Emeritus Professor Lyndon Carew will receive the College of Agriculture and Life Science's 2013 Sinclair Cup award for serving CALS with distinction as a member of the faculty for the majority of his professional career.

The Graduate College awarded Ben Green, a doctoral candidate in animal science, one of the two university-wide Graduate Teaching Assistant awards for the 2012-2013 academic year.

Betsy Greene, professor of animal science, will be presented with the American Society of Animal Scientists 2013 Equine Science Award at the ADSA-ASAS joint annual meeting in Indianapolis in July.

The Center for the Study of Citizenship at Wayne State University has awarded Jonah Steinberg, assistant professor of anthropology, the 2013 Book Award for his work, Isma'ili Modern: Globalization and Identity in a Muslim Community (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2011).

Richard L. Gamelli, senior vice president and provost of the Health Sciences Division at Loyola University Chicago and a member of the UVM Board of Trustees, has been awarded the President’s Leadership Award from the American Burn Association. Dr. Gamelli is a past president of the ABA and currently serves as president of the International Society for Burn Injuries. The award recognizes truly distinguished and exceptional service to the ABA and to the profession of burn care. It is awarded on a periodic basis to acknowledge such leadership qualities as: vision, dedication, courage, and steadfastness in the service of ABA, burn-care professionals and burn-injured patients.

University of Vermont Professor of Neurological Sciences Gary Mawe was recently honored by the International Foundation for Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders for his role in the scientific advancement in the area of chronic digestive disorders. Mawe was one of eight 2013 Research Award recipients who were recognized at the 10th International Symposium on Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders held in Milwakee, Wisc., April 12 to 14. Mawe was the awardee in the Senior Basic Investigator category. Read more.

Lisa Champagne, director of UVM athletic communications, will be honored with the 2013 Irving T. Marsh Award for the University Division at this June's annual ECAC-SIDA Workshop in Manchester, N.H. The Irving T. Marsh Award is given annually to both a University (Division I or II) and College Division (Division III, NAIA) or Junior College ECAC Sports Information Directors Association member who, in the opinion of the ECAC-SIDA membership and Executive Board, has exhibited excellence in the field of sports information. Learn more.

Publications and Presentations

The following were co-authored by Ted Flanagan, emeritus professor of chemistry: "Phase Transformatin and Crystallization Kinetics of Melt-Spun Ni60Nb20Zr20" in the Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids; "Hydrogen Permeability and Crystallization Kinetics in Amorphous Ni-Nb-Zr Alloys" in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy; and "H2 Isotherms and Diffusion Parameters of H in fcc Pd-Mg Alloys" in the Journal of Physical Chemistry.

The Lawrence Debate Union particpiated in the U.S. Universities Debating Championship held in southern California, where 160 teams from all over the nation competed. Team members Drew Adamczyk '14 and Mariel Golden '15 reached the semifinal round, and Sarina Selleck '14 and Rebecca White '15 reached the quarterfinal round. Adamczyk was recognized as the #9 debater in the U.S.  While the tournament was won by Yale, the University of Vermont had better results by its top two teams than any other university. Alumnus John Sadek '12 was named the top judge in America by his fellow adjudicators.

Redstone Lofts on Redstone Campus was winner of the Burlington Business Association's Architectural Excellence Award, given in memory of Hertzel Pa­sackow, owner of the Mayfair on upper Church Street and founding member of both the BBA and the Church Street Mar­ketplace Commission. The developers, UVM alumni Doug Nedde ’84 and Larry Williams ’81, accepted the award at the April 4 dinner ceremony. Learn more about the 400-bed on-campus apartment complex.

Emeritus professor of chemistry Christopher W. Allen along with co author Kenneth R. Carter published an article titled “Mixed Substituent Poly[(vinyloxy)cyclotriphosphazenes]” in the Journal of Polymer Science, Part A: Polymer Chemistry. He also continues to serve as president of the Vermont Academy of Science and Engineering. In that role, he participated in the recent second round of reviews of the next Generation of Science and Engineering Standards for K-12 schools. He also initiated a competitive VASE grant program for small equipment to be used for innovated student projects in Vermont schools.

Fourth-year University of Vermont medical student Haddon Pantel and his wife will be recognized with the 2013 Ann Atherton Award at the 28^th Annual Burlington Dismas House Dinner & Auction. Named for a long-time Dismas volunteer, the Ann Atherton Award is presented annually to dedicated volunteers who through their efforts, make a difference in the Dismas community, a residential program that aims to reconcile prisoners with society and society with prisoners. Read more.

