Ascent Magazine by College of Arts and Sciences at Ohio State

2015-2016

ASCENT

NEWS FROM THE COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

Built in 1893 on the north side of the Oval, Hayes Hall is one of the oldest buildings on campus and currently home to the Department of Design.

ASCENT

6 THE COSMIC ROADMAP HAS OHIO STATE’S FOOTPRINTS ALL OVER IT

DANCING WITH THE STARS THE SPORTS AND SOCIETY INITIATIVE

BIOPRESENCE: DISCOVERING ANIMAL LIFE ON CAMPUS

13 ON THE RISE: JUNIOR FACULTY RECEIVE

21 WE HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE THE UNDERGROUND ASTRONAUT

24 MODELING THE ZIKA EPIDEMIC

NSF CAREER AWARDS

14 MOLTO BENE: ITALIAN SCREEN STUDIES COURSE

AN INTERVIEW WITH E! NEWS CORRSPONDENT ZURI HALL

AVAILABLE ON ITUNES U COMING SOON! MOVING IMAGE PRODUCTION

15 ANN HAMILTON HONORED WITH NATIONAL MEDAL OF ARTS

NEW COURSE OFFERS MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES ON CLIMATE CHANGE

GEOFFREY PARKER ELECTED CORRESPONDING FELLOW OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH

16 ALL SEVEN CONTINENTS 18 EXCEPTIONAL STUDENTS;

EXCEPTIONAL HONORS

20 FINDING A VOICE IN FILM 2

26 27 $5M GIFT SUPPORTS SCHOLARSHIPS, TEACHING 28 PAYING IT FORWARD 29 CLASS ACT GET READY TO READ!

READ ONLINE: go.osu.edu/ascent WELCOME to the College of Arts and Sciences at The Ohio State University.

GET READY TO READ!

31 OHIO STATE STUDENTS WANT TO KNOW: IS THERE EVIDENCE FOR GOD?

32 BEYOND THE CLASSROOM WALLS 33 FIRST ONLINE DEGREE PROGRAM IN ASC LAUNCHES VAN TAYLOR MONROE: ART FOR KICKS

The act or process of ascending; advancement

For us, ASCENT reflects the amazing potential and value of an arts and sciences education at Ohio State. The Buckeye experience is powerful, transformative and stays with us throughout our lives, reaching far beyond geographic borders.

We want to share these stories with you and we hope that youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll share your stories, ideas and feedback with us. CIRCULATION ASCENT is mailed once/year to alumni (circulation 132,000). We also send supplemental updates to our alumni, students, faculty, staff, donors and friends throughout the year via e-newsletter. GO GREEN ASCENT is printed with environmentally friendly papers (30% post industrial and 100% post-consumer fibers) using soy-based ink. To receive just the e-newsletter email asccomm@osu.edu. CONTACT US/UNSUBSCRIBE Please send us your feedback, comments and story ideas. To unsubscribe, send an email to asccomm@osu.edu or a note by mail to: 1010 Derby Hall, 154 N. Oval Mall, Columbus, Ohio 43210

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES 186 University Hall | 230 N. Oval Mall | Columbus, Ohio 43210 | asc.osu.edu

In EACH Issue MESSAGE FROM THE DEAN 4 INSIGHT 5 SCIENCE & SCHOLARSHIP 33 Read online at go.osu.edu/ascent.

David Manderscheid | Executive Dean and Vice Provost Susan Williams | Vice Dean Janet Box-Steffensmeier | Divisional Dean, Social and Behavioral Sciences Christopher Hadad | Divisional Dean, Natural and Mathematical Sciences Peter Hahn | Divisional Dean, Arts and Humanities

A MESSAGE FROM DEAN MANDERSCHEID Where can an arts and sciences education take you? To a meaningful career? Without question. It is simply untrue that a great job and a liberal arts degree are incompatible. In fact, a study by the Association of American Colleges and Universities found that liberal arts majors are far more successful — and earn more — than their counterparts with other undergraduate majors. To address some negative perceptions about liberal arts education, I recently wrote a letter to the editor of The Columbus Dispatch. Here’s an excerpt: In the arts and sciences, we stimulate the potential of our students to dream, innovate and invent what does not yet exist — new ideas, jobs and technologies. Our majors acquire the critical, creative and analytical skills enabling them to adjust and contribute to everchanging work environments throughout their lives. ASC faculty, students and alumni are going all kinds of places, crossing disciplines, breaking boundaries, forging collaborations, solving problems and advancing knowledge in all corners of the globe. So, where can an arts and sciences education take you? Anywhere you want to go. A few destinations highlighted in this issue of ASCENT: • The Oval and beyond — BioPresence collaborators heighten awareness of the lives sharing our campus spaces • Underground — an alumna helps recover a new species of a human relative from South Africa’s Rising Star Cave • The universe — researchers begin work on NASA’s WFIRST telescope, promising our deepest look yet • Antarctica — an undergraduate embarks on an unforgettable research journey • London — TBDBITL takes its game to Regent Street and Wembley Stadium Please send us your stories and speak out for the arts and sciences. Our alumni remain our best friends, most powerful advocates and ultimate legacy.

DAVID MANDERSCHEID, PhD Executive Dean and Vice Provost College of Arts and Sciences, The Ohio State University

To support the College of Arts and Sciences, visit go.osu.edu/give-asc {Fund #310982}

INSIGHT: EXPLORE THE INSIGHT ARCHIVE AT GO.OSU.EDU/ASC-INSIGHT

We all need it. Today’s world moves fast. It’s hard to keep up, much less make sense of everything flashing by. But then we realized that right here in the College of Arts and Sciences, we have a wealth of experts — faculty, students, alumni. Why not tap into their expertise and experience to help us put some of the noise surrounding us in context? Last October, we launched our first Insight online — you should have received it in your inbox. Let us know what topics you’d like to hear about; we like to keep them topical and timely.

February 2016 THE VALUE OF AN ARTS AND SCIENCES EDUCATION Believing in the increasing importance of advocating for the value of an arts and sciences education, we thought about how our students measure up. It turns out, very well. Deploying facts, figures and real-life stories, we dispelled the myth that a great job and a degree in the liberal arts are incompatible. A comprehensive education gives our students context to interpret and master a changing world. Our students learn how to ask questions and find answers. If you can do that, you can do anything. Our arts and sciences community offered their insights on the value our graduates bring to the workforce, the community, the world, the future.

December 2015 ISIS, SYRIA AND THE MIDDLE EAST

November 2015 MARS IS CALLING Last month, The Martian and NASA’s flowing-water find fueled our Red Planet fascination and Mars fever ramped up. This month, NASA has new insight on its atmosphere. With the help of our faculty experts, we take you into the heart of Mars Madness and ask probing questions, such as, “What would it be like to play football on Mars?” and “Are human colonies on Mars a reality?”

In the wake of the Paris attacks and the recent rampage in San Bernardino, people are asking, “Who or what is ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria)? Where did it come from?” ISIS did not exist on 9/11; now it controls vast swaths of Syria and Iraq and has demonstrated — gruesomely so — that it has the discipline, training, reach and logistical capability to wreak havoc. Arts and sciences experts weigh in ...

October 2015 FROM THE BIG SCREEN TO BROADWAY What do Goosebumps, Peanuts and a Broadway musical all have in common? From the silver screen to TV to the bright lights of Broadway, arts and sciences alumni are entertaining audiences in theaters, in movie houses and in their own comfy living rooms.

Read online at go.osu.edu/ascent.

ASC FACULTY APOINTED BY NASA TO HELP LEAD W

THE COSMIC ROADMAP

HAS OHIO STATE’S FOOTPRINTS ALL OVER IT NASA’s WFIRST Planetary Microlensing and Wide-Field Cosmology Teams’ members (L to R) Scott Gaudi, David Weinberg and Chris Hirata. Photo courtesy of Shellee Fischer Photography.

Read online at go.osu.edu/ascent.

In February, NASA announced it would launch a powerful space telescope in the mid-2020s to map our galaxy and distant universe further and faster than ever before. The new Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) presents an incredible opportunity to understand fundamental questions about the past, present and future of the universe — and our place in it.

They will design the high-latitude survey, expected to cover an area about 10,000 times larger than the full moon.

OHIO STATE’S WFIRST INVESTIGATORS

“On the scale of the universe, gravity is pushing, not pulling. That’s an extremely surprising discovery, like tossing an apple in the air and having it accelerate upwards and disappear from sight. WFIRST is our best route to understand this behavior.” {David Weinberg}

Ohio State researchers SCOTT GAUDI, CHRIS HIRATA and DAVID WEINBERG played major roles in developing WFIRST’s current design. In December, NASA appointed all three to WFIRST’s two science investigation teams. For the next five years they will help lead efforts to develop the mission and make preparations for analysis of the extraordinary cosmic maps it will send back to Earth. Their presence on these critical teams gives Ohio State the largest scientific footprint in WFIRST of any university in the country.

REVEALING THE UNIVERSE’S SECRETS: MAPPING EXPANSION AND DARK MATTER David Weinberg, professor of astronomy and physics, and astronomy department chair; and Chris Hirata, professor of astronomy and physics, are co-investigators on the Wide-Field Cosmology Team designing WFIRST’s largest program, an enormous map of hundreds of millions of galaxies that will enable measurement of the universe’s growth and the clustering of dark matter.

Their hope is that WFIRST’s measurements will give them a better understanding of why the expansion of the universe is speeding up rather than slowing down.

