College of Letters & Science
IN FOCUS
December 2019, Vol. 9, No.12
A UWM archaeologist finds a historical record written in teeth Pg. 6
A maize mystery
UWM team unlock
Contents Feature Stories
Professor makes protein discovery AtmoSci student studies storm chasers Anthropologist uses teeth to unveil diets UWM debuts new online language classes Senior auditors enjoy UWM classes for free Jewish Studies receives $300K donation Physics alum advises CA lawmakers Physics receives astronomy grant
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Columns Laurels and Accolades Alumni Accomplishments Passings In the Media Upcoming Events Program Spotlight Published College the
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To study the swiftness of biology – the protein chemistry behind every life function – scientists need to see molecules changing and interacting in unimaginably rapid time increments – trillionths of a second or shorter. Imaging equipment with that kind of speed was finally tested last year at the European X-ray Free-Electron Laser, or EuXFEL. Now, a team of physicists from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has completed the facility’s first molecular movie, or “mapping,” of the ultrafast movement of proteins. With this capability, scientists can watch how proteins do their jobs properly – or how their shape-changing goes awry, causing disease. Their findings mark a new age of protein research that enables enzymes involved in disease to be observed in real time for meaningful durations in unprecedented clarity. The paper is in the journal Nature Methods. The EuXFEL produces intense X-rays in extremely short pulses at a megahertz rate – a million pulses a second. The rays are aimed at crystals containing proteins, in a method called X-ray crystallography. When a crystal is hit by the X-ray pulse, it diffracts the beam, scattering in a certain pattern that reveals where the atoms are and producing a “snapshot.” The rapid-fire X-ray pulses produce 2D snapshots of each pattern from hundreds of thousands of angles where the beam lands on the crystal. Those are mathematically reconstructed into moving 3D images that show changes in the arrangement of atoms over time. A new level The European XFEL, which opened last year, has taken this atom-mapping to a new level. Extremely powerful bursts contain X-ray pulses at a quadrillionth of a second, in “bursts” that occur at 100 millisecond intervals. Schmidt’s experiment began with a flash of blue, visible light that induced a chemical reaction inside the protein crystal, followed immediately by a burst of intense X-rays in megahertz pulses that produce the “snapshots.” It’s an experiment he first staged in 2014 at the U.S. Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California. There, he and his students were able to document atomic changes in their protein samples for the first time at an XFEL.
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ks new age of protein research Subsequently, in 2016, they were able to map the rearrangement of atoms in the range of time proteins take to change their shapes – quadrillionths of a second (femtoseconds) up to 3 trillionths of a second (picoseconds). In a picosecond, which is a trillionth of a second, light travels the length of the period at the end of this sentence. Previous time-resolved crystallography on their photoreactive protein had already been completed using other X-ray sources capable of imaging time scales larger than 100 picoseconds, leaving a gap of uncharted time between 3 and 100 Members of the Schmidt lab who worked on the paper include (from left) doctoral student Ishwor Poudyal, Professor Marius Schmidt and doctoral picoseconds that the scientists student and first author Suraj Pandey. (UWM Photo/Troye Fox) were able to fill using the EuXFEL. Doctoral student Suraj Pandey, who came to UWM from his native Nepal, is first author on the paper. He now has Much quicker data gathering experience with technology that few people in the world The exceptional brightness of the laser and the can claim, at least for now. He said he was not sure what megahertz X-ray pulse rate allowed them to gather data to expect going into the experiment. much quicker and with greater resolution and over longer Pandey’s role was to analyze the data and calculate the time frames. maps of structural change. Of the millions of X-ray pulses Schmidt describes EuXFEL as “a machine of that XFELs deliver, the majority don’t hit a target at all. In superlatives.” The largest XFEL in the world, it is 3 fact, only 1% to 2% diffract off a protein crystal, while the kilometers long, spanning the distance between the remaining pulses produce “noise” that must be removed German federal states of Hamburg and Schleswigfrom the data. Holstein. Superconductive technology is used to The team had other worries too, he said. It took months accelerate high-energy electrons, which generates the for Pandey to grow the protein required to produce X-rays. the experiment’s crystals, but during their transport to Schmidt, a biophysicist who has participated in more than Germany, the 5 grams of frozen protein was detained in 30 XFEL imaging projects to date, offered a taste of the customs for several days, during which some of it melted. medical potential of enhanced crystallography with the By Laura Otto, University Relations XFEL: Using this method, he has witnessed how multiple proteins work together, how enzymes responsible for antibiotic resistance disable a drug and how proteins change their shape in order to absorb light and enable sight.
