harmon Family Professor of Africana Studies, delivered the Opening Convocation keynote address titled “‘Tell The Minister We Are Human Too!’ To be Human in Today’s World: Is it Possible?” to the undergraduate, graduate, and medical students beginning their studies at Brown. The ceremony took place at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2010, on the College Green. Full text is at http://today.brown.edu/articles/2010/09/bogues

A first-ever uniform, comprehensive catalog of large craters on the moon is providing new clues to the bombardment history that characterized the chaotic early days of the inner solar system. In a paper that appears on the cover of Science, a research team led by Brown University identified and mapped more than 5,000 large craters, established the oldest regions on the moon, and confirmed a theory about past solar system bombardment.

Every crossword in the New York Times this week, from Monday to Saturday, has been created by a member of the Puzzling Association of Brown University. Founded in 2008, the club for students has about 30 members, who meet weekly during the school year to solve and discuss puzzles.

A new policy report issued by two Brown University researchers presents evidence challenging what they say is the conventional view of immigrants in the United States.

Boxes, hand trucks, room keys, new people, orientation sessions: It was all prologue to September 1 and Opening Convocation — the first day of the 247th academic year.

A study by Mark Lurie of Brown University and an international team of researchers has developed the first statistical evidence linking mining to high rates of tuberculosis in sub-Saharan Africa. The exponential rise in TB in the region had been attributed to higher rates of HIV, but this paper finds a more direct link between work in the mines and incidence of TB.

Brown University has been awarded $15.5 million to create a national mathematics research institute. The Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics is the eighth math institute in the United States funded by the National Science Foundation and the only one of its kind in New England. The institute will bring in leading scholars from around the world to explore the frontier of mathematics and computation.

This summer, Brown offered its second annual International Advanced Research Institutes (BIARI) to promising young scholars from emerging markets and the global South. BIARI is co-sponsored by Banco Santander through its Santander Universities Global Division.

A team of archaeologists led by Brown's Stephen Houston has discovered a royal tomb in Guatemala, filled with materials that have been preserved for approximately 1,600 years. Credit: Mike Cohea, Brown University

Brown's Science Center is a state-of-the-art facility that supports teaching and learning in the sciences. The Center houses academic mentoring and support programs and serves as the campus clearinghouse for information about research and fellowship opportunities at Brown and around the world.

An overview of Brown University's Alpert Medical School: opinions of students and faculty members.

Moderated by BAM editor and publisher Norman Boucher, this first-annual BAM Commencement forum features four alumni prominent in newspapers and magazines discussing the future of their industry. Are we witnessing the end of print or the beginning of new kinds of digital publications? How will magazines and newspapers survive? The panelists are: Elizabeth Baker Keffer ’84, Vice President of The Atlantic and President of AtlanticLIVE Michael Zimbalist ’78, Vice President, Research & Development Operations at the New York Times Rob Fleder ’72, Special Contributor and former Executive Editor of Sports Illustrated. Editor of SI Books. Bob Safian ’85, Editor-in-Chief and Managing Director of Fast Company

Hailing from Seattle, Tatiana Gellein '10 delivers the first senior oration during Brown's 2010 Commencement. Beginning with the biblical parable of Jonah and the whale, Gellein speaks on achieving our dreams and those people in our life who make the journey possible.

Brown's Commencement/Reunion Weekend — what is it, exactly? It's 2,259 degrees and tens of thousands of special moments, all compressed into three days on 142 acres in Providence. Digital content producer Mike Cohea distilled the sights and sounds of the 242nd Commencement into these evocative five minutes and 23 seconds.

David Rohde ’90 is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times who made headlines in 2009 after he was kidnapped by the Taliban, then escaped. He delivered the baccalaureate address for the Class of 2010 at Brown University.

Tan Nguyen '10, the son of tofu makers in Vietnam, delivers the second senior oration during Brown's 2010 Commencement. Drawing on the metaphor of a tightrope, Nguyen tells seniors how far they have come since they entered college, and according to Nguyen, no matter what happens, you are still going — in the right direction.

Engineers Without Borders, a student group at Brown University, builds an hourglass to benefit OXFAM. Every three seconds a marble falls, representing one child's death due to hunger.