“The cause of this acceleration could be a form of exotic ‘dark energy’ that pervades otherwise empty space. Or, maybe Einstein’s theory of gravity just doesn’t work when we get to distances of billions of light years. “The galaxies and supermassive black holes WFIRST will discover are 13-14 billion light years away. Their light has been traveling for continued on pg. 8

WFIRST’s 2.4-meter telescope will uncover millions of galaxies — going further and faster into the universe. Additionally, its coronagraph will directly image giant ice and gas exoplanets. Image and info courtesy of NASA.

WFIRST continued from pg. 7

almost the entire history of the universe to get to us. By the time humans came on the scene, the universe was already middle-aged, so this is our way to look back at cosmic youth.” Hirata, leading his team’s design assessment, said, “Everything has to be perfect: The simulations. The test data. The temperature to run the telescope. We’re putting a 5-6 ton satellite on top of 700 tons of fuel and accelerating to 35 times the speed of sound.

“The whole optical system — including five mirrors and their alignment — has a tolerance of 90 nanometers and has to work for six years. One of our tasks is to make sure that these numbers are right so that NASA and industry will build the right mission.” {Chris Hirata} “But, it’s an awe-inspiring mission — and it will be in exactly the right position to help us learn about our place in the universe, the critical questions of, ‘What is most of the universe made of?’ ‘What will the universe look like in the future?’ “The cosmological constant hypothesis states that even an empty vacuum (without any matter present) has some gravity, and the amount of that gravity is a new fundamental constant of nature. “If that is correct, we live in a remarkable time. We still can see all the other galaxies, but they will fade away exponentially and in several tens of billions of years they will be practically invisible.”

ARE WE ALONE? THE PLANETARY MICROLENSING TEAM AIMS TO FIND OUT Astronomy professor and Ohio State’s Thomas Jefferson Professor for Space Exploration and Discovery Scott Gaudi is principal investigator of WFIRST’s Planetary Microlensing Team. It is expected to discover thousands of planetary systems around distant stars, using gravitational microlensing, a search technique pioneered at Ohio State by Gaudi’s mentor Andrew Gould, astronomy professor emeritus. “Everyone wants a sense of purpose — to know why we’re here and where the universe came from,” Gaudi said. “It provides context to our existence. WFIRST is another big step toward answering these questions, driving imagination and hope. “Microlensing is currently the most sensitive method for finding planets in orbits from their parent stars further than that of the Earth

but it relies on extremely rare alignments, so after many years of ground-based searches, we’ve detected only a few dozen planets.” Even so, Gaudi has been an extraordinarily skilled extrasolar planet hunter, involved in discovering nearly two dozen. With its wide field of view, its sensitivity to infrared light and the crystal-clear imaging possible only from space, WFIRST should detect thousands of microlensing planets, from gas giants like Jupiter to rocky planets like Earth and Mars. Gaudi believes leading a space-based gravitational microlensing team is both honor and obligation. “It’s hard work and lots of travel,” Gaudi said, “but how do you say no to an amazing leap toward discovering answers to so many questions? How many get such a chance?” Gaudi is putting several different skill sets to use “to ensure we fulfill our promise to make this happen within the timeframe we set up. “This requires more than the technical skills to develop hardware, software and an observational plan with zero margin for error,” Gaudi said. “You have to pull people together, negotiate, communicate and build partnerships.” In the next decades, WFIRST will certainly push the frontier for astrological and cosmological discovery, but it had immediate impact in Gaudi’s classroom.

“When I watched NASA’s announcement with my undergraduate class, they were so enthusiastic, I just threw away the day’s lessons. It was the perfect teachable moment, a fantastic tool for engaging students.” {Scott Gaudi} NASA FUNDS NEXT-GENERATION EXPLORERS Most of the researchers’ approximately $2 million in NASA grants will pay their postdoctoral researchers to work on mission design and methods to analyze WFIRST data. All agree it is funding well spent. Four new postdocs join Hirata this fall to work on WFIRST, as well as other projects. “I’m very excited about the people we were able to attract — and they are thrilled to be coming here,” he said. “It’s great to be able to help make WFIRST happen, it’s even better having the opportunity to train the young scientists who will lead the charge when WFIRST is up there a decade from now,” said Weinberg.

DANCING WITH THE STARS PAUL SUTTER is everywhere, seemingly, at once. The engaging astrophysicist makes us understand that we ARE made from stars, answers our pressing cosmological questions (such as, “What would happen if I fell into a black hole?”) and makes us want more through his phenomenal public outreach — from his “Space in Your Face” YouTube channel to his “Ask a Spaceman” podcast to, now, dance. Yes, dance. Always looking for novel connections, Sutter’s collaboration with Seven Dance Company, Song of the Stars: A Dance Experience of Cosmic Proportions, the story of a star in a one-hour modern dance performance, debuted at the Capital Theater on April 21. Sutter, a former Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics (CCAPP) postdoctoral researcher, now proves he can be in two places at once. Named CCAPP cosmological research and community outreach coordinator, and the Center of Science and Industry’s (COSI) chief scientist, he splits his time between the two. In both worlds, Sutter will continue to connect us to research — Sutter is a world-leading expert on cosmic voids, the vast empty spaces between galaxies — and keep us focused on the stars. Photo courtesy of Jo McCulty

With the increasing importance of sports in every aspect of American life, sports-related issues facing our society have become complex and poorly understood by many in the general public. A new program, the Sports and Society Initiative at Ohio State, is devoted to the development of a better understanding of the role of amateur and professional sports in the economy and society at large. The brainchild of two Ohio State economics professors, LUCIA DUNN and TREVON LOGAN, the aim of the Sports and Society Initiative is to bring together world-class scholars and research scientists from multiple disciplines across the university with policy makers, leaders, educators and community partners to examine issues related to amateur and professional sports and to provide a platform for important sports policy debates. Recent public forums have focused on the issues around “pay to play” in high schools in Ohio and paying college athletes. The initiative is supported by an advisory board that includes football great Archie Griffin and Ohio State women’s basketball legend Kristin Watt. Read online at go.osu.edu/ascent.

DISCOVERING ANIMAL LIFE ON CAMPUS

10 BioPresence: An Ohio Past, Jasmine Yetts, Digital Mixed Media

“Some people talk to animals. Not many listen though. That’s the problem.” -A.A. Milne At Ohio State, the BioPresence project has been encouraging a broad contingent of faculty, staff and students to take the time to listen to the animals that live around us. To seek them out. See them. Study them. And understand that the humans and the animals share one campus together. “Noticing and documenting the animals, insects, plants and microorganisms on campus frames them as important cohabitants and acknowledges our relationships and interdependencies with them and with other non-human forms of life on the planet,” said AMY YOUNGS, associate professor in the Department of Art, who organized the project along with fellow art and technology professor KEN RINALDO. BioPresence was funded through a Framework Grant, a campus initiative to engage teams of faculty and students and cultivate cross-disciplinary and place-based learning. The project examines how we understand the place of other species on campus in light of concerns about biodiversity worldwide. Project collaborators across campus came from a broad range of departments and units, enlisting involvement of faculty and students from diverse areas. The working group, Animal Worlds in the Arts, Sciences and Humanities (AWASH) has been documenting nonhuman animals living on campus, and they uncovered a plethora of furry, feathered, slithery and buggy companions — from deer, possums and feral cats to spiders, snakes, fish, birds and bees, and even living mold.

“We examined a number of questions,” said RICK LIVINGSTON associate director of the Humanities Institute. “How do we make connections between the moments when species meet? What are the effects and habits of their daily life? What policies and priorities regulate our shared habitat, and our common aspiration to live sensibly and equitably over the long term?” He said the project coordinated a variety of activities, including posting photos of campus animals online, installing cameras and recording equipment at the Olentangy River Wetland Research Park, and arranging birding and bat-watching walks. He also engaged his own students through a May session course that explores environmental citizenship and ecological restoration along Columbus rivers. Youngs, working with ANGELIKA NELSON, curator of the Borror Laboratory of Bioacoustics, created an archive of species on campus, installed cameras to capture nighttime animal visitors at the Olentangy River wetlands, recorded the songs and calls of birds and insects, and invited the campus community to submit Instagram photos of animals they encountered. With a robust social media platform, the group used Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Flickr and Tumblr to share posts and create a dialogue across the campus community. MATT LEWIS, graphic research specialist at the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design, used the Instagram photos — ranging from ducks and deer to owls, cows and even earwigs and spiders – to develop an interactive map of animals and where they were spotted on campus. “Using interactive mapping software, I created a webpage that maps the area,” Lewis explained. “With the hashtag #AnimalOSU,