The University of Vermont Medical Group at Fletcher Allen recently presented awards to five of its physician members in recognition of their exceptional research efforts. The UVM Medical Group consists of approximately 450 physicians from all fields of medicine devoted to advancing patient care through clinical and laboratory research, and educating the next generation of providers. Award winners include Isabelle Desjardins, M.D., UVM associate professor of anesthesiology and medical director of inpatient psychiatry at Fletcher Allen; David Krag, M.D., S.D. Ireland Professor of Surgery at UVM and a surgical oncologist at Fletcher Allen; Mary Cushman, M.D., professor of medicine and pathology at UVM and medical director of the Thrombosis and Hemostasis Program at Fletcher Allen; Kalev Freeman, M.D., Ph.D., UVM assistant professor of surgery and emergency medicine specialist at Fletcher Allen; and Renee Stapleton, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine and pulmonologist and critical care physician at Fletcher Allen. Read more.

The University of Vermont School of Business Administration has maintained its business accreditation by AACSB International—The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. Founded in 1916, AACSB International is the longest serving global accrediting body for business schools that offer undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degrees in business and accounting. Read more.

Michael Strauss, emeritus professor of chemistry, has published a new book, The Mind at Hand: What Drawing Reveals: Stories of Exploration, Discovery and Design (BrownWalker Press). The book "explores how artists, scientists, writers, and others -- students and professionals alike -- see their world, record it, revise it and come to know it." Learn more.

Rory Waterman, associate professor of chemistry, has received a fellowship award from the Humboldt Foundation to support his research during a sabbatical next year. Waterman plans to work with Prof. Manfred Scheer at the University of Regensburg in Germany. “I hope to reinvigorate my old interest in metal-phosphorus multiple bonding,” Waterman said. “Beyond that, I hope to build some European connections to start a program in phosphorus remediation when I return.”

Alice Schermerhorn, assistant professor of psychology, published a paper in the journal Child Development. The article, “Temperament Moderates Associations Between Exposure to Stress and Children's Externalizing Problems,” is currently online and forthcoming in print. Schermerhorn and her colleagues found that children who tend to be both fearful in novel situations and to be low in self-regulation are more likely than other children to have behavior problems when exposed to stress. Read the article.

In honor of the late Armin Grams, a UVM human development and family studies faculty member, and his commitment and passion for aging, the Center on Aging at UVM has established the Armin Grams Memorial Research Award to support pilot research projects that will lead to extramural funding in aging research. UVM professor of medicine Naomi Fukagawa and Jane Kolodinsky, professor of community development and applied economics, have been announced as the award’s first recipients for their joint project proposal titled “Community-Based Nutrition Intervention in Affordable Housing for Elders.” The award presentation will take place on Friday, Feb. 22  at 4 p.m. in room 200 of the Health Science Research Facility. Learn more.

Gund Fellow Jon Erickson, BrightBlue EcoMedia, and Mountain Lake PBS released  “Lake Defenders” which explores the ecological and economic issues of aquatic invasive species impact in Lake George. The film highlighting both the successes and mounting challenges faced by the shoreline communities that depend on a healthy lake system. The 30-minute educational documentary promotes public awareness and participation in stopping the spread of invasive species, and provides a case study in management practices as a model for hundreds of communities nationwide.

Patricia Prelock, dean of the College of Nursing and Health Sciences, professor of communication sciences and disorders, and professor of pediatrics, has been appointed president of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, based in Maryland. Prelock is a board-recognized specialist in child language and coordinates parent-training programs for caregivers and providers who serve children with autism spectrum disorders. Prelock will serve a one-year term.

Publications and Presentations

Three faculty from the Department of Social Work recently presented at the Society for Social Work and Research annual conference “Social Work for a Just Society: Making Visible the Stakes and Stakeholders" held in San Diego, Jan. 16-20. Kelly Melekis, assistant professor, presented on “Older Adults’ Pathways Through Homelessness” as part of a symposium on “Aging and Economic Vulnerability.” George Leibowitz, assistant professor, organized a symposium on "Developmental Trajectories to Delinquency, Socioemotional Disturbance, and the Characteristics of Family Environments Among Male Adolescent Sexual Offenders" and presented a paper on “The Role of Callous and Unemotional (CU) Traits” co-authored with Timothy Stickle, associate professor of psychology. Jessica Strolin-Goltzman, assistant professor, was part of a panel presenting on “Measuring Change with Longitudinal Data” and was a co-author on another presentation entitled “Engaging Interdisciplinary Partners to Examine Treatment Participation and Change In Neural Activation: Results from an fMRI Clinical Trial for Substance-Dependent Adults.”

The critical link between discovery science and new medical treatments and cures is the focus of a “Viewpoint” piece featured in the December 2012 issue of the Association of American Medical College’s AAMC Reporter. The article is co-authored by Dr. Richard Galbraith, University of Vermont professor of medicine and director of the Center for Clinical and Translational Science.