College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 3
All eyes on the storm
Atmospheric Sci
In 2013, the El Reno tornado in Oklahoma broke records. The monster storm clocked wind speeds topping 300 miles per hour, among the highest ever recorded on Earth. The funnel measured 2.6 miles wide, the widest ever observed. A crowd of storm chasers converged on the twister, congregating on the storm’s southeast side. Then the tornado took an unexpected – and deadly – turn, putting the storm chasers right in the path of danger. “At least one group of storm chasers lost their lives in part because of what they call ‘storm chaser convergence.’ If there are too many storm chasers in one area, it slows down traffic like on the interstate,” Alex Moxon explained. “If the tornado switches directions, it can become quite dangerous because all of these people need to get out, now.” Moxon is majoring in atmospheric science at UWM and plans to graduate in December of 2020. He’s working with distinguished professor of atmospheric science Paul Roebber, and their research focuses on preventing another tragedy like the loss of life in the El Reno tornado. “We are modeling that storm chaser behavior: How they’re moving in a simulated tornado event,” Moxon said. “What we’re trying to accomplish at the end of the day is seeing if it’s better to have them move in an organized fashion – (where they) have some sort of a central dispatcher – or if it is better for them to make their own decisions.” Storm chasers are people who follow tornados when a funnel cloud touches down. Many are atmospheric scientists hoping to gather data like wind speed, barometric pressure, atmospheric conditions, and more. The information they collect helps researchers learn more about “tornadogenesis,” or the development of tornados. Understanding tornadogenesis may help scientists more accurately pinpoint when and where a tornado might form. In order to determine whether storm chasers might be better served being coordinated by a central dispatcher or by relying on their own instincts and observations, Moxon and Roebber turned to computer modeling. The pair – mostly Roebber, Moxon admits – built a program
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Alex Moxon sits in front of a weather map at the Innovative Weather center at UW-Milwaukee. Moxon is studying storm chaser behavior. Photo courtesy of Alex Moxon.
that predicts the behavior of storm chasers based on their past movements. Much of their research draws from a paper published in the aftermath of the El Reno tornado. A group of scientists gathered the GPS data and video recordings from the surviving storm chasers who tracked the twister. Using video editing software, data from Google Maps, and GPS data, the scientists were able to plot where each storm chaser was in relation to the tornado.
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ience student studies storm chasers Based on the paper those scientists published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, as well as other information they’ve gathered about storm chaser movements, Moxon and Roebber were able to feed data into the model so the program could predict how storm chasers might act in a variety of scenarios. “Now we’ve gotten to a point where the code accurately reflects storm chaser movements,” Moxon said. “Now that we have that, we can go in and examine specific storm events and storm paths, and see how well storm chasers organize themselves and what they could do to organize themselves differently.” They won’t have results for a few months yet, but Moxon can see pros and cons to each approach. “It’s more difficult for a dispatcher using a radar to see a tornado on the ground versus a storm chaser who is actually there,” Moxon said. “If the storm chasers are
able to see that the tornado is turning now, (they can react) before the radar scan comes through and can already be out of harm’s way. “On the other end, a dispatcher is able to look at the radar much more closely, more scientifically, than what storm chasers get looking at their cell phone. He’s also able to see where the other chasers are and say, okay, there are already 20 of you in this spot. You shouldn’t go here in case this tornado shifts direction.” Moxon will present his findings at the American Meteorological Society conference in Boston in January, and he and Roebber plan to publish their work as well. Moxon hopes that they will be able to make recommendations to the National Weather Service and emergency managers around the country about best practices for storm chasers. By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science
This map shows the path of the 2.5 mile-wide El Reno tornado in Oklahoma in 2013. Map courtesy of www.weather.gov. The background image shows the height of the El Reno tornado as viewed from the southeast corner of the storm. Photo by Nick Nolte.
College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 5
An a-maize-ing find Archaeologist examines teeth to uncover mysterious Oneota agriculture shift Robert Jeske, an archaeologist and professor of anthropology at UWM, knows that our teeth tell a story: What we eat, our overall health, and the kinds of crops we cultivate. His most recent paper details how his coauthors and he used dental remains to uncover the agriculture trends and diet of Wisconsin’s Oneota settlements, groupings of Native Americans who lived in clusters around the state more than a thousand years ago. His research adds evidence to a surprising development in history: Around 1000 AD, Native Americans made a drastic shift in their diets to include more maize, and no one knows why. Jeske sat down to talk about his research, which was published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology earlier this year. What was the main focus of your research? The basic idea is that people who live in different environments, you might suspect, have different ways of making a living. We’ve been looking at how people began to use maize agriculture in Wisconsin. Many researchers assumed that you’d have a lot more maize down south than you would up north. In between here and Oshkosh is a transitional area where we go from savannah and prairie and mixed forest to more of a forested environment. That forest goes from a dry forest up to the wet forest that you see in northern Wisconsin. We thought maybe there would be difference between how much agriculture people south of that transition would do as opposed to people north. When we looked at that, it turns out that probably not. Based on the dental characteristics we see from people south and north of that line, they seem to be engaging in agriculture at about the same rates. So, the assumption was that people in these separate locations would have different agricultural practices because of their different environments?
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Maize is a Mexican domesticate. We assume that it took time to spread from the south up to the north. Now what we’re finding is that that doesn’t appear to be the case. In fact, the amount of maize that people ate switched at about AD 1000 from being a relatively small part of the diet – probably less than 25 percent around 800 AD – to being more than 50 percent of the diet by 1100-1200. And everybody, throughout the Midwest and the Great Robert Jeske Lakes, appears to switch over at the same time, regardless of the actual environment that they’re in. Whether you’re down in the Ohio River Valley, which is much warmer than here, or up in the Fox Valley, which is much colder than here, or you’re out in Lake Koshkonong or down in northern Illinois, everybody seems to switch at about the same time. And we can tell this because we look at their teeth. How does looking at teeth tell you people made a huge shift in their diets to maize? If you go back a thousand years and look at teeth, you’ll see they’re ground flat because they tend to have a fair amount of grit in their diet, but they tend to be very healthy. And you don’t have much in the way of caries or cavities. After AD 1000, you get teeth falling out. You get abscesses. And you get great big cavities in large numbers of teeth. The cavity per tooth count goes way up. And it’s because of a sudden switch to maize as the major food source in the diet.