A crowd-sourced map is created using Instagram photos tagged #animalosu: go.osu.edu/animalosu-map

continued on pg. 12

BIOPRESENCE continued from pg. 11 individuals can upload a photo of an animal, note their location and the photo will appear on the map.” So far, the map is populated by more than 100 photos. The project team started to notice a number of dead birds on the university grounds — many of which had met their fate flying into glass windows on campus buildings. Nelson and STEPHANIE MALINICH, curatorial manager of the tetrapods collection at the Museum of Biological Diversity, added these dead birds — from Wilson’s snipe and rosebreasted grosbeaks to the common house sparrow — to the collection and database, tagged with information about the bird and where it was found. Lewis created a second interactive map detailing these feathered findings. BioPresence, which began in summer 2014, culminated in an art exhibition in Hopkins Hall last December, curated by Youngs and Rinaldo and lecturers Doo Sung Yoo and Trademark Gunderson. They invited students in art and technology classes to become involved in the project and create works for the BioPresence exhibition. Rinaldo’s students used 3-D modeling and sculpture to explore the species uncovered in the research. “I wanted them to choose an animal, whether a mammal, bird, a type of moss or bacteria, and document it using photographs and video. Their research and sketches were then used to make 3-D models, rapid prototypes and build a functioning camera-capture project.” One clever outcome, he said, was ETHAN SCHAEFER’S moving “selfie stick” to take images of sluggish stick bugs in a terrarium to create new ways to look at the creatures. STEPHANIE HAYDEN, another student, created a campus “retail store” for squirrels, filling tiny shelves with nuts, fats and sweets, and then recorded the squirrels’ frenetic reactions. There also were colorful hummingbird paintings, a luminescent sculpture to attract fireflies by MADDIE RICO, a video shot from a horse’s-eye-view by CIARA BARTHOLOMEW and a project that sprang from Lewis’ map of dead birds. Youngs created a giant art installation, appropriately titled Strike, where bird skins from the Museum of Biological Diversity were hung in nets to spell the word strike. This work and others were reviewed in NY Arts Magazine in an article by ANNIE JACOBSON, a PhD candidate in the Department of History of Art. Youngs’ students also concentrated on moving image art. “They collected existing video clips of animals at the wetlands and animated them with hand-drawn animation,” she said. “The students had to understand how the animal moves, how it acts and animate it frame by frame with rotoscoping. “Good art,” she added, “rests on good observation. This experience made the students more aware of their surroundings; they noticed

subtleties and made connections with the world around them that they normally wouldn’t make.” “Students come to art, and art and technology, thinking that 3-D modeling and animation are just tools to help them create art,” added Rinaldo. “But these are powerful ways to discover yourself and discover the world. We wanted them to conceptualize and invent and discover the natural world around them. And they did.” Top L: Nighttime bat-detecting event at Mirror Lake, using an ultrasonic transformer; Top R: Display about BioPresence at the Museum of Biological Diversity (MBD) Open House; Middle: Amy Young’s Strike being created at the MBD’s Tetrapod Collection; Bottom L: Wildlife webcam at the Olentangy River Wetland Research Park; Bottom R: Allison Blair’s Specter of a Common Songbird installed at Hopkins Hall. All photos courtesy of Amy Youngs.

ON THE RISE: JUNIOR FACULTY RECEIVE NSF CAREER AWARDS

ADRIANA DAWES, (L) assistant professor, mathematics and molecular genetics; CHUAN XUE, (R) assistant professor, mathematics; and IAN KRAJBICH, (not pictured) assistant professor, psychology and economics, each received the National Science Foundation’s top award supporting the work of the nation’s most promising junior researchers. Recipients exemplify exceptional research, teaching excellence and commitment to integrating teaching with research. Dawes’ five-year, $447,447 NSF CAREER Award for “Multiscale investigation of cortical actin organization and dynamics” funds further research on actin. Required for critical cell processes, such as wound healing and cell division, actin is a protein that interacts across multiple time and space scales to give rise to cell-level functional structures. “In this project,” she said, “my group will rigorously explore the link between microscale processes and emergent macroscale patterns to yield key insights into the role of actin in both normal and misregulated cells.” Read online at go.osu.edu/ascent.

Dawes intends to use her educational outreach funding to develop and teach an undergraduate course in mathematical modeling accessible to all levels of math students. “Its purpose is to prepare students to compete in COMAP’s [the Consortium for Mathematics and Its Applications] annual Mathematical Contest in Modeling, an international competition using mathematical tools to solve realworld problems,” Dawes said. CHUAN XUE’S five-year, $408,628 NSF CAREER Award for “Multiscale modeling of axonal cytoskeleton dynamics and axonal transport” supports developing new multiscale models to study the cytoskeleton, the intracellular polymer system that provides “highways” to transport proteins and organelles inside cells, including neurons. Through this project, Xue seeks to understand the neuronal cytoskeleton’s dynamic behavior and nerve cells’ intracellular traffic problems — crucial processes related to cell life and neurodegenerative diseases, such as ALS. continued on pg. 34

MOLTO BENE: ITALIAN SCREEN STUDIES COURSE AVAILABLE ON ITUNES U “The students found the course really, really rewarding. It was completely interactive, sparking engaged conversations each week with the different scholars.” {Dana Renga}

The course covered Italian cinema from 1942 to the present, concentrating on teen film, queer cinema, migration cinema, neorealism, fascist colonial cinema, post-feminism, the terrorist film, mafia cinema and more. Once the course was complete, all of the videos of the scholars and students became available, for free, on iTunes U, thanks to assistance from Ohio State’s Office of Distance Education and eLearning. Jacques Perrin and Marcello Mastrioanni in Cronaca Familiare

Nearly 50,000 people have browsed a new Ohio State iTunes U course, “New Research Trends in Italian Screen Studies,” since it became available online last fall. The iTunes course was the end product of a campus course that 10 Ohio State students took as a group, participating in weekly video-conferencing sessions with scholars from many institutions, said DANA RENGA, associate professor of Italian in the Department of French and Italian. The course was featured by Apple in its top New Courses category after release. Ohio State’s iTunes site is one of the largest course providers for the platform, reaching thousands of learners around the globe. “There is a lot of interest in Italian screen studies, and I wanted to ‘bring in’ scholars from the U.S. and U.K. to do video units with our students,” Renga said. “Each speaker chose a film and five articles to help contextualize the film; then the students interacted with the scholars through video conferencing.”

Why the fascination with Italian cinema? Recent Italian films frequently are nominated for prominent international awards — for instance, La grande bellezza won the 2013 best foreign film Oscar, and Caesar Must Die won the 2012 Golden Bear at Berlin — and numerous recent Italian films have had broad distribution in the U.S. Plus, explains Renga, Italy has always been a source of fascination, and Italy’s image in recent cinema is both beautiful — tapping into ideas of Renaissance culture, food and wine culture — and dark, with the migration crises, mafia and political corruption. Since being published, the course has been downloaded almost 9,500 times and streamed nearly 8,000 times. That’s 17,489 online “students” in just a few months. Daniel Paul, a PhD student in Italian, took the course and also coauthored the iTunes U course. “It really kept us on our toes,” he said. “We read the articles and watched the films to prepare for interacting with each guest. We wanted to get involved with the materials so we could really engage with the scholars.”

COMING SOON! MOVING IMAGE PRODUCTION

Undergraduate students soon will be able to major in Moving Image Production, a study of live-action and animation filmmaking, where they will develop the creative talent to produce films using high-level production techniques. A minor in film studies will be part of the new curriculum.

ANN HAMILTON HONORED WITH NATIONAL MEDAL OF ARTS ANN HAMILTON, Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Art, who is internationally recognized for the sensory surrounds of her large-scale, multimedia installations, was named a recipient of the 2014 National Medal of Arts. The award was presented by President Barack Obama at a White House ceremony on Sept. 10, 2015. “I am both humbled and proud to be part of this recognition of the arts, and the work of culture we are all engaged in making together,” Hamilton said. The National Medal of Arts is the highest award given to artists and arts patrons by the U.S. government. Hamilton is one of 11 individuals and organizations who were honored, along with actress Sally Field, author Stephen King and performer Meredith Monk. In addition, 10 National Humanities Medals were presented.

Photo courtesy of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Hamilton, who joined Ohio State’s faculty in 2001, creates ephemeral environments and immersive experiences that poetically respond to the architectural presence and social history of their sites. She represented the U.S. in the 1999 Venice Biennale and has exhibited extensively around the world.

Last year, Hamilton was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Among her many honors, she is the recipient of the Heinz Award, MacArthur Fellowship, United States Artists Fellowship, NEA Visual Arts Fellowship, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture and the Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship.

NEW COURSE OFFERS MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES ON CLIMATE CHANGE “Our hope is that through the course, students will analyze climate change from an evidence-based point of view, not a political assertion-based point of view. Our students will come out of this course and be able to judge by the evidence.” {Michael Bevis} Beginning autumn 2016, Ohio State students will have an opportunity to study climate change from multiple angles through a first-of-its-kind interdisciplinary course. “Climate Change: Mechanisms, Impacts and Mitigation,” will be teamtaught by MICHAEL BEVIS, Ohio Eminent Scholar and professor in the School of Earth Sciences; GEOFFREY PARKER, Andreas Dorpalen Professor of European History; and STEVEN RISSING, professor in the Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology. Course topics include, the effect of carbon dioxide; biological responses; historical experiences; effects on human infrastructure; and the implications for business, politics and policy. Read online at go.osu.edu/ascent.

GEOFFREY PARKER ELECTED CORRESPONDING FELLOW OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH GEOFFREY PARKER, the Andreas Dorpalen Professor of History and Distinguished University Professor, was elected Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh — this honor puts him in the company of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Kelvin. He joins Ohio State’s only other Fellow, chemist James Cowan, who was inducted in 2014. Created in 1783 by Royal Charter for “the advancement of learning and useful knowledge,” Scotland’s National Academy of Science and Letters elects Fellows across disciplines, making it unique among national academies. Parker, considered one of his generation’s most influential historians, is no stranger to top awards and honors; among his myriad recognitions is the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for History, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for historians.

