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Brown Designated as Nobel Laureate Marilyn A. Brown, Professor, School of Public Policy, has been designated a Nobel Laureate. She was one of three GT faculty members who were a part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 jointly with Al Gore. As a member of IPCC Working Group III, Brown produced special reports on Aviation, Emission Scenarios, Technology Transfer, Ozone and Climate, CO2 Capture and Storage, as well as the Third and Fourth Assessment Reports. This work provided the foundation for the current recognition of IPCC as an authoritative voice on the climate system, and the impacts of climate change. |
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Andrew Young Keynote Speaker at 9th Model U.N. Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Andrew Young, spoke to nearly 700 high school students from around the Southeast attending the Ninth Annual Georgia Tech Model United Nations on October 8. "I'm glad to share some of the excitement I feel about the world in which we live," Young said. "There are horrors, but each of these turns a tragedy into a chance for opportunity."
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Leggon Named AAAS Fellow  Cheryl Leggon, Associate Professor, School of Public Policy, has been named a Fellow of The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for her research in advancing the knowledge of underrepresentation at the intersection of gender, ethnicity, and class, and in illuminating academic career pathways. She will be inducted on Saturday, February 16, at the Fellows Forum during the 2008 AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston. |
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Multiple Grants for INTA Faculty  Dan Breznitz, Assistant Professor, Sam Nunn School of International Affairs (INTA) and the School of Public Policy, has received a grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation for $114,304 to support research on the relationship between innovation and economic growth, and how to formulate policies that maximize the local economic gains of innovation. He also received a grant for $45,000 from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for a project entitled, "R&D and Public Policy in the Chinese IT industry: The Rise and Stagnation of the New Global Workshop." In order to better understand the rise of China as a high-tech industrial power and the policy implications of such a rise, this research will contribute to the understanding of what mechanism keeps and distributes the fruits of R&D within the local economy.
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LCC Faculty Interviewed on Blip.tv Celia Pearce, Assistant Professor, Literature, Communication, and Culture (LCC), discussed conscious vs. unconscious game design in a Blip.tv interview, October 14. "Since most games have a causal relationship between actions and advance, designers should be more conscious about the values conveyed through the game," she said.
Michael Nitsche, Assistant Professor, (LCC), also appeared in a Blip.tv interview as well on October 14, stating "games need layers of values as their underlying design to generate artificial intelligence behaviors." |
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Gender Split on Family Issues Call for More Family-Friendly Policies In an article in Science, November 9, (Vol 318. no. 5852, p.897), entitled, "Postdoc Survey Finds Gender Split on Family Issues", Dean Sue Rosser, while agreeing that family-friendly policies are a key issue for women in science, warns against underestimating how gender discrimination affects women, especially at higher rungs of the academic ladder. "It gets complicated pretty quickly," Rosser says, adding that many female faculty members face isolation and dismissive attitudes throughout their careers. The article surveyed how young biologists view their prospects; the results suggest that the main concern for women is not a hostile climate but insufficient time to juggle the needs of family and career. The study of 1,300 postdocs at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, includes a call for more family-friendly policies at U.S. research institutions. Rosser, a noted expert in the field of women in science and technology, will be presenting a talk entitled, "Mentoring through ADVANCE: Speed Mentoring and ADEPT" at the National Leadership Workshop on Mentoring Women in Biomedical Careers on November 27. |
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Paper Industry Primed for Change  Georgia Tech's Center for Paper Business and Industry Studies (CPBIS), directed by Patrick McCarthy, Chair and Professor, School of Economics, has been busy over the last seven years tapping the expertise of Georgia Tech faculty across campus in order to gain in-depth knowledge of the pulp and paper industry. From a local perspective, the manufacture of pulp and paper products is a significant industry in the state of Georgia, employing 48,000 people in 2003, which is 11% of the state’s manufacturing employment population. |
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IAC Prominent at 50th Anniversary of SHOT Georgia Tech and Ivan Allen College were featured prominently last month as the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) launched a year-long celebration of its fiftieth anniversary. Organized and chaired by Steven Usselman, Associate Professor, School of History, Technology, and Society (HTS), who is serving as SHOT’s president during 2007-2008, the session featured author Henry Petroski and Dr. Charles Vest, newly installed president of the National Academy of Engineering. The celebration kicked off with an evening plenary session, “Recasting Engineering,” held at the National Academy of Sciences. The anniversary events, held in Washington, DC from October 17-21, attracted over 600 attendees. |
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Bourne Poetry Reading Prompts Exceptional Turnout Celebrating the Sixth Annual Bourne Poetry Reading, October 18, Thomas Lux, the Margaret T. and Henry C. Bourne Jr. Chair in poetry, introduced two renowned poets, Tony Hoagland and Dean Young, who read to a packed house of nearly 300, including students and lovers of poetry from Atlanta and as far away as the Carolina’s and New York. Known for the humor in their work, the guest poets soon had the crowd laughing as they read from published works as well as new poems and works in progress, some only days old, or still handwritten. "Allowing others to witness the artifact so early in its evolution is something that most artists or writers would not dare do," Lux said, "but Hoagland and Young both happily allowed the crowd in on this process of review and revision." |