Students of UWM archaeologist Robert Jeske work in an excavation of an Oneota settlement near Lake Koshkonong. Jeske studies Wisconsin’s Native Americans and recently discovered that groups across Wisconsin ate and cultivated maize at similar rates, despite variations in climate and geography. Photo courtesy of Robert Jeske.
What is it about maize that is so bad for your teeth? Maize is a carbohydrate. It’s sticky, so it sticks to your teeth. That high starch and high carbohydrate concentration turns into sugar. That sugar feeds microbes and the microbes produce acid that eats off the enamel of your teeth and allows for infection. If you want to see it in action, take a plain cracker and put it your mouth. If you let it sit for a few minutes, you’ll begin to taste sugar. That’s because your mouth is turning the carbohydrates from starch into sugar. I’m picturing you as a forensic dentist. How did you conduct your research? In my case, we looked at notes and photographs from the teeth we’ve come across during my research at agricultural villages near Lake Koshkonong. We don’t remove human remains of Native Americans from the sites we’ve been working on at Lake Koshkonong, but record them in place if we encounter them in our excavations. One of my coauthors, Jordan Karsten at UW-Oshkosh, examined skeletons in museums around Oshkosh and Green Bay. He and a research assistant looked and physically counted each individual tooth.
Adults have 32 individual teeth. Quite often, not all of the teeth are there because they fall out. That’s a bad sign. With agriculturalists, you’ll find even with relatively young adults, there will be teeth that are missing. You can look at pre-mortem tooth loss. You can look at cavities. And you can look at the bone itself, where the tooth meets the socket. That occlusal area often shows signs of infection. Why is it important that we know what people in Wisconsin were eating 1,000 years ago? I’m interested in Native Americans of roughly 800 years ago. To give you a full description of what their life was like, we have to look at a whole multitude of things. We talk about their ceramic technology, their stone tool technology, the kind of work they did with antler and bone, and the kind of homes they built. But probably the most important of all and the most basic to everything is what did they eat? If you want to know something about a person, their diet is one of the most foundational things you can know about them. It’s really telling when you get something like what happened in AD 1000 when people made this switch. Continued on page 8
College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 7
Mysterious maize What would have happened to have made people who are living a particular lifestyle for a long time, who had known about maize for a thousand years already but didn’t use it much, suddenly doubledown on this particular food source? That’s a burning question that you’ve got to answer. People don’t do that for no reason. We haven’t figured that out. Admittedly knowing nothing about archaeology or this time period, my money would be on the blight of another staple crop. It could be, but we just don’t have much evidence for that. My money is on a religious revival movement. I think that there was a movement of people and ideas that went from east to west across the Great Lakes that was connected to maize consumption, and production of a new kind of pottery vessel that symbolized something that was connected to the use of maize. That’s very vague, but it’s the closest I can come. There really doesn’t seem to be a very good environmental explanation for it at all. Is this the next great mystery in archaeology? The next great mystery is to see about farther north. There are contemporaneous populations in the same time period that live from Green Bay and north. They’ve got some interesting sites that look to be agriculture in the middle of the forest. They appear to be growing corn up in the northern forests. We haven’t got it quantified yet, but if it quantifies to about the same use of maize at about the same time period, but that far north? That, I think, will be an interesting way to think about corn and how it came to be some important to Native American populations. It really wasn’t important back, say, in AD 500, in the northeastern United States. It was not a very important food crop at all, but it suddenly became one, all over the place, at the same time. That defies our usual expectations. We like to think of things diffusing out from one place and then the idea spreads out in waves. That does not appear to be what’s going on here. By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science
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A digital dialogue: U Learning any new language can be hard, but studying Hebrew has a unique set of difficulties. It uses an entirely new alphabet, and students have to get used to reading from right to left instead of left to right. Diana Thomawong has an additional challenge: Her language teachers are more than a thousand miles away. “It works as long as you’re willing to put the time into it,” she said from her home in California. “The convenience of an online language class is nice.” Thomawong is one of a new crop of students who are taking advantage of UWM’s online language offerings. The university now offers four semesters of Hebrew online, and will offer online classes in German for the first time in the spring of 2020. Plans are in the works to begin offering French and Italian online as well. “I think these language offerings are going to be valuable, especially for less-commonly taught languages, like Hebrew, where students can’t necessarily go to their local university and find someone who’s going to be teaching Hebrew,” said Mike Darnell, “But they can ‘come’ to UWM and have that experience.” Darnell is an assistant dean of curriculum and governance in the College of Letters & Science. He’s helping bring UWM’s language courses online so that students across the country can attend UWM without ever stepping foot on campus. And now that UWM is offering these classes, Darnell added, students can more easily earn their degrees completely online as well. An online bachelor’s degree The College of Letters & Science requires students to take four semesters of a language other than English in order to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts, or two semesters of a language other than English for a Bachelor of Science. “I think you’re going to see students who already have college credit but dropped out for whatever reason coming back online for a completed degree,” Darnell said. “I think it’s going to be a huge thing for them.” For Thomawong, it means that she’ll be able to graduate this May with double majors in history and Jewish studies. “The convenience of online courses and also having a friendly user interface was what made the difference for me,” she said. The convenience can’t be overstated. Thomawong is a 35-year-old mother who manages her parents’ Thai restaurant in northern California. Between her family and
UWM expands online language offerings practicing the language with them. In a traditional classroom, “You see the teacher every day. You can ask questions right away and you hear the repetition. You’re with other students and you can hear them pronounce the words too,” Thomawong said. “With online classes, it’s up to the student to be resourceful.” With synchronous learning, however, those worries may be mitigated. Konewko notes that in UWM’s future Italian courses, “Instructors relate in real time proposing group activities, interactions among participants, and explanation of notions when students are struggling. Students receive immediate answers about any aspect of the learning process.” Four courses in Italian will be offered starting the in the fall of 2020. The wave of the future? Diana Thomawong smiles with her son. Thomawong takes classes from UWM online from her home in California. Photo courtesy of Diana Thomawong.