ALL SEVEN CONTINENTS

WITH UNDERGRADUATES TRAVELING TO ANTARCTICA, OHIO STATE NOW HAS STUDY ABROAD PROGRAMS ON EVERY CONTINENT

The McMurdo Dry Valleys, in a cold desert region of Antarctica, hosts an NSF-funded ecological research program led by principal investigators from around the U.S.

For now, Antarctica is one of the last great places on the planet to do research on many critical questions. But rarely does that research include undergraduates. Few researchers even consider the possibility. Fortunately for third-year Earth sciences major ELSA SAELENS, Berry Lyons does. Lyons, professor and director of the School of Earth Sciences, has spent nearly every “summer” in Antarctica since 1981. For the past several years, he has given undergraduates this unique opportunity. Of course, a lot depends on the student. While Antarctica is not a typical place for undergraduate research, Saelens is not a typical college junior. “Elsa is mature beyond her years,” Lyons said, “She’s a quick learner, very competent, a true team player with a great sense of responsibility; in other words: a jewel.” Lyons — part of the McMurdo Dry Valleys Long-Term Ecological

Research program, one of two NSF-funded Antarctic sites — is a leading expert on the biogeochemistry of Antarctic terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and their response to climate change. Saelens impressed Lyons her first year at Ohio State when she inquired about research possibilities. “I usually don’t get these questions until they’re juniors,” he said. Two years later Lyons was preparing for his next field trip and Saelens was, he said, “essentially running my lab’s isotope analysis.” When the phone rang one day Saelens overheard him say, with no hesitation, “I have an undergraduate who could do that.” This call, Lyons said, was from his team members who needed help running instrument tests and collecting samples. Lyons had no doubt that Saelens could and would. “Elsa’s a jack of all trades, in the field and in the lab; if you give her something to do,

While in Antarctica, Saelens studied the geochemical variations of streams within the dry valleys. Elsa and Berry Lyons (R) survey glacier melt in the McMurdo Dry Valleys.

she does it superbly. She was invaluable in helping my team with their work in Antarctica.”

“We worked every day, sometimes until 3 a.m., but I loved it. It felt like we could be more productive because there were no light restrictions.

This one phone call was a pivotal moment in Saelens’ life. Thrilled, she began to prepare for the 33-hour flight from Columbus to New Zealand that would ultimately take her to the continent described as the “closest you can get to Mars on Earth.”

“From the moment I stepped off the plane onto the ice sheet and took the first breath of cold, fresh air, I knew this was the opportunity of a lifetime.” {Elsa Saelens} “It is beautifully silent. So quiet I could hear the glacier next to me creaking when we slept in the field. “It’s hard to imagine how fast time went by. The constant light made it seem like one, long day.”

“Even though the sun never sets, you get a sense of what time it is from where the sun is in the sky. “I loved working with everyone there and feeling that I was making a contribution to their work.” Lyons noted that many of the senior researchers and graduate students Saelens interacted with daily were women. “There are many women scientists on the teams and all are wonderful role models.” “It was exciting to do some of my own senior thesis work,” Saelens said. “I looked at stream-water melt coming off the glaciers — to see how much it melts each day and how it changes. This is the coldest, driest place on Earth and even small changes in climate have a big impact. “ Saelens can’t wait to go back. This one long day “made me realize this is what I really want to do,” she said. “Yes, it’s hard work, but it’s so much fun.”

This would be surreal for anyone, but Saelens thrived on it. Read online at go.osu.edu/ascent.

EXCEPTIONAL STUDENTS; EXCEPTIONAL HONORS

Ohio State boasts two of the 15 Churchill Scholars awarded nationwide, Henry Tran and Alexis Crockett (L to R). Both will begin graduate study at the University of Cambridge and plan to pursue careers in academia.

An arts and sciences education at Ohio State catalyzes rigorous scholarship, original research and public service. It should be no surprise, then, that within the past year, four students have been awarded distinguished scholarships â&#x20AC;&#x201D; among the most competitive in the world â&#x20AC;&#x201D; that will enable graduate study, further research and broadened horizons. 2016 CHURCHILL SCHOLARS HENRY TRAN (chemistry and mathematics) and ALEXIS CROCKETT (neuroscience and psychology) have been named 2016 Churchill Scholars. This is the first time that two Ohio State students have received the honor in the same year. The Winston Churchill Foundation awards 15 scholarships annually to graduating seniors and recent graduates who demonstrate exceptional academic talent, outstanding personal qualities and a capacity to contribute to the advancement of knowledge in the sciences, engineering or mathematics. The scholarship supports one year of graduate study in a relevant field at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

Crockett, who is from Macedonia, Ohio, has investigated the effects of the antidepressant ketanserin on chronic neuroinflammation, a potential contributor to major depressive disorder. After obtaining a PhD in neuroscience, Crockett plans to seek a faculty position at a research university to study the pathophysiology of depression and contribute to the development of more effective antidepressants. Tran, who is from Dublin, Ohio, is conducting research on JahnTeller distortions of the NO3 molecule. After receiving a PhD in theoretical chemistry, Tran plans to pursue a faculty position to teach and conduct research on developing computational methods to understand the electronic structure of important molecules.

Nima and Ilhan Dahir (L to R), daughters of Somali immigrants, will each be pursuing graduate studies and focusing on areas of international development.

And, in another first for Ohio State, the Dahir sisters garnered two of the most nationally coveted college scholarships for graduate education. 2015 BEINECKE SCHOLAR

2016 RHODES SCHOLAR

NIMA DAHIR, a senior majoring in economics and mathematics (who also happens to be Ilhan’s sister), was named a 2015 Beinecke Scholar — Ohio State’s fifth. The Beinecke Scholarship is awarded to 20 students nationwide who have demonstrated superior standards of intellectual ability, scholastic achievement and personal promise.

ILHAN DAHIR (BA; political science, English; 2015) was named a 2016 Rhodes Scholar. The scholarship supports two years of graduate study at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Dahir is Ohio State’s sixth Rhodes Scholar, and ASC’s third.

Beinecke Scholars must be current college juniors with plans to pursue a terminal degree in the arts, humanities or social sciences. The award provides $34,000 to support graduate studies. For the past two years, Dahir has been developing an independent research project in experimental economics on the relationship between optimism and willingness to borrow microfinance loans. This past summer, she completed an internship at the Federal Reserve Bank and will be returning as a research analyst after graduation. She also intends to obtain her PhD in economics to pursue a career in academia, conducting experimental economics research related to development. Read online at go.osu.edu/ascent.

Dahir was selected for her commitment to the empowerment of refugee communities around the world and her potential as a leader and advocate for refugees and communities in turmoil. Dahir, who is currently on a Fulbright Fellowship teaching English in Turkey, completed her senior thesis at Ohio State on the role of Western foreign fighters in the Islamic State group and their threat to global peace. During her two years at Oxford, Dahir plans to work toward MSc degrees in refugee and forced migration studies and in global governance and diplomacy before returning to attend law school and begin a career as an international human rights attorney. She plans to dedicate herself to advocating for refugees and communities in turmoil.

FINDING A VOICE IN FILM

PHD STUDENT HELPS YOUNG AFRICAN REFUGEES SHARE THEIR UNIQUE STORIES

Teenagers get hands-on practice with cinematography and film directing as they set up their next scene in the studio.

Several years ago, HYUNJU KIM, a PhD student in arts administration, education and policy, volunteered at the Columbus Global Academy to work with teenage refugees. The experience made her wonder: What would it be like to live as a refugee in Columbus today? She also said many African refugees are misidentified as Somali, just because there is a large Somali population in Columbus. “Unintentional errors like this reveal our ignorance and indifference. As an art educator, I wanted to dispel the notion of refugees as one assimilated group and initiate conversation between refugees and Americans. I used art for this purpose.” Last summer, Kim worked with a group of teenage refugees, teaching movie editing and production techniques, enabling them to share their unique stories. She worked with three Ethiopian students and one Congolese student. The group produced three short movies about issues including nostalgia for a home country, African and American school memories, and differences between Ethiopians and Somalis. “My students did not believe their stories were important. They were not sure if their efforts to overcome many challenges in the moviemaking process would be meaningful.”

“Refugees have little agency to define their representation in American society. They are labeled by others or the media. For example, refugees are often described as ‘uprooted’ or ‘people at risk’ instead of as ‘people of resilience.’” {Hyunju Kim} But on screening day, their stories on film were warmly welcomed by audience members, who said they appreciated the personal expressions reflected in the movies. They said each film helped them to better understand refugees in the community. “It was a great learning experience for me, too,” Kim said. “I learned what it means to communicate with people who have different cultures and languages. We needed perseverance, understanding and trust. There was tension, misunderstanding and narrow perspectives in the beginning of the project for all of us — however, we built trust throughout the process. I was happy to see that friendships were developed among the students themselves and me, and that our movie could initiate a conversation with the students and the audience.”

WE HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE SIFISO MAZIBUKO (MFA, theatre, 2015) is playing the role of Marvin Gaye in the London cast of Motown: The Musical, which opened in March at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London’s West End. “My experience has been amazing,” he said. “The cast, creative team and everyone involved with this production have been incredible. The idea of my West End debut being on a show of such magnitude blows me away. I’m beyond thrilled to be a part of it and to be playing a figure as iconic as Marvin Gaye.” All of the cast members do their own singing and dancing in the show, he said, which chronicles the American dream story of Motown founder Berry Gordy, who launched the careers of Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Smokey Robinson and many more, and features classics like “My Girl” and “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” While at Ohio State, Mazibuko appeared in productions including The Mystery of Edwin Drood (autumn 2012) and The Tempest (autumn 2013).

