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Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences |
Thorne Lay, professor of Earth and planetary sciences at UC Santa Cruz, has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, one of the nation's oldest and most prestigious honorary societies.
Lay was among 212 new fellows and honorary members of the academy announced this week. He joins 23 other UCSC faculty who are fellows of the academy. Drawn from the sciences, the arts and humanities, business, public affairs, and the nonprofit sector, the newly elected members are recognized leaders in their fields. They include Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, Nobel Prize winners Linda Buck and Craig Mello, filmmakers Ethan and Joel Cohen, and blues guitarist B.B. King.
An eminent seismologist, Lay is known for his contributions to earthquake seismology, the use of seismic waves to probe the structure of the deep Earth, and the development of methods for monitoring the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. He has served on many national and international committees, including the board of directors of the Incorporated Research Insitutions for Seismology (IRIS), which operates a global network of seismic monitoring stations. As chair of the board of IRIS, Lay organized the scientific analysis of the great Sumatra-Andaman earthquake of December 2004.
"The academy honors excellence by electing to membership remarkable men and women who have made preeminent contributions to their fields, and to the world," said academy president Emilio Bizzi. "We are pleased to welcome into the academy these new members to help advance our founders' goal of 'cherishing knowledge and shaping the future.'"
At UCSC, Lay has served as founding director of the UCSC branch of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics (IGPP), director of the Institute of Tectonics, and chair of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. He currently directs the Center for the Study of Imaging and Dynamics of the Earth, part of the IGPP. Lay earned a B.S. in geomechanics at the University of Rochester and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in geophysics at the California Institute of Technology. He joined the UCSC faculty in 1989. |
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Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics;
Astronomer, UC Observatories/ Lick Observatory |
Claire Max, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of her distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Election to the academy is considered one of the highest honors that can be accorded a scientist or engineer. Max joins 12 other UCSC faculty who are members of the academy.
"Claire Max is widely admired for her many contributions to plasma physics, astronomy, and astronomical instrumentation," said Sandra Faber, University Professor and chair of astronomy and astrophysics at UCSC.
Max is a pioneer in the field of adaptive optics, a technology that removes the blurring effects of turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere, allowing telescopes on the ground to see as clearly as if they were in space. A coinventor of the laser guide star technique for astronomical adaptive optics, she has helped revolutionize the capabilities of ground-based telescopes.
Max directs the Center for Adaptive Optics, a Science and Technology Center funded by the National Science Foundation and headquartered at UCSC. She has been active in the development of advanced adaptive optics systems for current and future large ground-based telescopes. Her current research in astronomy involves the use of adaptive optics to study merging black holes at the centers of galaxies.
Earlier in her career, Max studied the plasma physics aspects of laser fusion at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). She made important contributions to laser-plasma interactions and to the understanding of astrophysical plasmas.
A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Max received the E. O. Lawrence Award in Physics in 2004. She earned her A.B. degree in astronomy from Harvard University (Radcliffe College) and her Ph.D. in astrophysical sciences and plasma physics from Princeton University. Max joined the UCSC faculty in 1999.
Max is among 72 new members whose election to the academy was announced today. The National Academy of Sciences is a private organization of scientists and engineers dedicated to the furtherance of science and its use for the general welfare. It was established in 1863 by a congressional act of incorporation signed by Abraham Lincoln that calls on the academy to act as an official adviser to the federal government, upon request, in any matter of science or technology. |
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Associate Professor of Community Studies |
Renee Tajima-Peña's film Calavera Highway, named the best television documentary by the San Francisco International Film Festival, will premiere during the festival on Sunday, May 4, at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas.
Tajima-Peña, an associate professor of community studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, will receive the Golden Gate Award for best long-form documentary at the premiere, which begins at 6:15 p.m. The Sundance Kabuki Cinemas are located at 1881 Post Street at Fillmore in San Francisco.
Calavera Highway was also named best feature documentary during the San Diego Latino Film Festival in March and was selected for national broadcast by PBS from more than 1,000 entries. It will air September 23 on PBS stations as part of its P.O.V. (point of view) documentary series.