her job, Thomawong doesn’t have time to spend commuting to classes. Learning a language online There are several models for online language learning, including synchronous – where students will meet in an online classroom at a set time – and asynchronous, where students learn the material online but practice on their own time. Darnell says that the French and Italian classes UWM offers will be synchronous, while Hebrew classes are already asynchronous. German, will combine both methods. In any language, “Students access the courses remotely and utilize multimedia elements such as group chats, web seminars, and video conferencing,” said Simonetta Milli Konewko, an associate professor in UWM’s French, Italian, and Comparative Literature department. “This approach presents several
positive components that make this kind of learning very similar to a faceto-face delivery,” she added. There’s not much research yet indicating whether online language learning is any more difficult or easy than traditional classroom learning, but Darnell suspects there might be advantages to learning a language at a distance from your classmates. “I say this as a linguist. You can imagine the fear of some people have around embarrassing yourself when you try to say something (in a foreign language),” he said. “You can also imagine if you’re learning these things in a place where you don’t feel like anyone is watching you while you make mistakes, it could be considered easier.” The drawback is that students don’t get to hear their teachers and peers
In an increasingly digital world, online language offerings are a way to help more students in more places access a UWM education. Even so, Darnell said, there will always be a place for classroom learning. “There are cases where (students) simply prefer the classroom experience,” he said. Online languages are also a way to extend UWM’s reach, especially at a time when the population of collegeaged students is shrinking. “We see this as a real opportunity to allow students who wouldn’t be able to complete a degree otherwise to complete one. And too, the breadth of languages that we currently offer on this campus might well become much more sustainable,” Darnell added. “We’re expanding our campus.” By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science
College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 9
Super seniors: Auditors enjoy UWM classes Thirteen years ago, Russ Eisenberg took his first class at UWM. And then he took a history class. And a linguistics course. And a business ethics class. And then a class in political science. Today, he’s still not done learning. “You have to get out in the world and see what’s new,” Eisenberg said. “The world changes. There are different views. Professors can explain the newest research to you.” That’s why Eisenberg and his wife, Merzy, are senior auditors at UWM. The pair are happy grandparents, are retired, and love learning new things. Each enjoyed a long career; Merzy was the founding Hebrew/Jewish Studies teacher at Milwaukee Jewish Day School, and Russ was a lawyer and then a bankruptcy judge in the U. S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. In addition to classes, they are busy with music Russ with piano, and Merzy singing in four choirs. Russ also does some pro-bono photography work. They’re taking advantage of Wisconsin’s senior auditors program. Any Wisconsin resident age 60 or older can audit classes at any UW System institution without charge. There are exceptions; some professors choose not to allow auditors in their classes. Homework? Tests? Not a problem – auditors are not required to complete them, though they can if they want. Russ Eisenberg was teaching a class at University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison when he first learned about the senior auditor program. Curious, he enrolled in a class at UWM and found himself impressed by the caliber of the professors and the quality of the classes.
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Merzy and Russ Eisenberg are enjoying their retirement after long, successful careers. These days, they enjoy auditing UWM classes. Seniors in Wisconsin may audit almost any class offered at UW institutions for free. Photo courtesy of Merzy Eisenberg.
“UWM has outstanding professors, fine education, and it’s nearby,” he said. “Both Merzy and I believe that people, especially those who reside in the greater Milwaukee area, are fortunate to be near UWM because UWM has some truly outstanding instructors.” Consequently, he and Merzy choose which classes to take based on the professors they find particularly interesting. Between the two of them, they’ve taken a linguistics class with Fred Eckman, a class on Russian history with Christine Evans, and a business ethics course with Mike Freimark, a lecturer in the Lubar School of Business. They began with a course in Jewish Studies taught by Rachel Baum.