Read online at go.osu.edu/ascent.

In 2013, HANNAH MORRIS (MA, anthropology, 2012) answered an ad on Facebook posted by Lee Berger, professor of human evolution studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, for archaeologists with caving and climbing abilities to work in South Africa. A few weeks later, Morris, who is studying for a PhD in archaeology at the University of Georgia, was on a plane to Johannesburg to work inside one of the most remote chambers in the Rising Star cave system at the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site. “Lee believed that the Rising Star cave contained the largest assemblage of fossil human relatives ever discovered in the history of the continent of Africa,” said Morris. “However, the chambers were so difficult to access, and Lee needed a team of qualified excavators who were slender enough to reach the chambers and recover these fossils.” Morris joined five other scientists from around the globe chosen to excavate the site. These women — Morris, Marina Elliot, Becca Peixotto, Alia Gurtov, K. Lindsay Hunter and Elen Feuerriegel — were dubbed the “Underground Astronauts.” The 21-day excavation began in November 2014. The journey to the Dinaledi Chamber involves navigating through Superman’s Crawl — so-called because most people can move through the tunnel only with one arm extended in front and one at their side in a Superman pose, then climbing vertically up a 20-meter underground ridge called Dragon’s Back, and then descending through a narrow, 12-meter vertical chute that is only 20 centimeters (approximately 7.9 inches) wide at one point. “The first time I made it down the chute, there were a lot of bruises, scrapes, ripped clothing and cursing,” remembered Morris. “There were crystals on the wall that were razor sharp, and protrusions that dug into my hips. I couldn’t turn my head to look at where I was putting a hand or foot, because my helmet would get stuck in between the walls.”

“I had excavated and touched the remains of six individuals from our human lineage who lived and died and walked across the same path that I was walking down. “I sank down to the ground staring at my hands. I think each of us had moments like this, when we were able to grasp for a moment the impact of what we were discovering.” {Hannah Morris} Once Morris finally made it into the fossil chamber, her goal was to clear the loose and scattered fossils lying on the surface. Local cavers helped thread two miles of communication and power cables down into the fossil chamber to allow Berger and his team, located on the surface, to view what was happening in the chamber. “On the second day, we realized that we were not just dealing with the skeletal remains of one individual — there were remains of more than one hominin [human relative] in this cave,” said Morris. Read online at go.osu.edu/ascent.

When alumna Hannah Morris answered an ad on Facebook for archaeologists with excavation experience, little did she know that she would find herself in a cave in South Africa and help uncover what could possibly be a new species of a human relative.

By the end of the expedition, Morris and her fellow “astronauts” had excavated some 1,550 specimens in all, representing at least 15 individuals, from infants to elderly adults. These remains contained multiple elements from almost every part of the body, a remarkable find that would tell the story of the growth and development of these hominins. In May 2014, at the Rising Star Workshop in Johannesburg, scientists from around the globe analyzed the remains from the Dinaledi Chamber excavation and produced a series of scientific papers detailing the anatomy, taxonomy and context of the hominin remains. This analysis ultimately led to the conclusion that these fossils represented a new species of hominin, Homo naledi, that deliberately disposed of their dead in this chamber. “I was truly honored and grateful to be part of such an incredible team,” Morris said. “And now comes the really fun part — Homo naledi has a lot more to tell us about hominin evolution, what it means to be human and how we came to be the way we are.” The Dinaledi Chamber is now the richest fossil hominin site on the continent of Africa, and home to one of the most well-represented fossil species in the world.

MODELING THE ZIKA EPIDEMIC

CONNECTING WARMER CLIMATES TO INCREASES IN ZIKA-CARRYING MOSQUITOS ANDREW MONAGHAN (MS, PhD; atmospheric sciences; 2003, 2007) is a scientist in the Research Applications Laboratory of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. Why is it that the hotter it gets, the more likely an insect can spread disease, and is it likely that a mosquito that carries the Zika virus will pass it to humans before it dies? Warmer temperatures, up to a certain point, increase the development and survival rates of mosquitoes and also increase the virus incubation period — the time it takes for a female mosquito to become capable of transmitting a virus after biting an infected human. It’s all very nonlinear, meaning a few degrees of warming can really accelerate the system. We still don’t know much about the incubation time for the Zika virus, so I can only say qualitatively that the warmer it is, the more likely that Zika-transmitting mosquitoes will survive long enough to transmit the virus. The current outbreak of Zika virus featured in the news has been transmitted primarily in tropical and subtropical regions of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. How do you work with atmospheric models, and what do they tell us about the relationship between changes in climate and vectorborne diseases? In the area of vector-borne disease research, we sometimes use atmospheric models to generate high-resolution, gridded meteorological data sets to drive models of disease vectors (e.g., mosquitoes, ticks) and/or disease transmission (e.g., dengue, Lyme disease, human plague). Is it too early to make a statement about the role, if any, of climate change in the Zika outbreak? I don’t think we can definitively identify the fingerprint of climate change on Zika vector dynamics or virus transmission presently, for two primary reasons.

Surveillance is limited, particularly for virus vectors like Zikatransmitting Aedes mosquitoes, and we don’t have complete records in space or time, which makes it difficult to accurately track where vectors have been, where they are now (particularly at the edges of their ranges where they are most sensitive to climate fluctuations) or whether their ranges are expanding or contracting. With all vector-borne viruses, climate is one of many factors that influence transmission. While climate change can enhance suitability for vector survival or virus transmission in a given region, socioeconomic and human behavioral factors also play an important role in modulating risk that complicates isolating the signal of climate change. If climate change intensifies in forthcoming decades, I think we may see the imprint of climate change on vector-borne virus transmission more clearly than we do now, particularly if we can improve surveillance of vectors and disease incidence at the margins of present-day transmission.

THE ZIKA VIRUS MAY COST THE WORLD $3.5 BILLION The mosquito-borne Zika virus has been declared a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organization. The virus not only appears to severely harm unborn children, but it is hurting the economies of many Latin American and Caribbean countries. The World Bank estimates that Zika will cost the world $3.5 billion in 2016. How did the World Bank calculate this figure? According to JAY ZAGORSKY, research scientist at Ohio State’s Center for Human Resource Research, this figure is generated by adding together estimates of four categories of spending: direct outlays, lost productivity, loss from death and the impact of avoidance. These costs include payments for extra doctors, nurses, drugs and prophylactic treatments. Currently, much of Zika’s direct outlay is spent trying to control mosquitoes. When people get sick, they either miss work or are less productive while working. When epidemics spread wildly, productivity in entire cities, regions and countries can plummet. Most of the projected $3.5 billion impact results from tourists who are expected to avoid Caribbean and Latin American countries associated with the disease. Fear of the unknown, especially fear of a new disease, can drive tourists away and cause economic devastation in fragile economies.

Many U.S. cities face potential risk in summer of low, moderate or high populations of Zika-transmitting mosquitoes (colored circles). The mosquito has been observed in parts of the U.S. (shaded portion of map) and can establish populations in additional cities because of favorable summertime meteorological conditions. The Zika risk may be elevated in cities with more air travelers arriving from Latin America and the Caribbean (larger circles). Image based on data mapped by Olga Wilhelmi, NCAR GIS program.

IS ZIKA COMING TO A CITY NEAR YOU? Key factors that can combine to produce a Zika virus outbreak are expected to be present in a number of U.S. cities during peak summer months, according to new research by Andrew Monaghan and a team of scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. “The Aedes aegypti mosquito, which is spreading the virus in much of Latin America and the Caribbean, will likely be increasingly abundant across much of the southern and eastern United States as the weather warms,” warned Monaghan. By analyzing travel patterns from countries and territories with Zika outbreaks, Monaghan and his research team concluded that cities in southern Florida and impoverished areas in southern Texas may be particularly vulnerable to local virus transmission. Wintertime weather is too cold for the species outside southern Florida and southern Texas, the study found. “This research can help us anticipate the timing and location of possible Zika virus outbreaks in certain U.S. cities,” he said. “While there is much we still don’t know about the dynamics of Zika virus transmission, understanding where the Aedes aegypti mosquito can survive in the U.S. and how its abundance fluctuates seasonally may help guide mosquito control efforts and public health preparedness.” Monaghan stressed that even if Zika establishes a toehold in the mainland U.S., it is unlikely to spread as widely as in Latin America and the Caribbean because a higher percentage of Americans live and work in air-conditioned and largely sealed homes and offices. The study is published in the March 16, 2016, issue of the journal, PLOS Currents Outbreaks. Read online at go.osu.edu/ascent.