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Sam Nunn Fellows Visit Savannah and Warner Robbins On October 8-9, the fellows of the Sam Nunn Security Program traveled to Savannah and Warner Robins to meet with experts on port security and military logistics. The Port of Savannah includes the third largest port in the country for container operations, and, therefore, its security and continued operation is critically important to the nation. In Savannah, Fellows met at Georgia Tech's Savannah Campus with representatives from the Coast Guard, Customs, Georgia Ports Authority Police, Thunderbolt Marine, and the Maritime Logistics Innovation Center (MLIC), who hosted the group. The experts briefed Fellows on the ways in which technology and national security intersect at the port. Topics included the new transportation worker credentialing system, sensors and scanning technology, the threat of piracy, cyber attacks on port information systems, plans for disruptions of port operations, and the effect of the new Panama Canal construction on the port. |
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Bolter Honored at GVU Celebration and Symposium  The Graphics, Visualization & Usability Center (GVU) at Georgia Tech presented the Impact Award to Jay Bolter, Professor, School of Literature, Communication, and Culture, at the GVU 15th Anniversary Celebration and Symposium on October 25. Bolter was recognized for his significant contribution to graphics and visualization research, particularly in the area of augmented reality design. GVU aims to elevate the disciplines of graphics and visualization, by serving as a campus-wide resource to foster creativity and support related academic programs. |
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Faculty Profile - Olga Shemyakina Olga Shemyakina, a newly appointed Assistant Professor, School of Economics, received her BA in Accounting from the Kazakh State Academy of Management, her MA in Economics from Kazakhstan Institute of Management and the University of Massachusetts, and her PhD in Economics from the University of Southern California. Her current research is focused on the microeconomic impact of civil wars in developing countries and transitional economies. While the devastating effects of civil wars on populations have long been recognized, little is known about the nature and duration of the impact of such conflicts on household and individual behavior. Using data from Tajikistan, a former Soviet Union republic in Central Asia which experienced a devastating civil war from 1992 to 1998, Shemyakina focused her research on the impact of such conflict on school-aged children and on the ratio of men to women. She also examined the effect of conflict on the age at which Tajik women first marry as well as on local marriage practices and traditions, such as polygamy and bride-price.
Her interests in the understanding of the sources and consequences of armed conflicts have been advanced through her collaboration with scholars from the Households in Conflict Network. The Network brings together researchers interested in the micro-economic and econometric analysis of violent conflict and household behavior. As a result of her involvement, she has started collaborating with Dr. Patricia Justino, a researcher at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, U.K. and one of the Network founders. Their joint research project studies the role of private and public transfers received by households in the conflict torn zones. They aim to differentiate between households that use these transfers as a form of temporary risk insurance and those that employ transfers as a long-term income replacement vehicle. In the future, Shemyakina intends to focus her research on local entrepreneurship, particularly on the small businesses led by women entrepreneurs. At Georgia Tech, she is also participating in a Class of 1969 Teaching Fellows program intended to encourage Assistant Professors to explore various aspects of classroom teaching and learning. In her spare time, she enjoys cooking and learning about dishes from South India. In this process, she learns about food and it's rituals as a part of a culture. She also enjoys reading books on anthropology and ethnography. Her current favorite is “Guests of the Sheik: an ethnography of an Iraqi village” by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea. "I find it fascinating to learn from ethnographic, anthropological, personal accounts, and about all the differences between nations, ethnicities, geographies, and cultures of the world." |
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Student Profile - Stephanie Bolan Stephanie Bolan is an International Affairs/Modern Languages (IAML) major and recently appeared in the Student Profile section of the Division of Professional Practice Work Abroad Program website. "As a student double-majoring in International Affairs and Spanish, my internship this summer with the American Embassy in Costa Rica was the perfect opportunity to utilize what I've been learning in the classroom. I had the amazing opportunity to see foreign policy in action, meet international diplomats and ambassadors, attend formal diplomatic events as a representative of the United States, and get a first hand look at the United States' role in the International Arena.
"Since I'm highly interested in pursuing a career in diplomacy after I graduate this coming May, this internship allowed me to see for myself what a career would be like while establishing relationships and contacts within the Department of State and getting to live in beautiful Costa Rica all summer. It was an incredibly rewarding and an amazing experience, and I'm so glad I had the opportunity to do it." |
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Molly Cochran, Director of Undergraduate Programs and Associate Professor, Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, sees the conference as not only an opportunity for students to learn the finer points of diversity, but also as an introduction to a Georgia Tech of which most may not be aware. "Our involvement with high schools in hosting this conference lets young people know we here at Tech are very much interested in fostering international awareness and leadership in future generations,' Cochran said.
INTA and the College of Computing received a joint grant totaling $180,000 from Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). 
Professor Michael Salomone, Sam Nunn School of International Affairs (INTA), and Professor Richard Fujimoto, College of Computing (CoC), have received a grant continuation underwritten by an anonymous donor, for their project "Technology and War Gaming," which studies how the nature of computer simulation applies to strategic events in international relations. Through computer simulation, students replicate the plan and test the various explanations given for the plan's failure. Ultimately, their collaboration extends and generalizes the simulator to create a more powerful and flexible experimentation tool that is suitable for execution in distributed computing environments.