“Now (Freimark) has me come back once a year to teach a class on business ethics and responsibility from the perspective of a bankruptcy judge,” Russ Eisenberg said. In fact, many professors find that senior auditors have a lot to contribute to classes. “It gives my instruction such a boost to have senior auditors participate in my courses,” said history professor Amanda Seligman. “Imagine: people who could do just about anything with their time choose to spend three hours a week learning about history from me! Senior auditors bring so much to the classroom: they model curiosity and excitement about life-learning, they ask great
Jewish Studies receives $300K gift The Baye Foundation is at it again. This past September, the foundation gifted $300,000 to the Sam and Helen Stahl Center for Jewish Studies at UWM. “The donation will make a huge difference for the program,” said Joel Berkowitz, the director of the Sam and Helen Stahl Center for Jewish Studies. “This additional major gift from the Baye Foundation helps Jewish Studies at UWM move from strength to strength,” he added. “The gift provides significant new funding to help further develop our curriculum, foster the research and teaching activities of our faculty and academic staff, underwrite a wide array of public programs, and support our Jewish Studies majors.” Nathan and Perl Berkowitz, long-time supporters of Jewish education in Milwaukee, established the Baye Foundation. In 2009, the foundation donated $2 million to UWM to renovate the Greene Memorial Museum on campus and named it the Sam and Helen Stahl Center for Jewish Studies, after Pearl Berkowitz’s parents. The restored building sits at 3367 N. Downer Ave. The Baye Foundation board of trustees consists of Berkowitz family members. They are happy with the way Joel Berkowitz (no relation) and the Stahl Center have helped carry out the Berkowitz’s vision for greater Jewish education in the Milwaukee community. Inspired by this success, the Baye Foundation made the donation. “It’s important to have the Jewish Studies program at the university because it offers programming that otherwise would not be available to the Milwaukee community,” said Joan Eisenberg, the daughter of Nathan and Perl Berkowitz and director of the Baye Foundation. “It’s served to increase people’s knowledge and appreciation of Jewish studies.”
The funding will be allocated to four funds: 1. The Nathan and Pearl Berkowitz (Programming) Fund, which supports public programming including guest speakers, concerts, film screenings, and workshops. 2. The Stahl Center Distinguished Lecture Fund, which underwrites Joel Berkowitz one public lecture each year given by a leading scholar in any area of Jewish Studies. 3. The Wisconsin Society for Jewish Learning Fund, which will help expand and develop the UWM Jewish Studies curriculum as well as support faculty and staff research opportunities. 4. The Student Support Fund, which provides tuition assistance for Jewish Studies majors. The funds are making an impact: “The gift has already spurred new activity in our program, and will continue to benefit our work for years to come,” Joel Berkowitz said. The donation is generous, and Eisenberg is excited to see how it can help the Center grow. “I think the success of the Center makes it all worthwhile,” she said. By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science
questions about the readings, and they bring the depth of their personal experience to classroom conversations.”
how the Eisenberg’s daughter borrowed a prom dress from Justice Anthony Kennedy’s daughter when they were friends at Stanford University.
Case in point: When Russ took one of associate professor of political science Sara Benesh’s classes about the United States Supreme Court, he was able to relate the story of how he met former Chief Justice John Paul Stevens when the judge would visit the Seventh Circuit courts. Merzy told Benesh, whom she considers a “true expert” on the Supreme Court Justices, the story of
Russ and Merzy prefer not to speak up in class unless they’re called upon. The undergraduate students are graded on their participation, and it seems unfair to take any time away from them, Russ explained. They’re on the lookout for their next class – maybe another political science course, or perhaps sociology. They want
to keep learning. When Merzy is too busy rehearsing for choral concerts, Russ teaches her the content of the lectures he hears the next day as they are take a walk. There’s always something to talk about. “Merzy and I believe there is no such thing as remaining stationary,” Russ said. “You either move head or fall behind. And there’s no moving ahead without an education.” By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science
College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 11
A year in the legislature: Alum keeps CA lawm Sydney Chamberlin earned her PhD in physics from UWM in 2016. She was part of the team that helped identify gravitational waves, a discovery that rocked the astronomical world. Her expertise lies in black holes and pulsars. She had no idea what Quagga mussels were when she started working in the California legislature. “I remember going into the first week, someone told me they needed me to make a fact sheet about Quagga mussels. I was like, what’s a Quagga mussel? I’d never heard of that,” Chamberlin recalled with a laugh. She learned quickly. Chamberlin has spent the past year working in California’s state government as a fellow with the California Council on Science and Technology. CCST is a non-partisan nonprofit that was created in 1988 at the request of the state legislature. The organization advises lawmakers and provides expert opinions and analysis about certain scientific issues so legislators can make informed decisions about policy. “For example, this year they’ve had several expert briefings on wildfires,” Chamberlin said. Each year, CCST recruits 10 fellows, all with doctoral degrees in the sciences, to serve for a year in the legislature. Chamberlin and her cohort became committee consultants, each assigned to a different committee in the legislature where they both analyzed proposed legislation as well as penned their own bills for consideration. Chamberlin was assigned to the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Water. The committee deals with matters concerning fish, wildlife, forest management, and water. With her PhD in astrophysics, Chamberlin was admittedly outside of her wheelhouse.
UWM physics alum Sydney Chamberlin crosses one of Senator Henry Stern’s bills on the Senate desk. Sh California Council on Science and Technology.