The film, by independent film makers Tajima-Peña and Evangeline Griego, is a feature-length documentary about Tajima-Peña's husband's family. A sweeping story of seven brothers grappling with the meaning of masculinity, fatherhood, and the nature of family ties, the film follows Armando Peña, a veteran of the 1968 Chicano student walkouts, and his brother Carlos, as they carry their mother's ashes back to South Texas and reunite with their far-flung brothers. Calavera Highway traces the family odyssey as the Peñas learn why their mother was an outcast and what happened to their father, who disappeared during "Operation Wetback," the 1954 U.S. government program that deported more than 1 million Mexicans and Mexican Americans.
Calavera Highway will also screen at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, May 7, at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas and also on Thursday, May 8, at 6:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley.
Tajima-Peña is the award-winning film maker of Who Killed Vincent Chin? As a founding faculty member of the UCSC graduate program in Social Documentation, Tajima-Peña teaches documentary film making and video production. Her work focuses on Asian American and immigrant communities, media, and social change. |
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Professor of
Biomolecular Engineering |
The International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) has awarded its Senior Scientist Accomplishment Award to David Haussler, professor of biomolecular engineering in the Baskin School of Engineering at UC Santa Cruz.
Haussler will receive the award and deliver a keynote presentation at the 2008 International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB) in Toronto in July. The ISMB is the largest conference on computational biology worldwide.
A Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, Haussler is director of the Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering at UCSC and scientific codirector of the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3). His research lies at the interface of mathematics, computer science, and molecular biology. He develops new statistical and algorithmic methods to explore the molecular evolution of the human genome, using cross-species comparative genomics to study gene structure, function, and regulation. In recent years, he has begun taking his computational hypotheses to the laboratory for further study in living systems.
Haussler joined the UCSC faculty in 1986. A member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). He has won a number of awards, including the 2006 Dickson Prize for Science from Carnegie Mellon University and the 2003 ACM/AAAI Allen Newell Award. |
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Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry |
The discovery of a gene responsible for black coat color in dogs may help researchers understand fundamental processes in humans, including the regulation of body weight and stress hormones.
The gene produces a type of protein previously thought to play an important role in the immune system. However, the new findings suggest that these proteins, known as defensins, may be involved in regulating other important processes in the body, including pigmentation, energy balance, and production of glucocorticoid hormones.
"This study has uncovered a new level of regulation in the body. We don't know yet, but it could have implications for understanding genetic factors involved in obesity, diabetes, and related diseases," said Glenn Millhauser, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Millhauser and three graduate students in his laboratory--Matthew Nix, Darren Thompson, and Bin Yu--are coauthors of the paper describing the new findings, published online November 2 in the journal Science. The study was led by a team of geneticists at Stanford University.
The determination of coat color in dogs has long been a mystery. While most mammals share the same genetic mechanism to determine coat color, dogs seemed to be an exception. The Stanford researchers, led by geneticist Greg Barsh, identified a new gene in dogs that acts in addition to the two main coat-color genes recognized in other mammals. To their surprise, the new gene makes a beta-defensin protein belonging to the large and variable family of proteins called defensins, thought to play a role in fighting infections. [Read More...] |
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Professor of Psychology |
In a harsh critique of the death penalty before a gathering of the nation's lawyers in August, 2005, U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens said recent exonerations of death row inmates reveal serious procedural flaws that undermine the way capital punishment is administered in this country.
Stevens's remarks before members of the American Bar Association marked one of the very few times that any member of the current court has acknowledged systemic flaws that plague death penalty trials in the United States, said Craig Haney, professor of psychology at UCSC and author of the just-published book, Death By Design: Capital Punishment as a Social Psychological System (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2005).
In Death By Design, Haney addresses the fundamental question, "How can otherwise normal, moral people participate in a process designed to take the life of another?" Haney, one of the nation's most respected death penalty researchers, finds the answer in a set of procedures and practices that systematically "distance and disengage" those charged with deciding the fate of defendants.