Paul Hines has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award for $400,000 for his research proposal entitled, “Harnessing Smart Grid Data to Enable Resilient and Efficient Electricity." Hines, an assistant professor in the College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, leads a research program seeking "technology that can make power grids more resilient, including the ability to better incorporate variable power sources, such as wind and power," he says. The CAREER program is the NSF’s most prestigious award in support of junior faculty “who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations,” the NSF notes.

Carol Buck Rolland, associate professor of nursing, received a two-year, $699,972 Health Resources and Services Administration Advanced Education Nursing Traineeship grant. Buck-Rolland serves as project director of the grant, which helps support UVM nurse practitioner students.

Publications and Presentations

Domenico Grasso, vice president for research and dean of the Graduate College, was a keynote speaker at Engineers Without Borders Canada’s annual conference, “Class of 2016: What’s possible in a generation of systemic change, ” held Jan. 12-13 in Calgary, Alberta. Grasso spoke as part of the conference’s Global Engineering Symposium on the challenges of educating the 21st century engineer.

Stephen Higgins, professor of psychiatry, and Stacey Sigmon, associate professor of psychiatry, are co-editors and contributors to a special supplement to the November 2012 issue of the journal Preventive Medicine on Incentives and Health. The supplement is devoted to a review of the scientific evidence on the use of modest financial incentives for promoting health – a model developed by Higgins that is founded on the use of small monetary rewards in exchange for healthy behavior compliance. This low-cost approach has been successfully applied to reinforce a variety of healthy behaviors in studies and public health initiatives around the world. In addition to Higgins and Sigmon, UVM contributors to the special supplement include Philip Ades, professor of medicine; Ira Bernstein, professor and chair of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences; Diann Gaalema, assistant professor of psychiatry; Hugh Garavan, associate professor of psychiatry; Sarah Heil, assistant professor of psychiatry; Evan Hermann, predoctoral fellow in psychiatry; Tara M. Higgins, first-year medical student; Mollie Patrick, predoctoral fellow in psychiatry; Laura Solomon, professor of family medicine and psychology emerita; and Karen Weierstall, research project assistant in psychiatry.

Dr. Helene Langevin, professor of neurological sciences, has been appointed director of the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Read more.

Publications and Presentations

A new study, led by Dr. Daniel Weiss, professor of medicine and a pulmonologist at Fletcher Allen Health Care, was the first-ever clinical trial examining the potential of mesenchymal stem cell therapy to reduce chronic pulmonary and systemic inflammation in patients with moderate to severe Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder (COPD). The results were published online Nov. 22, in CHEST, the journal of the American College of Chest Physicians. Read more.

Kenneth I. Gross, professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, has been selected as an American Mathematical Society (AMS) Inaugural Fellow, and will be officially inducted into the Fellows of the AMS Program in early January at a ceremony in conjunction with the 2013 national mathematics meetings in San Diego. The Fellows of the American Mathematical Society program recognizes “members who have made outstanding contributions to the creation, exposition, advancement, communication, and utilization of mathematics.”

André-Denis Wright, chair of the Department of Animal Science, is collaborating on an international project with Aarhaus University in Denmark titled “Reduction of methane emissions from dairy cows and concurrent improvement of feed efficiency obtained through host genetics and next generation sequencing of rumen microbiome.” The project is the recipient of $2.1M grant the Danish Strategic Research Council.

The American Folklore Society, the U.S.-based international society for the field of folklore studies, has bestowed its highest award for scholarship, the AFS Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Award, on Professor Wolfgang Mieder of the UVM Department of German and Russian. Diane Goldstein, president of the society, says Mieder is a "leading global ambassador for folklore." "He has written several indispensable reference works and bibliographies and has contributed significantly to the intellectual history of international folklore studies," she says. "He has also crossed disciplinary boundaries, making a significant impact on the allied fields of politics, literature, history, art, linguistics and media studies."

Third-year University of Vermont medical student Vanessa Patten was awarded a $10,000 scholarship by the Vermont Medical Society’s Education and Research Foundation at the Society’s annual meeting, held October 27, 2012 in Woodstock, Vt. Read more.

Publications and Presentations

Building on surprising 2011 study results – that asthma in obese individuals is due to a combination of the effects of weight on airway function and metabolic changes in fat affecting the airways – Associate Professor Anne Dixon and colleagues recently reported another critical discovery in the Oct. 1 American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. The new results show that the adipose – or fat – tissue around the abdomen appears to play a role in abnormal airway function in obese individuals. Read more.