“When CCST places you in a role in the legislature, it’s not about your scientific training at all. It’s completely about personality fit and whether you fit into the culture of the office,” she said. “You’re not necessarily going to work on science that’s tied to your degree. I certainly knew that was going to be the case for me. Nobody legislates about gravitational waves or black holes right now.”
To prepare for their roles, Chamberlin and the other fellows underwent a month-long “policy boot camp” where they learned the finer points of California’s government, the current political climate, the role of legislative staffers, and other essential information. Then came the hard work. “My job was to do research on all of these proposed bills and try to decide if it’s a sound policy idea,” Chamberlin
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makers informed through fellowship the same skills to learn about the science surrounding bills that addressed water permitting and animal management. Along the way, she learned to navigate the interests of various lobbying groups and concerned citizens. For instance, one bill that crossed her desk concerned the use of rodenticides, poisons used for controlling small pests like mice and rats. She took meetings from exterminators and environmental groups alike as she researched the issue. In addition, she crafted the language on several pieces of legislation. “I actually helped write the language for a couple of bills that have been signed into law, one of which streamlines the water permitting process here in California. The other bill extends environmental protections for an invasive species program,” Chamberlin said. “I felt really proud about having worked on those bills, basically shepherding them through the legislative process so they were able to be signed into law by the governor.” Chamberlin has always been interested in politics and government. She grew up in a politically vocal family in Salt Lake City, Utah, and volunteered for Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012. When she learned about the opportunity to become a CCST fellow, Chamberlin jumped at the chance to apply.
he crossed two additional bills for the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Water. Photo courtey of Now that her year of service has come to an
said. “Does it solve the problem it sets out to solve? Are there unintended consequences? What does the science say? Then I would prepare a written document called a bill analysis, which is a public-facing document that the legislators and their staff can use to be informed about the issue.” That’s where she put her UWM degree to use. As a PhD student, Chamberlin was used to analyzing mounds of data and conducting thorough research. She used
end, Chamberlin has embarked on a new career journey – this time as a Climate Policy Associate with The Nature Conservancy, a large environmental conservation group. “I’m so happy to have landed here,” she said. “I really owe the fellowship for this opportunity I have now.” By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science
College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 13
$2.8 million grant boosts effort by UWM and others to harness cosmic data The National Science Foundation awarded UWM and nine other collaborating organizations $2.8 million to further develop the concept for a Scalable Cyberinfrastructure Institute for Multi-Messenger Astrophysics. Multi-messenger astrophysics combines observations of light, gravitational waves and particles to understand some of the most extreme events in the universe. For example, the observation of gravitational waves and light from the collision of two neutron stars in 2017 helped explain the origin of heavy elements, allowed an independent measurement of the expansion of the universe and confirmed the association between neutron-star mergers and gamma-ray bursts. “Multi-Messenger Astrophysics is a data-intensive science in its infancy that is already transforming our understanding of the universe,” said Patrick Brady, UWM physics professor and director of the Leonard E. Parker Center for Gravitation, Cosmology and Astrophysics. “The promise of multi-messenger astrophysics, however, can be realized only if sufficient cyberinfrastructure is available to rapidly handle, combine, and analyze the very large-scale distributed data from all types of astronomical measurements. The conceptualization phase of SCIMMA will balance rapid prototyping, novel algorithm development and software sustainability to accelerate scientific discovery over the next decade and more.” The goal of the institute, called SCIMMA, is to develop algorithms, databases, and computing and networking cyberinfrastructure to help scientists interpret multimessenger observations. SCIMMA will facilitate global collaborations, thus transcending the capabilities of any single existing institution or team. “SCIMMA is bringing data scientists, computer scientists, astronomers, astro-particle physicists and gravitationalwave physicists together to leverage NSF investments in large astronomical facilities and cyberinfrastructure,” said Amy Walton, program director, NSF Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure. These investments include the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), IceCube Neutrino Observatory, Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), and multiple cosmic ray and neutrino observatories. “SCIMMA is supported by two of NSF’s Big Ideas — Harnessing the Data Revolution and Windows on the
“The promise of multi-messenger astrophysics can be realized only if sufficient cyberinfrastructure is available to rapidly handle, combine and analyze the large-scale distributed data from all types of astronomical measurements,” said Patrick Brady, physics professor and director of the Leonard E. Parker Center for Gravitation, Cosmology and Astrophysics. (UWM Photo/Pete Amland)
Universe,” added Nigel Sharp, program director in the NSF Division of Astronomical Sciences. The SCIMMA project, entitled “A Framework for Data Intensive Discovery in Multi-Messenger Astrophysics,” is under the direction of Brady and co-principal investigators Chad Hanna (Penn State), Mario Juric (University of Washington) and David L. Kaplan (UWM). “The SCIMMA project team is excited to play a part in making NSF’s ‘Big Ideas’ a reality,” said UWM Chancellor Mark Mone, “and is working diligently to bring scientists and cyberinfrastructure experts closer together to harness the data revolution and open windows on the universe.” Project collaborators include Columbia University; Cornell University Center for Advanced Computing (CAC) and the Department of Astronomy; Las Cumbres Observatory; Michigan State University; Pennsylvania State UniversityUniversity Park; University of California-Santa Barbara; National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin; and the University of Washington. The project’s two-year conceptualization phase began Sept.1, 2019. Besides enabling seamless co-analysis of disparate datasets by supporting the interoperability of software and data services, this phase will include the development of novel education and training curricula designed to enhance the STEM workforce. By Laura Otto, University Relations
14 • IN FOCUS • December, 2019
Alumni Accomplishments
Laurels and Accolades Nan Kim (History) was awarded the 2019 Scott Bills Memorial Prize by the Peace History Society for her book, Memory, Reconciliation, and Reunions in South Korea: Crossing the Divide. The award is given every two years for a first book that represents an outstanding English-language work in the field of Peace History. The book analyzes cultural politics of inter-Korean reconciliation and explores a series of emotionally charged meetings among family members who had lost all contact for over 50 years on opposite sides of the Korean divide. Jeffrey Sommers (African and African Diaspora Studies and Global Studies) received a U.S. State Department Fulbright Specialist Project award to support his project titled, “Research in Developing Sustainable Political and Social Economies” with BabesBolyai University in Romania beginning in May of 2020. Erica Bornstein (Anthropology) was elected President of the Association for Political and Legal Anthropology (APLA), the section of the American Anthropological Association committed to critical study of politics and law. Her two-year term began in November.