AN INTERVIEW WITH E! NEWS CORRESPONDENT ZURI HALL Last year, ZURI HALL (BA, communication, 2010) became the newest correspondent for E! News, where she interviews musicians, actors and entertainers. Here, she talks about how she got her job and offers some advice. Tell us about yourself. I was a four-year Morrill Scholar and graduated from Ohio State with a BA in strategic communication and a minor in theatre. I was an active member of the Black Student Theatre Network and of Ohio Union Television. What do you do for E! Entertainment Television? I’m an on-air correspondent for E! News, and every day is different. Some days I do standups and traditional host-reads in the newsroom or in-studio, on the E! News set. Other evenings I’m covering film premiere red carpets. I do one-on-one sit-down interviews with musicians, actors and entertainers. During awards season, I’m a special correspondent/co-host for E!’s popular Live From the Red Carpet shows. I also produce, so I write and oversee the editing of those stories, from start to finish. How did you land your job? Developing and utilizing professional relationships is a major part of any industry. Being represented by a well-connected agency is a major help. My agent knew the position was going to become available, and when she told me about it, I jumped at the opportunity. An agent can get you into a room, but your talent and experience is what keeps you there. What advice would you give to students looking to enter your industry? You have to create to keep your skills sharp, and you must develop a fresh perspective. Everyone has something to say, and in this digital age it’s easy to be drowned out in all the noise. So sharpen your craft, your delivery, the lens through which you view and communicate to the world. That’s what will make viewers want to hear “the same old information” from you, instead of the next person.

“My tenacity is the one quality that has kept me afloat in difficult times. Success is not a straight and simple path, so be open to the winding road of life.” {Zuri Hall} You have to want it more, be more patient and outwork your competition. True talent grouped with persistence and dedication will eventually make room for your breakthrough. There is more than one route to the same destination. Look at detours or setbacks as alternate routes that will prepare you for the place you are meant to eventually arrive. What is your fondest Ohio State memory? Football season! It’s not one specific memory; it’s the crisp, chilly air. The beauty of autumn as leaves change to burgundy, orange and gold while you walk alongside Mirror Lake. The high energy of game days when our team plays in the ’Shoe. Sweater weather and a fresh school year.

$5 MILLION GIFT SUPPORTS SCHOLARSHIPS, TEACHING Veeam Software Corporation, co-founded by arts and sciences alumnus RATMIR TIMASHEV (MS, chemical physics, 1995) and his partner Andrei Baronov, has made a gift of $5 million to the College of Arts and Sciences targeted to student scholarships and teaching in chemical physics and data analytics. THE ENDOWMENTS FROM VEEAM INCLUDE: • The Veeam Software Dean’s Innovation Fund • The Dr. Terry A. Miller Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Chemical Physics • The Andrei Baronov and Ratmir Timashev Symposium Endowed Fund in Chemical Physics • The Andrei Baronov and Ratmir Timashev Professorship in Chemical Physics • The Veeam Software Scholarship in Data Analytics • The Andrei Baronov and Ratmir Timashev Endowed Chair in Data Analytics “The extraordinary generosity of Veeam will transform research and teaching in chemical physics and the college’s new program in data analytics,” said David Manderscheid, executive dean and vice provost for the College of Arts and Sciences. “The greatest institutions have the best minds, the most-innovative researchers and inspiring teachers. “Establishing a chair in data analytics and a professorship in chemical physics will go a long way in enhancing the reputation of the College of Arts and Sciences and The Ohio State University.” Veeam is the innovative provider of solutions that deliver “Availability for the Always-On Enterprise.” Veeam leverages virtualization, storage and cloud technologies that enable the modern data center to help organizations save time, mitigate risks and dramatically reduce capital and operational costs. Privately held, the company has offices around the world, with international headquarters in Baar, Switzerland, and North American headquarters in Columbus.

Born in Russia in 1966, Timashev studied physics at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technologies, the top science school in Russia.

Veeam Software Corporation, Veeam’s U.S. subsidiary, will make the gift. Timashev co-founded the company in 2006 and today, as CEO, leads a company with more than 2,000 employees and 183,000 customers worldwide.

“Being a scientist was a prestigious profession in Russia when I was working on my degrees in the 1980s,” said Timashev. “But then perestroika happened, Russia’s economy collapsed and it became impossible to make a living as a scientist.”

“We are a forward-thinking company that fuels innovative IT solutions for enterprises around the world,” said Timashev. “Our goal in endowing these funds to the College of Arts and Sciences is to enable students and faculty to become the next generation of innovative thinkers, problem solvers and providers of solutions.”

Timashev went to work selling computers and doing construction work to support his family, while still working on his PhD, but his dream was to become an entrepreneur.

Read online at go.osu.edu/ascent.

continued on pg. 28

PAYING IT FORWARD

FOUNDER OF FLAUM COMMUNICATION SCHOLARSHIPS SUPPORTS SPEECH INTERVENTION TREATMENT AT THE SPEECH-LANGUAGE-HEARING CLINIC “My mission is to help those college and graduate students who don’t have the financial support to be able to access stuttering therapy.” {Sander Flaum} SANDER A. FLAUM (BA, psychology, 1958), founder and principal of Flaum Navigators, is an internationally renowned business leader and veteran consultant to Fortune 500 pharmaceutical companies. He is an adjunct professor at the Fordham University Gabelli School of Business, author of several New York Times bestsellers and the host of a weekly radio show, Leader’s Edge. He is also a stutterer. “Because I have been a stutterer since the age of 5, I have always been motivated to overcome this adversity and work harder than my classmates and colleagues,” said Flaum.

An Army veteran, Flaum received his undergraduate degree in psychology from Ohio State and earned an MBA degree from Fairleigh Dickinson University. He then went on to work for 18 years at Lederle Laboratories (now Pfizer) as marketing head and become chairman and CEO of Euro RSCG Becker (now Havas Healthcare), where he led a worldwide team of marketing strategists and introduced six blockbuster, $2 billion health care brands. When he was young, Flaum attended the National Hospital for Speech Disorders, but wasn’t able to find a program through the public schools that could help. “My mother scraped together what she could and took me to every stuttering program as a kid. She was a great mentor to me and so I established the Rose Flaum Foundation to honor her.” Flaum not only faced the expected biases of the young, he has grappled with the ignorance of educated adults. When he was in his mid-40s, he was turned down for a top corporate job because a board member believed that stuttering was a sign of mental illness and that Flaum couldn’t be trusted to lead the company. “I was shocked by the news and resolved that day to prove my abilities by making Euro RSCG Becker the best in the world. Fifteen years later, the organization rose to the second-top health care agency in the world, and I had accomplished my goal.”

$5M GIFT continued from pg. 27 “I knew that to become a real entrepreneur I would have to go to the United States to learn business,” he said. “Science was my ticket to the United States when I was accepted into the chemical physics PhD program at Ohio State.”

year, it was sold to Quest Software for $115 million. Timashev then invested his own money and co-founded Veeam in 2006. With no traditional venture capital funding, Veeam is set to achieve $1 billion in revenue within the next two to three years.

Timashev enrolled at Ohio State in 1992, having been recruited by Terry Miller, who chaired the chemical physics program at the time. Miller, an Ohio Eminent Scholar and now-professor emeritus of physical chemistry, remained a trusted mentor during Timashev’s time at Ohio State.

“Veeam’s remarkable gift will have a very real and direct impact on Ohio State’s students and faculty,” said Miller. “Their passion and vision to expand access to science and technology for our students, and, at the same time, enhance the depth and quality of teaching and scholarship, will open doors to new ways of thinking. Ratmir Timashev serves as a tangible inspiration and example to students who earn degrees in areas like chemical physics of the future opportunities for them in science, technology and beyond.”

In 1995, Timashev started his own business, Aelita Software. At the same time, he asked his best friend from home, Andrei Baronov, to join him in Columbus and help him run the company. After they led the company for seven years to virtually double-digit growth each

“If you’re not paying forward, you’re not a leader in the best sense of that term.” {Sander Flaum} In addition to his many accomplishments, Flaum is a tireless advocate for stutterers. Together with his wife Mechele, he founded the Sander and Mechele Flaum Communication Scholarships, under the umbrella of the Rose Flaum Foundation, for treatment sessions at the Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic in Ohio State’s Department of Speech and Hearing Science. He recently established the Flaum Family Fund for Teaching Excellence in Speech and Hearing, which will provide for a new clinical faculty position dedicated to addressing fluency through teaching, research and service. Services for students who are in need of speech intervention are severely limited at Ohio State because most medical insurance does not cover speech assessment and intervention services. Without the scholarships provided by the Flaums, most students would go without treatment. “Stuttering can be a devastating communication disorder as it’s often misunderstood in the general population,” said Gail Whitelaw,

CLASS ACT “It’s time to give something back to the place that gave me so much.” Alumnus HOWARD BIEL (PhD, 1976; MA, 1971; geography), senior vice president, acquisitions and development, ECHO Realty, returned to Columbus on April 14 to witness the transformation and dedication of the Howard & Rene Biel Geography Lecture Room, in honor of Biel and his wife, Rene. “Howard and Rene’s generous gift means that our students and faculty will have access to state-of-the-art technology, in a space that will enhance and improve the teaching and the learning experience,” said Morton O’Kelly, chair of the geography department. In addition, at the classroom dedication Biel surprised the crowd with the announcement that he had recently endowed the Howard S. Biel Graduate Student Support Fund in Geography. Biel is a member of the College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Advisory Committee.

director of Ohio State’s Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic. “Funding is often nonexistent, and it’s difficult to find speech-language pathologists well educated to work with the population.” For more than 15 years, the Flaums have underwritten costs of treatment for fluency patients and students at the clinic, allowing hundreds to improve the quality of their communication and their lives. At the same time, the ongoing support provides a remarkable clinical education opportunity for students enrolled in the MA program in speech-language pathology to learn techniques in working with people who stutter. Sam Brown, a third-year graduate student in Ohio State’s audiology program, received stuttering services from the clinic last year. “As a graduate student, I never would have been able to afford the quality of speech therapy services I received from Ohio State,” said Brown. “I am grateful for the financial support that Mr. Flaum provided for me and others with disfluencies.” Flaum serves on the College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Advisory Committee and on the boards of The Ohio State University’s James Cancer Center and the Fisher College of Business.

