February 22, 2012 Dr. Caiyun Zhang (Geosciences) has been selected as the recipient of the Early Career Paper Award sponsored by the Remote Sensing Specialty Group (RSSG) of the Association of American Geographers with the paper “Zhang, C., and F. Qiu, Mapping Individual Tree Species in an Urban Forest Using Airborne LiDAR Data and Hyperspectral Imagery” . RSSG will announce the award officially at the AAG annual meeting in New York City, February 24-28, 2012. The paper will be published in the top ranking journal, Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing.

February 20, 2012 Kier Smith (Biological Sciences), a graduate student with Dr. Stephen Kajiura, is one of five graduate students at universities in Florida selected to be awarded $5,000 scholarships as winners of the Guy Harvey Scholarship Award, recognizing their outstanding achievement in marine science research. The scholarship, established in 2010 through a partnership between Florida Sea Grant and the Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation, recognizes students at Florida universities whose research focuses on novel strategies for improving sustainable management of large marine fish and sharks. For more information, visit http://bit.ly/zCNvg4.

February 17, 2012 Dr. Thomas Eisenbarth (Mathematical Sciences) was the speaker in the Frontiers in Science Public Lecture Series. Dr. Eisenbarth's talk was entitled "Cryptography in the Presence of Leakage" and demonstrated how cryptographic solutions protect digital systems; how the protection can sometimes be broken; and how novel methods may make future attacks impossible. For more information on the series see http://www.science.fau.edu/frontiers/brochure_2012.pdf

February 16, 2012 Rebecca Walters (Geosciences), a doctoral student in the PhD program in Geosciences successfully defended her doctoral dissertation today. Rebecca is the first graduate of this new PhD program implemented in Fall 2009. The title of her dissertation is “The Landscape of Prosperity and Poverty in Urban Qualified Census Tracts: Deconcentrating Poverty or Perpetuating Existing Conditions?” Her doctoral advisor was Dr. Russell Ivy and other Committee members included Dr’s Maria Fadiman, Yanmei Li, and Charles Roberts. Congratulations to all.

February 6, 2012 Dr. Maria Fadiman (Geosciences), who studies ethno-botany, gave an invited presentation at the recent TED x Berkeley about her work in the Amazon rain forest. Dr. Fadiman received rave reviews with one participant commenting that “…..I had to keep reminding myself that I was actually watching a PhD delivering a compelling story about rain forest preservation.”

February 2, 2012 Dr. Margaret Leinen, Executive Director, Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute at FAU presents the Frontiers in Science Public Lecture. Title: “Our Living Oceans.” For upcoming lectures in the series see http://www.science.fau.edu/frontiers/brochure_2012.pdf

January 26, 2012 Dr. Jeanette Wyneken (Biological Sciences) appeared in PBS’s Inside Nature's Giants that aired last evening. Dr. Wyneken provided background and explanation to the British and American presenters the Burmese Python (and other snake) anatomy and evolution. Several FAU students participated as volunteers on this show. See http://www.pbs.org/programs/inside-natures-giants/

January 20, 2012 Dr. W. Dalton Dietrich, Scientific Director of The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis and Kinetic Concepts Distinguished Chair in Neurosurgery at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine delivered the second Frontiers in Science Public Lecture entitled "New Discoveries Targeting Spinal Cord Injury." For upcoming lectures in the series see http://www.science.fau.edu/frontiers/brochure_2012.pdf

January 17, 2012 Dr. David Lewkowicz and graduate student Amy Hansen-Tift (Psychology) whose research published in the latest online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has received national and international attention in the news media. The research shows that as infants start babbling at around age 6 months in preparation for talking, they shift from focusing on adults’ eyes to paying special attention to speakers’ mouths. Babies who do not make the shift could be at risk for developmental disorders, such autism. SceinceNews Article; CNN Video; RTL.fr Article

As an early event in Alan Turing's centenary Year, the Mid-Atlantic Mathematical Logic Seminar (MAMLS), held a meeting dedicated to Turing (Jan. 13-15, 2012) at the Wyndham Hotel in Deerfield Beach, FL. Turing's contributions to the field of computational science has a profound impact on diverse areas of research: For ex. Computer science, Cryptology, artificial intelligence to developmental biology and several other areas. Dr. Bob Lubarsky, from Mathematics organized the conference supported by NSF. Over 60 participants, including many local undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty, as well as others from as far away as Italy and Japan participated.