Roxann Dirnberger (Polacek) (’92, BA Anthropology and Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies) presented “Raising to the Next Level” as a featured speaker of Women in Leadership of La Porte County in Michigan City, Indiana, in November. Dirnberger is a Principal at RDF Consulting, LLC, and a member of the board of the Women’s Business Owners of Michiana, the American marketing Association-Michiana Chapter, and the South Bend Regional Chamber of Commerce. https://bit.ly/2Noh2b2
Tim Rhode (’04, Masters of Public Administration) was named the new administrator for the Village of Hartland, Wisconsin. His term begins in January. Rhode was chosen from a pool of 30 candidates to lead the village. His is currently the administrator for the town of Cedarburg, Wisconsin. https://bit.ly/2NPX8og Claudia Delgadillo (’19, BA Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies) joined the staff of the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service focusing on the entrepreneurship, culture, and health beats. Delgadillo is an advanced Spanish speaker and has interned with WISN 12 News and WUWM Radio. https://bit.ly/2Kyzdcp
Alexander Hagler (’13, BA Urban Studies) recently opened Center Street Wellness, a business specializing in wellness products and classes, in Milwaukee’s Harambee/Bronzeville neighborhood. The business was featured on OnMilwaukee.com. The store offers a variety of teas, soaps, and other products, as well as yoga and group fitness classes. https://bit.ly/2D06EjJ
Passings Dr. Richard Warren passed away on October 15, 2019. He was a Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Psychology Department at UWM, and a noted expert on auditory perception. Dr. Warren received a PhD in organic chemistry from New York University. He transitioned to studying psychology at Brown University and then held a senior postdoctoral fellowship through the National Academy of Sciences, and he taught at Shimer College. Dr. Warren began teaching at UWM in 1964 and was based at UWM for the rest of his career, although he also conducted research for Cambridge University, Oxford University, the NYU College of Medicine, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Company in Tokyo. Dr. Warren became a Distinguished Professor in 1975 and retired from UWM in 1995, but continued research at the university for a number of years following his retirement. Dr. Warren authored several books, and published research papers and journal articles from the 1950s into the 2010s. Dr. Warren’s obituary is online. Visitation will be held on Friday, Dec. 6, from 1-2 p.m. at Wisconsin Memorial
Park-Chapel of the Flowers, 13235 W. Capitol Drive, in Brookfield. College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 15
In the Media and Around the Community Look Here! is an initiative that asks artists to create projects that reimagined, transformed, and egaged with the objects in the UWM Libraries’ Digital Collections. Marc Tasman (Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies) gave a joint presentation on the topic at the Society for Photographic Education Midwest Conference in Milwaukee in October. A new beer pays tribute to the 19th-century women who labored in the Midwest hop industry. “Ella” is a beer inspired by the research of Jennifer Jordan (Sociology) into a young hop picker who kept a diary in Sauk County, Wisconsin, in the 1870s. The brew debuted in Chicago at a four-day Beer Culture Summit where Jordan was an invited speaker. https://bit.ly/2Cl13Eg After plans for a proposed meat processing plant to be built in Milwaukee’s poorest neighborhood were shut down, Jeffrey Sommers (African and African Diaspora Studies and Global Studies) discussed how the move harms residents of the 53206 zipcode in an article for Counterpunch.org. https://bit.ly/2JVwSry Kimberly Blaeser (English) celebrated her fourth book of poetry, “Copper Yeaning,” with a reading and reception at Woodland Pattern Book Center. Blaeser was Wisconsin Poet Laureate for 2015-2016. Cary Costello (Sociology and LGBT Studies) discussed the relationship between transgender experiences and artistic expression during a talk in October at the Milwaukee Art Museum. (https://youtu. be/WBnrfy0xsQs) Later in November, he discussed violence against transsexual people on Fox 6 News. (https://bit.ly/37hvg5v) More regulation is needed to tell if a CBD product contains the actual, advertised amount of THC, Krista Lisdahl (Psychology) told TMJ4 News. https://bit.ly/2Kmyzyt
16 • IN FOCUS • December, 2019
Gary Nosacek (’78, BA Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies) serves as the Milwaukee Catholic Archdiocese’s circus and rodeo minister and was featured in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for his unusual job. https://bit.ly/2qcKojL