GET READY TO READ!

HILLTOP LITERACY INTERVENTION PROGRAM SHOWS SIGNIFICANT IMPROVEMENTS

Armed with copies of Clifford Goes to Dog School, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and Giggle, Giggle, Quack, graduate students and clinical staff from the Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic partnered with Hilltop Preschool in a first-of-its-kind, on-site pre-K literacy intervention program, and 89 percent of students demonstrated higher literacy scores.

In the basement of Hilltop Lutheran Church, you’ll find Hilltop Preschool, a nonprofit organization offering free preschool to residents of the Hilltop area on Columbus’ west side. Operated under the Early Start Columbus program, the preschool serves children from families who are below 125 percent of the poverty level. In October 2014, 67 percent of Hilltop Preschool students were below average on the National Center for Learning Disabilities’ Get Ready To Read! screening tool, an assessment for children in the year before they enter kindergarten to determine whether they have early literacy skills needed to become readers. Laura Moehrman, executive director of Hilltop Preschool, now in its seventh year, knew she had to do something. She also knew she had no money to hire a new teacher or specialist. Fortunately, the preschool’s board members were familiar with

the groundbreaking work in literacy intervention taking place at Ohio State’s Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic. They encouraged Moehrman to give Ohio State a call. “That phone call opened up a world of possibilities for our students, teachers and parents,” said Moehrman. “We were thrilled to get the opportunity to go out into the community,” said GAIL WHITELAW, director of the Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic. “We would be the first clinic to be on-site, leading a pre-K early literacy intervention program.” Ellen Bonk, a licensed clinical supervisor, and two graduate students from the clinic’s speech-language pathology MA training program, Breann Voytko and Kateyln Seitz, developed weekly lesson plans and led the classroom intervention sessions. Over the course of 11 weeks — from March through May 2015 — Bonk, Voytko and Seitz spent every Tuesday and Friday, two hours

a day, at Hilltop Preschool working with students, their teachers and staff on targeted literacy-based skills in the classrooms.

committed to this partnership and seeing how we can improve and expand on our services.”

At the conclusion of the intervention program, the preschoolers were tested to determine if their earlier literacy scores had changed.

In the meantime, a group of undergraduate students in the SpeechLanguage-Hearing Clinic are doing their part to support the children, families and teachers at Hilltop Preschool. The students, all members of the National Student Speech Language Hearing Association, are building a library at the school.

THE RESULTS? “Eighty-nine percent of our students demonstrated higher literacy scores and 67 percent achieved ‘average’ or ‘above average’ on the Get Ready To Read! screening tool,” said Moehrman. “Those are simply remarkable statistics considering the many challenges we face.” Students were not the only ones who benefited from the Ohio State partnership. “Our teachers benefited from the modeling of techniques for speech, language and literacy concepts provided by Ellen and her students,” said Moehrman. “And our parents were empowered with information and skills to support their young developing readers, through take-home sheets, scripts, special family events and parent/teacher conferences.” Moehrman believes that intervention is necessary to ensure that at-risk children learn at a quicker pace and to help fill the gap that exists between them and their national peers. “We must seek out emerging research and innovative partnerships like Ohio State’s Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic’s literacy intervention program if our children are to thrive and succeed.” For Whitelaw, being on-site, working with teachers, families and students, is critical to ensuring the success of a literacy intervention program.

“It can no longer be a segregated effort, with clinicians and researchers confined to the academic world. We do our best work when we have everyone at the table — teachers, principals, schoolchildren and families. That is cutting-edge practice.” {Gail Whitelaw} Both Whitelaw and Leach were thrilled with the test results when the pilot project was complete. The challenge now is to identify ways to continue bringing the best early education and literacy intervention to these at-risk children to ensure their success. “We’re in the process of hiring new clinical faculty in speechlanguage pathology specifically to provide language and literacy support to Hilltop and other schools,” said Whitelaw. “We are Read online at go.osu.edu/ascent.

For more information on the Ohio State Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic–Hilltop Preschool partnership, contact Gail Whitelaw, clinic director, at whitelaw.1@osu.edu.

OHIO STATE STUDENTS WANT TO KNOW: IS THERE EVIDENCE FOR GOD? This spring, a public event featuring two Ohio State philosophers and a visiting scholar demonstrated that students want to grapple intellectually with big questions. More than 2,300 people, almost all of them students, filled Mershon Auditorium to listen to a debate sponsored by the Veritas Forum over whether belief in the existence of God can be justified by evidence. “It was exciting to see thousands of students turn up on their own initiative for an evening discussion,” said JUSTIN D’ARMS, professor and chair of the Department of Philosophy. “This was a testament to the enduring interest of Ohio State students in deep questions about how to live your life.” The evening was all about philosophy and philosophers at their best — debating ideas that resonate across time and civilization. Ohio State professor KEVIN SCHARP and famous Christian apologist WILLIAM LANE CRAIG, a professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, took opposing views of the central question. “The discussion was lively, detailed, intelligent and respectful,” D’Arms said. “It was an excellent showcase for philosophy and a demonstration that students want to be exposed to serious ideas and argumentation. The depth of questions the audience submitted for the discussion period that followed was further evidence of this.” In the upcoming year, the philosophy department is offering a philosophy of religion course, co-taught by a Christian and an atheist. Not only will students hear some of the most influential ideas and arguments about the nature and existence of God, the class will model how people with conflicting viewpoints can engage in substantive disagreement in a way that is both respectful and productive.

BEYOND THE CLASSROOM WALLS

For several years, PAUL REITTER, Humanities Institute director and Germanic languages and literatures professor, and MAURICE STEVENS, associate professor in comparative studies, have wanted to bring the humanities to nontraditional students.

“The books we read were and are awesome,” said Wright. “They helped me to seek really who I am and what I want to accomplish in life. Our class conversations were enriching and challenging; it took a lot of looking deeper to discover issues that were not in plain sight.”

And so a new course, “Introduction to the Humanities: Our Journeys Our Selves!,” took shape. The course itself is a journey — with readings and writing exercises designed to introduce students to the experiences of others, while challenging them to give words and shape to their own journeys.

Dionne Ball, another student in the course, has a son who currently is an undergraduate student at Ohio State; her other sons are not yet in college. All were supportive of her going back to school.

Last August, it was offered to the parents of students in the Young Scholars Program, a pre-college development program for academically gifted first-generation students with financial need from urban school districts in Ohio. The parents, for the most part, had little or no college experience but were interested in earning a college degree.

“We’re creating a multigenerational learning environment. These parents are embarking on a journey at the same time their children are beginning their own journeys as undergraduates.” {Maurice Stevens} Benisha Wright places a high premium on education and was looking for some guidance to help prepare her daughter for college. At a pivotal point in her own life journey, moving into her 30s and looking for new career paths, Wright enrolled in the course to stretch her abilities and step outside her comfort zone.

“I thought it was a great opportunity, and it could help me determine if I am ready to go back to school to further my education,” said Ball. “It made me think of my own journey, and it was a good thing at this time in my life.” The parent-students, who all happened to be women, met every Tuesday and Thursday evening during the fall semester. College credit for the course was provided at no cost, along with stipends for books, transportation and child care. “The one thing that struck me about this class was the degree to which these women were really committed to being here,” said Stevens. “There was something really affirming going on in these classes.” “These students tackled some very, very challenging material,” said Reitter, “from Homer’s epic poem to works of literary criticism and a literary narrative by one of the great child psychologists of the 20th century. Over the course of 16 weeks, they challenged themselves and one another to find and develop their voices and self-narrative.” Selected readings for the course included Playing in the Dark (Toni Morrison), The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Díaz), The Odyssey (Homer), Prudence (David Treuer), Bambi (Felix Salten) and Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

FIRST ONLINE DEGREE PROGRAM IN ASC LAUNCHES

The DEPARTMENT OF ARTS ADMINISTRATION, EDUCATION AND POLICY has relaunched its online master’s degree in art education, which will be offered completely online starting in summer 2016. This two-year program focuses on critical thinking and reflective practice and is geared toward art educators who work in classrooms, in museums, in their communities and in the studio. “We are so proud that the online master’s in art education is the first online degree program in the College of Arts and Sciences,” said department chair Deborah Smith-Shank. “This new degree will give art teachers the opportunity to professionalize their license in a mentor-rich environment.” Students earn the same degree as if they attended the on-campus program, taking classes from the same faculty, personalized to their own interests as art educators. For more information, visit aaep.osu.edu/arteducation-online.

VAN TAYLOR MONROE: ART FOR KICKS

Cleveland artist Van Taylor Monroe led a workshop for middle school and high school students March 25, co-hosted by the Barnett Center for Integrated Arts and Enterprise and the African American and African Studies Community Extension Center. The four-hour workshop gave 25 students the chance to get to know Monroe and try their hand at painting colorful designs on their own sneakers. Monroe is known internationally for customizing sneakers and footwear. One of his first designs, a Barack Obama shoe, skyrocketed in popularity 33 when will.i.am wore it on the red carpet. View a slideshow of the workshop on our website: go.osu.edu/sneakers.