A Day on College Hill (ADOCH) is a two day event welcoming prospective Brown students admitted through the regular decision process to Brown's campus. ADOCH 2010 happened on April 15th and 16th and saw over 700 pre-frosh come to campus to exprience Brown. For Brown Daily Herald coverage of the event, see http://www.browndailyherald.com/over-700-visit-the-hill-for-a-taste-of-brown-1.2226390

Courtesy of the NSF. Since 2001, Sharon Swartz has teamed up with Brown University engineer Kenny Breuer to study the mechanics of bat flight. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the two scientists from very different disciplines set up a special facility, including a wind tunnel, to study bats in flight. "We take high-speed video of bats from multiple angles," Breuer explains, pointing to a computer screen which shows a bat flying in slow motion. "We also take high-speed video of the velocity field behind the bat using a technique called particle image velocimetry or PIV, and we synchronize these two things together to measure how the wings move and the kinds of patterns the wings generate in the wake behind the bat so we can understand how bats generate their lift forces, their thrust forces; what they do in order to maneuver and to fly." For more, see http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/science_nation/battyforbats.jsp

On March 25, the United Nations observed its International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade with an exhibit, video screenings, and remarks by diplomats and scholars. Among the latter was Brown’s Anthony Bogues, Harmon Family Professor of Africana Studies and an expert in Caribbean and African politics and culture. While the UN’s 1960 Universal Declaration of Human Rights established a self-governance plan for colonial countries and peoples, Bogues told the UN General Assembly it is important to remember that 156 years earlier, Haitians declared political independence from France and, in the resulting constitution, abolished slavery in Haiti forever. The international community should reframe its conception of Haiti as an “outcast nation of the West,” Bogues said. Rather, “we should embrace its historical contribution to human freedom as one central element in the making of the modern world.” With that new framework, how Haiti is rebuilt after its devastating earthquake of 2010 is “a critical question,” said Bogues.

Highlights from Tavis Smiley's talk at the 13th Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Lecture. Smiley, who hosts the Tavis Smiley show on PBS, talked about Martin Luther King, Jr.'s legacy, Barack Obama's presidency, and the state of politics in America. For more information, see the Brown Daily Herald's coverage at: http://www.browndailyherald.com/smiley-king-died-for-more-than-just-this-1.2140676

The Latin language (and Greek and a smattering of Sanskrit) is alive and well at Christmastime at Brown University. Photography and video by Scott Kingsley.

After spending the fall semester at Brown, nine African environmentalists are returning home armed with multidisciplinary tools to address their nations’ natural resource concerns. For more information, see http://today.brown.edu/articles/2009/12/wise-scholars

Rajmohan Gandhi, an author, leading public intellectual and grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, delivered a lecture on Sunday, Nov. 15, 2009, titled “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi.” For a review and analysis of the lecture, see the Brown Daily Herald's coverage at http://www.browndailyherald.com/gandhi-explains-a-confluence-of-ideas-1.2084448?pagereq=2

Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island has kicked it up a notch in the arena of high performance computing with the unveiling of a new almost-supercomputer at the Center for Computation and Visualization. Interviews, video, editing and production done by Scott Kingsley.

On Friday, November 13, a team of NASA scientists – including co-investigator Peter Schultz, professor of geological sciences – announced that they had found water ice on the south pole of the moon. The discovery stems from a mission called LCROSS, in which a NASA rocket was slammed into the moon last month and debris created by the impact was analyzed for water and other materials. Scientists said the impact kicked up at least 24 gallons of water. Today@Brown sat down with Schultz and other Brown faculty who have played major parts in recent lunar research missions.

Every Halloween at midnight, Mark Steinbach - the University Organist - dons a cape and plays Halloween-themed favorites in a crowded Sayles Hall.

With the publication of his latest book on October 16, Professor Emeritus of History Gordon Wood adds a thought-provoking volume to the Oxford History of the United States. Ted Widmer, director of the John Carter Brown library, talks to Wood about the early development of the new democratic society – and what surprised the Founding Fathers.

Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, delivered the annual Noah Krieger Memorial Lecture sponsored by Brown’s Taubman Center for Public Policy on September 24. A Rhodes Scholar and an alumnus of Stanford and Yale Law, Booker has been compared to Barack Obama as a “breakthrough leader”: “African-American politicians whose appeal transcends race,” said the New Yorker in a profile last year. In 2006, at the age of 37, he became mayor of the country’s third-oldest city and one of the worst-afflicted by poverty and crime. Newark’s political climate when Booker took office was described as among the most corrupt in urban America. Booker quickly initiated a controversial, and highly successful, crackdown on major crime as a first step toward achieving his dream for the city’s rehabilitation. He promised to make Newark “a national standard of excellence” for urban transformation. Speaking at the “First Draft of History” conference convened on October 1 and 2 at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., Brown President Ruth J. Simmons praised Booker as an exemplar of the broadly educated problem-solvers the United States increasingly needs. “As a university president, if I could produce one of him, that would be enough,” she said.

Footage from and interviews with participants from Shape Up Rhode Island's Midway Walk on March 28, 2009 in Lippit Memorial Park (Providence, RI).