Building on more than 25 years of his own and others' empirical research, Haney discusses the system of capital punishment as a whole and identifies the elements that skew the system to facilitate death sentences. [Read More...] |
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Professor of History of Art & Visual Culture |
In her book, The Subject in Art (Duke University Press), history of art and visual culture professor Catherine Soussloff uses illustrations of paintings and photographs to demonstrate both how portrait painters began to focus on the interior lives of their subjects, and how the discipline of art history developed around the genre of portraiture.
Grounding her work in an examination of philosophical and psychoanalytic approaches to human consciousness from Hegel to Sartre and from Freud to Lacan, Soussloff challenges prevailing theories regarding the birth of the modern subject and argues that our idea of the subject emerged in the theory and practice of portraiture in early 20th-century Vienna.
"This book started out to be about the relationships between human beings in modern Europe at a time of immense changes in art, technology, and science -- the beginning of the 20th century," said Soussloff. "As I pursued my research into the culture in Vienna at the Getty Research Institute, I came to understand the significance of the portrait and of the theories of portraiture developed concurrently by artists and art historians. I would say that artists and art history formed the basis of later psychoanalytic and philosophical investigations of the subject that have proven so potent in our own times."
Since she joined the UCSC faculty in 1987, Soussloff's research has focused on some of the key theoretical and historical concepts that have structured our culture's understanding of the visual world.
"My work on the visualized subject seeks to locate the significance of the human being in history in order to provide a greater understanding of our culture's operations in the present," said Soussloff. "A belief in and an enormous respect for our human imaginations and creativities underlies all of my research and teaching."
"In our world today, art and visual practices of all sorts can give us the most accessible and democratic means of discovering these great human potentials, whether they be in the fields of science, social science, or the humanities," Soussloff added. "As an interpreter of art and the role of the visual in the world, I feel both privileged and enormously responsible to a future whose foundations will rest on what has been seen by us."
Soussloff was elected chair of the Editorial Board of Art Journal, one of two print journals published by the College Art Association of America--the professional association of art historians, artists, and museum professionals. In early 2006, she co-convened a two-day colloquium on book publishing in art history at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute that was attended by major U.S. and European editors and publishers of art books. A discussion from that event which she edited, called "Art History and Its Publishers," as well as an essay titled "Forum: Publishing Paradigms in Art History," was published in the Winter 2007 issue of Art Journal.
In July 2006, Soussloff was appointed to a Presidential Chair on the UCSC campus in recognition of her "distinguished scholarship and continuing efforts in the areas of interdisciplinary teaching, research, and publication activities on performance and the visual arts." |
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Professor of Music |
Nicole Paiement’s activities as orchestral and choral conductor have permitted her to develop a strong approach toward score study and musical performance. She greatly values the concept of historically guided performance to gain insight into the composer’s musical score.
In addition to her ongoing work at UCSC, she is also the artistic director of the New Music Ensemble at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and of Parallèle Ensemble, a professional ensemble dedicated to the recording of new music and of obscure music from all periods. Paiement is also an active guest conductor.
Recording is one of Paiement’s major activities. Her work in this medium ranges from the music of the Renaissance to that of living composers. Most of her numerous recordings focus on world premiere recordings.
Her strong interest in French music of the 20th century has led her to in-depth study and to premiere performances of music by composer Germaine Tailleferre. Paiement has completed a recording and catalog of the works of Henri Collet. Her interest in interdisciplinary performance has culminated in several staged works at UCSC.
Through her experience in teaching conducting, Paiement has developed an approach that concentrates on clear and expressive baton technique combined with effective score study and rehearsal technique. |
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Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology |
Sophisticated electronic tagging technology developed as part of the Tagging of Pacific Pelagics (TOPP) program is now being deployed to study Cape fur seals in South Africa.
The electronic tags are attached harmlessly to the seals' fur and fall off when the seals molt or are removed by researchers.
Daniel Costa, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCSC, is currently in South Africa working with an international team of investigators to study the biology and feeding behavior of the Cape fur seal, the most important marine predator in the region.
"The point of this collaboration is to share new technologies and approaches that have been developed in association with the TOPP program," said Costa, a TOPP principal investigator overseeing the program's research on marine mammals and seabirds throughout the North Pacific.