January 9-11, 2012 Dr. Frederick Hoffman (Mathematics) chaired The Twelfth International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics was held at the Embassy Suites Hotel on SE 17th Street in Fort Lauderdale, January 9-11, 2012. The series of symposia began in 1990, and continues to the present time, under the sponsorship of the journal, Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence, and Florida Atlantic University. Dr. Martin Charles Golumbic of the University of Haifa is the General Chair of the Conference.
See http://www.cs.uic.edu/Isaim2012/ for details.

January 10, 2012 – The Charles E Schmidt College of Science Department of Mathematical Sciences receives a $12,000 check from the Wells Fargo Foundation to support the 2012 Encounters with FAU Math Program, a multi-part series of events, competitions, inter-active presentations , and activities for elementary, middle and high school students from tri-county area, which will culminate on March 31, 2012 when more than 250 high school students gather on the FAU Boca Raton Campus for the all-day event. Mr. Chris Major, Boca Raton District Manager for Wells Fargo presented the check to Dr. Tomas Schonbek, Dr. Lee Klingler and Ms. Emily Cimillo, the principle organizers of the Encounters with FAU Math Program.

January 6, 2012 Dr. David Fitzpatrick, CEO and Scientific Director of the Max Planck Florida Institute in Jupiter FL gave the season’s opening Frontiers in Science Public Lecture. The title of his talk was “Illuminating Brain Circuits.” For more lectures in the series see brochure.

January 9, 2012 Dr. Sukanya Chakrabarti (Physics), who has developed a way to discover and map dark matter in galaxies, took part in a press conference held this morning at the American Astronomical Society conference in Austin, Texas. Chakrabarti's paper presented at the conference, "A New Probe of the Distribution of Dark Matter in Galaxies," analyzes observed ripples in the outskirts of galaxies to infer the density profile of the dark matter halo. See press release.

December 23, 2011 Dr. J.A. Scott Kelso (Complex Systems and Brain Sciences) has been elected as a 2012 Fellow of The Society of Experimental Psychologists, the oldest and most prestigious honorary society in Psychology. The Society elects only a handful of new Fellows each year, and Fellows are elected for life. Dr. Kelso also recently delivered the keynote address entitled “How Humans Learn New Skills” at the International Conference of the European SKILLS Project in Montpellier, France, December 15 -16, 2011.

December 13, 2011: Dr.Chakrabarti's (Assistant Professor, Physics) recent paper in the Astrophysical Journal was chosen for the highlights in the prestigious Journal Science (Dec 9 ). See www.sciencemag.org/content/334/6061/twil.full.pdf.

December 12, 2011: Frontiers in Science Public Lecture Series speakers for the Spring Semester 2012 have been published on the College’s web site at www.science.fau.edu/frontiers/brochure_2012.pdf

December 9, 2011: Dr. Michael Posner, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Oregon and National Medal of Science recipient (2009) was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Human Letters by FAU for his outstanding contributions to the fields of psychology and cognitive science, and for his contribution to the success of the programs in Psychology and Complex Systems and Brain Science at FAU.

December 2, 2011: Dr. Dale Gawlik (Biological/Environmental Sciences) was interviewed on the Australian radio show ABC news radio (similar to NPR in the US) about his research on wading birds. Dr. Gawlik is on sabbatical at the University of New South Wales and working with one of Australia's top wetland ecologists, Dr. Richard Kingsford. Click here to listen to the interview.