SCIENCE & SCHOLARSHIP The College of Arts and Sciences is building a powerhouse to nurture, support and inspire discovery, innovation and creativity. Our scholars, researchers and their students are making discoveries that advance their fields and influence the world. And the world notices. Each year, our research profile increases and our reputation as the home of world-class scholars grows. The value of an arts and sciences degree has never been higher, and a unified College of Arts and Sciences is shaping the future.

TOP 1 PERCENT IN THE WORLD DAVID WEINBERG, professor of physics, Henry L. Cox Professor of Astronomy and astronomy department chair, is one of nine Ohio State faculty members named to Thomson Reuters’ 2015 list of Highly Cited Researchers, a measure of worldwide impact and influence. All have contributed research that ranks among the top 1 percent most cited for their field and year. OHIO STATE PHYSICIST LEADS A FIVE-YEAR, SIX-INSTITUTION COLLABORATION WITH LASER FOCUS Professor LOUIS DIMAURO, the Dr. Edward E. and Sylvia Hagenlocker Chair in Physics, is leading a Department of Defense Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) award supporting work at Ohio State and five other universities to study interactions of intense, ultrafast, mid-infrared radiation with matter. Other Ohio State collaborators are physics researchers Pierre Agostini, Cosmin Blaga and Enam Chowdhury. The five-year, $12.5-million grant for “Fundamental strong-field interactions with ultrafast, mid-infrared lasers” brings enormous potential to many areas of science, technology, medicine and national security. The work involves researchers at four other U.S. universities — the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Arizona, the University of Central Florida and Louisiana State University — and the U.K.’s Imperial College London.

PSYCHOLOGY PROFESSOR SHARES $13.1 MILLION NSF BRAIN INITIATIVE ZHONG-LIN LU, professor of psychology and director of the Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Brain Imaging and the Center for Cognitive Science, is one of a handful of U.S. research scientists selected to share $13.1 million in 16 new awards associated with NSF support for integrative, fundamental brain research and the BRAIN initiative. Lu and colleague Mark Steyvers, a cognitive scientist at the University of California, Irvine, will use a new modeling framework integrating brain imaging with individual behavior information — an approach building on and integrating recent advances in cognitive science, neuroscience, statistics and machine learning — that could revolutionize cognitive neuroscience. The research will go beyond establishing and explaining individual differences to predicting individual cognitive performance in a variety of tasks. TWO CHEMISTS WIN TOP AWARDS BOOSTING ENERGY RESEARCH ANNE CO’S fundamental studies of electrochemical reactions and electrocatalytic materials for chemical conversion and energy received a huge boost with a recent five-year, $651,729 NSF CAREER Award for “Control of surface reactivity for catalyzing hydrocarbon formation from CO2.” Co, an assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and her team are investigating novel,

NSF WINNERS continued from pg. 13 “We continue to be amazed by how useful mathematics is to biology,” Xue said. “Mathematical models allow us to make sense of existing experimental data; multiscale methods help draw connections between data collected at different spatial and temporal scales to make testable predictions using these models.” Ohio State cell biologist Anthony Brown’s lab has begun testing her model predictions. Xue is using her outreach funding to share the excitement of mathematical biology with high school students, teaching them about intracellular traffic

jams and neurodegenerative diseases. IAN KRAJBICH’S five-year, $722,305 NSF CAREER Award for “The common attentional and dynamical properties of decision making” focuses on dynamical modeling of the interactions between attention and choice in human decision making. Unlike most research in decision making, Krajbich’s project aims to develop models that can be applied and tested across different types of choices. He will generate mathematical models of underlying choice

processes that can be tested using a variety of data, such as eye movements during evaluation of options, hand movements during execution of choice and the overall time that it takes to make a decision. Neuroeconomist Krajbich’s research intersects social science and neuroscience, combining tools from both to investigate mechanisms behind decision-making. He is a member of Translational Data Analytics @ Ohio State. His outreach plans include a hands-on research summer internship program for underrepresented groups, specifically disabled students.

nanoporous electrode materials and single-atomic-layer model systems for the catalysis of oxygen to water, alcohols to carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide to hydrocarbons. Ultimately, their work will facilitate designing new materials to improve efficiency of electrical conversion and storage devices, such as fuel cells and batteries. OHIO STATE’S FIRST DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY EARLY CAREER RESEARCH AWARD ROBERT BAKER, assistant professor, chemistry and biochemistry, is one of the 50 outstanding young researchers — and Ohio State’s first — who received a 2015 Department of Energy Early Career Research Award, which is given to stimulate research in disciplines supported by DOE’s Office of Science. Baker’s grant for “Probing ion solvation and charge transfer at electrochemical Interfaces using nonlinear soft x-ray spectroscopy” funded for five years at $150,000 per year, accelerates exploration of nanomaterials and solid-state electronic devices for chemical energy conversion and highly selective catalysis. The critical role of surfaces and interfaces in nanoscale systems, particularly those controlling charge transfer in actual energy conversion systems — including solar cells, fuel cells and batteries — is a major, unexplored frontier of materials chemistry. ASTRONOMERS MAY HAVE DISCOVERED THE KING OF SUPERNOVAE An international team of astronomers including Ohio State professors KRZYSZTOF STANEK, CHRISTOPHER KOCHANEK and TODD THOMPSON may have discovered the largest supernova ever seen from Earth. The exploding massive star, named ASASSN15lh, is only 10 miles (16 kilometers) across at its core, yet is much brighter than the entire output of the Milky Way. The team of astronomers released their findings in the journal, Science. “This may be the most powerful supernova ever seen by anybody … it’s really pushing the envelope on what is possible,” said study coauthor Stanek. LINGUIST PART OF DARPA-FUNDED NATIONAL COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS PROJECT WILLIAM SCHULER, associate professor in the Department of Linguistics, is part of a national team of researchers awarded $449,847 by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop a grammar-acquisition component enabling translation from any language to support emergent missions, such as humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, peacekeeping or infectious disease response. The project, Low Resource Languages for Emergent Incidents (LORELEI), involves computational linguists and computer scientists from the University of Illinois and Harvard/ Boston Children’s Hospital. Understanding local languages is essential in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief efforts, but with more than 7,000 languages spoken worldwide, the U.S. military frequently encounters languages for which translators are rare and no automated translation capabilities exist. This computational linguistics project aims to become the first of its kind. Read online at go.osu.edu/ascent.

OHIO STATE PROFESSORS SHARE $630,000 AWARD TO STUDY ACCOUNTABILITY IN PUBLIC EDUCATION VLADIMIR KOGAN, assistant professor of political science, and Stéphane Lavertu, associate professor in the John Glenn College of Public Affairs, received a $632,778 Lyle Spencer Research Award to study education governance and accountability. The Education Governance and Accountability Project aims to improve understanding of the political institutions governing U.S. public education in order to facilitate democratic accountability and more efficient provision of K-12 education. TEACHERS ON THE SILK ROAD — NEH SUMMER INSTITUTE 2016 A $186,630 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) will allow Ohio State to host and present an NEH Summer Institute, Central Asia in World History. The program provides an exceptional three-week summer learning opportunity for 25 middle and high school teachers from across the country. Led by SCOTT LEVI, associate professor of history, the initiative is in partnership with the Center for Slavic and East European Studies and the Department of History. Teachers will study Central Asian history with some of the best scholars in the field, develop an understanding of the many ways Central Asian peoples helped shape world history and then use this experience to design new course plans for their own classes. FOUR-YEAR, $1.2 MILLION NIH GRANT FUNDS FUNDAMENTAL MEDICAL SCIENCES RESEARCH HAY-OAK PARK’s NIH grant supports ongoing work focused on GTPase-signaling networks involved in the development of cell polarity and cell asymmetry. “Placement of the cell division plane and polarity establishment are crucial for cell proliferation and cell movement, as seen in developing embryos, wound healing and bud formation during yeast growth,” said Park, professor of molecular genetics. Her group addresses two main questions in cell biology: How do cells achieve polarized organization of the cytoskeleton in response to spatial cues? And, how do cells respond to oxidative stress caused by cellular metabolism and other environmental stresses? “One of the fundamental questions in cell biology is how asymmetry and polarity within a cell are established, resulting in oriented cell divisions or a functionally specialized cell fate,” Park said. GRAPHIC WARNINGS ON CIGARETTE PACKS IMPACT SMOKING BEHAVIOR ABIGAIL EVANS, a postdoctoral researcher in psychology, is lead author of a new, first-study look at the impact of graphic warning labels on smokers outside a laboratory and over a relatively long period of time. Evans and co-author ELLEN PETERS, professor of psychology and director of the Decision Sciences Collaborative, found that smokers who saw graphic warning labels on every pack of cigarettes smoked for four weeks had more negative feelings about smoking compared to those who saw only text warnings.

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TBDBITL IN THE U.K. The 225-member “Pride of the Buckeyes” marched through spectator-lined streets in London on Oct. 24, and wowed British crowds with its showmanship at a pregame show before the Oct. 25 NFL matchup between the Buffalo Bills and Jacksonville Jaguars in London’s Wembley Stadium. It was the first time The Ohio State University Marching Band has performed outside of the U.S. since 1975, though its reputation spans the globe thanks to viral videos of its halftime shows that have been viewed by millions. The group marched in the festive parade that spanned Regent Street and conducted an open rehearsal in a rugby stadium on Saturday. The following day, The Best Damn Band in the Land performed at a pep rally and entertained fans with a London-themed show in the stadium. The NFL covered all of the band’s travel costs for the trip.