In South Africa, Costa is working with John Arnould from Deakin University in Australia and Herman Oosthuizen and his colleagues from the Marine and Coastal Management unit of the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism in Cape Town, South Africa. The team traveled to a fur seal colony on the northwest coast of South Africa to conduct the study. The colony happens to be located in the middle of a diamond mine, which meant the researchers had to pass through stringent security to gain access to the site.
To understand the habitat needs of the Cape fur seal, the researchers want to find out where the seals feed and how much they eat. The Cape fur seal is currently one of the most abundant fur seals in the world. Researchers and conservationists would like to better understand the role of this top predator in the marine environment, and they would also like to make sure that appropriate protection is in place to assure that the population stays healthy. [Read More...] |
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Professor of Economics |
Economist Lori Kletzer coauthored a major proposal to overhaul the U.S. unemployment system that has attracted the attention of top policy makers in Washington, D.C.
Kletzer, an expert on the U.S. labor market, collaborated with Howard Rosen of the Institute for International Economics in Washington on the report, Reforming Unemployment Insurance for the Twenty-First Century Workforce, which was released last week by the Brookings Institution.
The paper addresses shortcomings in the current system, including the fact that lower-income workers, who need unemployment insurance more than their better-paid counterparts, are less likely to receive it.
"The nation's unemployment insurance program is seriously out of date, given the changes over the last 70 years in the U.S. labor market," Kletzer told the New York Times.
The proposal was featured in a high-level briefing Sept. 15 sponsored by the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project, launched this year to "inject new policy options from leading thinkers across the country into the national economic debate." The forum, "Economic Security in a Changing World," brought together former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin, Roger C. Altman of Evercore Partners, and Laura D'Andrea Tyson of the London Business School.
Kletzer, whose research focuses on the impact of global trade and economic integration on the U.S. labor market, has become an influential voice in Washington policy circles. She was singled out in a National Journal special report on the "people whose ideas will help shape debate on 10 important issues of the day." [Read More...] |
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Associate Professor of History of Art & Visual Culture |
History of art and visual culture associate professor Jennifer González received a $16,000 publication grant from the Wyeth Foundation for American Art in suppport of her book: Subject to Display: Restaging Race in Contemporary Installation Art (MIT Press). The grant is awarded through the College Art Association to support the publication of books on American art.
González said her book focuss on the works of James Luna, Fred Wilson, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Pepón Osorio, and Renée Green. “These artists have drawn attention to the fact that the collection and display of artifacts is a primary means by which a nation tells the story of its past and locates the cultures of its citizens in the present,” said González. “By creating gallery installations or by working directly with museum archives, these artists have played a pivotal role not only in the transformation of contemporary art and museum culture, but also in reviving the history, narrative, and biography of otherwise marginalized subjects.”
Jennifer Gonzalez writes about contemporary art with an emphasis on installation art, digital art and activist art. She is interested in understanding the strategic use of space (exhibition space, public space, virtual space) by contemporary artists and by cultural institutions such as museums. More specifically, she has focused on the representation of the human body and its relation to discourses of race and gender.
Artists over the past two decades have used installation art to represent their concerns about history, identity and memory. Installation art and museum display practices have become mutually influential; many artists have been invited to produce original art projects inside museums or using museum exhibition techniques. Gonzalez’s research has lead to a forthcoming book project on the work of contemporary artists who use installation art as a way to stage a critical assessment of race politics in the United States.
In addition to installation art, Jennifer Gonzalez has written on contemporary digital art and specifically on the visual representation of the body. Several of her articles and book chapters focus on the cyborg body or the hybrid body as both symptoms of and metaphors for cultural transformation. The visual representation of new forms of corporeality often signal a utopian hope or distopic unease with new technologies and imaginary futures.
González has written for periodicals such as Frieze, Diacritics, Inscriptions, Art Journal, and Bomb. She has also contributed chapters to The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics (1995), as well as books such as With Other Eyes: Looking at Race and Gender in Visual Culture (1999), Race in Cyberspace (2000), and Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self (2005). |
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