Though Wisconsin’s unemployment rates are up compared to this time last year, John Heywood (Economics) told the Post Crescent that unemployment rates have been so low the only direction they can go is up. (https://bit. ly/33SWD3A) He also told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that though job growth has slowed in Wisconsin, the state is still putting up respectable employment numbers. (https://bit.ly/2DkHRqK) Nan Kim (History) sat on a roundtable panel at a University of Notre Dame event entitled, “Building Sustainable Peace: Ideas, Evidence, and Strategies” (Nov. 8-10) an interdisciplinary conference on the state of the field of peace research and peace-building practice. The event was held at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. As a lesbian woman serving in the Air Force during the era of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” veteran-turned-UWM-graduatestudent Kimberly Stuart (Nonprofit Administration) lived in fear of her sexuality being revealed. Now, she’s the CEO of Veterans for Diversity, and she was profiled on Veteran’s Day in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. https:// bit.ly/2CFmMab
Paul Lyman (Physics) was the featured Science Bag presenter of “Cooked: Science in the Kitchen” in November. He sat down with WUWM’s Lake Effect to explain some of the science behind the culinary arts. https://bit.ly/2qrcW9j
After a shooting in California claimed the lives of four Hmong men and wounded six others, Chia Youyee Vang (History) told The New York Times she was shocked by the killing and dismayed at the suggestion that the victims had gang ties. https://nyti.ms/2OpHbH1
Upcoming Events
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December 2 - 19
Art History Exhibit: Work+Water. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Emile H. Mathis Gallery (Mitchell Hall). The gallery is open Monday-Thursday and is free and open to the public. https://bit.ly/2nyKCQy
December 4
Women’s & Gender Studies’ Brown Bag Lunch: A Woman’s Work in the Military-Gender & Military Recruiting in the 1990s and 2000s. 12:30 p.m. Curtin 535B. Jeremiah Favara, UWM. https://bit.ly/2XZogG7
December 5
The Unbearable Whiteness of Post-Soviet Immigration. 12:30 p.m. Merrill 131. Author Claudia Sadowski-Smith discusses the cultural politics of immigrants to the U.S. Geosciences Colloquium: The end-Permian mass extinction from a high southern palaeolatitude perspective. 4 p.m. Lapham N103. Christopher Fielding, University of NebraskaLincoln.
December 6
Neuroscience Seminar: Corticolimbic circuits in regulating reward-seeking and fear behaviors in response to discriminative safety cues. 2 p.m. Lapham N101. Susan Sangha, Purdue University. Geography Colloquium: Effects of Police Violence on Community. 3 p.m. AGS Library. Aki Roberts, UWM.
December 6
Anthropology Colloquium: Family Truths, Fabrications, and Absences in the Transnational Circulation of Parentless Muslim Children. 3:30 p.m. Sabing G28. Katherine E. Hoffman, Northwestern University.
December 6 - 13
Planetarium Show: Celestial Celebrations. Fridays at 7 p.m. and 8:15 p.m. Manfred Olson Planetarium. Tickets are $6 and are available online. Family-friendly. https://bit.ly/2NqRwRg
December 8
Planetarium Holiday Sing-a-Long: Music by the Light of the Stars. 2 p.m. Manfred Olson Planetarium. Music provided by UWM Collegium Musicum. Tickets are $6. The show is not intended for children under 4. https://bit.ly/37Jiop0
December 12
Planetarium Event: Moonlight Meditation. 4 p.m. Manfred Olson Planetarium. Join the Planetarium Club Pipeline Vision and the Essence of Power. 3 p.m. Curtin at UWM and the Mediation Group at UWM for a guided 175. Brian R. Jacobson, University of Toronto, discusses meditation. Free and open to all UWM students. the role of undersea photography in the expansion of the https://bit.ly/2QTShpr French petroleum industry. Sponsored by the Center for Geosciences Colloquium: From Source to Sink, Late 21st Century Studies. https://bit.ly/34shIlR Devonian Algal Cysts Delivered to the Gulf of Mexico Physics Colloquium: Imaging the “Baryon Cycle” of during the Last Glaciation. 4 p.m. Lapham N103. Forming Galaxies. 3 p.m. Lapham N160. Chuck Steidel, Brandon Curry, University of Illinois. Caltech. College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 17
Program Spotlight: Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies Students in Journalism, Advertising and Media Studies class 380 (“Event Planning”) had the opportunity to obtain hands-on practical experience by planning a campus event for Intersex Awareness Week. They conceptualized the Gender Unraveled event, found sponsorship, fundraised, and brought in three guest speakers: •
DawnMark Bacon-Johnson shared her decades-long story of being raised as a girl, discovering they are intersex in their mid-forties, and self-advocating for correct treatment and past medical records.
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Vaughan Larsen (’19 BFA in art) showed how photography enables them to live experiences often reserved to cisgender heterosexuals and create closer bonds to family and friends.
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Elena Hight, a graduate student at UW-Madison, shared her life journey of discovering she is intersex through the power of song.