On the occasion of the twenty-year celebration of the founding of its Department for the Study of Religions, Professor Emeritus Luther H. Martin was presented by the philosophical faculty of Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic, a memorial medallion honoring those “who have made an outstanding and effective contribution in nurturing letters and sciences and in supporting endeavors of (their) faculty.” Martin was key to founding this department in 1992 and continuing its development of a “scientific platform” for the academic study of religion. Additionally, he hosted exchange students and research faculty from Masaryk University at UVM and served there as a visiting full professor in 2010.

George F. Pinder has been named a 2012 Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). Pinder, along with ten other recipients, received a medal memorializing this achievement during the ASCE’s 142nd Annual Civil Engineering Conference, Oct. 18-20, 2012 in Montreal, Quebec. ASCE regards this award as the highest honor to which a civil engineer can aspire. Pinder is a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering with secondary appointments in Mathematics and Statistics and Computer Science, at the University of Vermont’s College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences. To view the ASCE biographical video spotlighting Pinder’s achievements visit: http://www.asce.org/Distinguished-Member-Videos/

Vikas Anathy, research associate of pathology in the College of Medicine, has received a competitive unrestricted grant from the American Thoracic Society Foundation/Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation for his research project application, titled “Genetic Role of endoplasmic reticulum stress and epithelial apoptosis in allergen induced airway fibrosis.” Read more.

The School of Business Administration has been named an “Exemplary Beta Gamma Sigma Chapter” for the 2011-2012 year. Beta Gamma Sigma is an international honor society that recognizes the outstanding academic achievements of students enrolled in collegiate business and management programs. Membership in Beta Gamma Sigma is the highest recognition a student can receive in an undergraduate or master’s program in business schools accredited by the International Association to Advance College Schools of Business or AACSB. Read more.

Kheng Newick and Brian Cunniff, two University of Vermont doctoral students in the Cell, Molecular and Biomedical Sciences Program, recently received prestigious awards. Newick received a travel award to attend the International Mesothelioma Interest Group (iMIG) meeting, which took place September 11 to 14, 2012 in Boston, Mass., where she presented a poster titled “Combinatorial Approaches for Targeting Mitochondrial Redox Signaling and FOXM1 Expression in Malignant Mesothelioma.” Cunniff was recently awarded a four-month Society for Free Radical Biology and Medicine Research mini-fellowship, which began in September 2012. Currently working in Cambridge, England with Michael Murphy, Ph.D., in the Mitochondrial Biology Unit of the Medical Research Council, Cunniff is conducting a research project titled “Combinatorial Approaches for Targeting Mitochondrial Redox Signalling and FOXM1 Expression in Malignant Mesothelioma.” He was also recently presented a Young Investigator Award for his platform presentation titled “Mitochondrial Architecture, Oxidant Production and Redox Signaling in Malignant Mesothelioma Cells,” at the Society for Free Radical Research International meeting, which was held September 6 to 9, 2012, at Imperial College in London, England. Both students are being mentored by Nicholas Heintz, professor of pathology. Learn more.

In a series of talks at the United States General Accountability Office on Sept. 26 and 27, UVM professors Christopher Koliba and Asim Zia from the Community Development & Applied Economics Department, and fellows with the Vermont Complex Systems Center and the James M. Jeffords Policy Research Center, discussed the tools and techniques currently being used to model and evaluate interagency network performance and accountability. Koliba presented a talk titled, “Assessing Complex Public Sector Networks: New Developments in Research Design and Methodology.” Zia presented a talk titled, “Computer Simulation Models of Interagency  Networks: Applications to Transportation Infrastructure Planning and Watershed  Management.” In both presentations research and modeling efforts funded through grants from the National Science Foundation and the James M. Jeffords Policy Research Center were discussed. Their talks were sponsored by the Applied Research and Methods Division of GAO.

Austin Troy, director of UVM’s Transportation Research Center, will give a keynote address at the Yale Forestry School quinquennial reunion, October 19, 2012. The reunion’s theme is “Sustainability and the City,” and Troy will speak about his new book, The Very Hungry City: Urban Energy Efficiency and the Economic Fate of Cities. Troy completed his undergraduate and master’s degrees at Yale and is a professor with appointments in UVM’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources and the College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences.

Alan Wertheimer, professor emeritus of political science and senior research scholar, Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health gave a lecture at the annnual meeting of the German Association of Ethics in Medicine in Hamburg, Germany on Sept. 28, 2012: "The Ethics of Using Payment to Recruit Subjects for Psychiatric Research."

Awards and Honors 

Richard L. Gamelli, senior vice president and provost of the Health Sciences Division at Loyola University Chicago and a member of UVM's board of trustees, has been named president of the International Society for Burn Injuries. Dr. Gamelli, a graduate of the UVM College of Medicine, accepted the nomination of president at the ISBI annual meeting in Scotland in September and will serve a two-year term.