From: Official Announcement Date: May 13, 2008 4:06:24 PM CDT To: OFFICIAL_FACULTY@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Subject: [OFFICIAL] Message from the Chancellor Reply-To: donnaj@uic.edu Dear Colleagues, With commencements behind us and the Spring 2008 semester at a close, I’m proud to share with you recent highlights from the campus. I also want to thank every member of the UIC community for your hard work and dedication throughout this past academic year. It will come as no surprise that a number of UIC students won prestigious national awards, which underscores excellent work by our faculty and by Beth Powers, Director of Special Scholarship Programs: --Three seniors begin post-graduation journeys this summer as Fulbright Fellowship winners. Bioengineering major Farah Shareef will study at Imperial College London, designing a system to reduce atherosclerosis. Biological sciences major Jessica Harper will research stem cells at the Biomedical Sciences Research Center-Alexander Fleming, near Athens, Greece. And English major Leigh Hellman heads to South Korea where she'll teach English to secondary school students in a rural location. --Aarti Sharma, a junior chemistry major, won a Goldwater Scholarship, and Peter Ifft, a junior bioengineering major, received honorable mention. Both students plan careers in health care. Ms. Sharma is a member of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and editor-in-chief of the Journal for Pre-Health Affiliated Students, sponsored by the Honors College. Mr. Ifft is a pitcher for the UIC men's baseball team and was named the 2007 Male Student-Athlete of the Year. In the last nine years, 16 UIC students have won Goldwater Scholarships and three have received honorable mentions. --UIC chemical engineering major Dima Alfawakhiri has been named a recipient of a Morris K. Udall Scholarship, based on her work and career promise in the field of renewable energy technology. She is one of 80 Udall Scholars selected from the 510 nominated this year. --Oisin Kenny, a senior in economics, will receive a Merage Foundation for the American Dream Fellowship, a $20,000 award for immigrant students. Mr. Kenny, an Honors College student who immigrated to the United States from Ireland with his family 13 years ago, is one of only 12 students nationwide to win the fellowship. Mr. Kenny also received the Donald and Leah Riddle Prize awarded to the outstanding graduating senior. Samuel Dudley, professor of medicine and chief of cardiology at the Medical Center, has been inducted into the American Society for Clinical Investigation, one of the nation's oldest and most respected medical honor societies. Election to membership is reserved for individuals who are 45 years of age or younger and who, therefore, have significant research accomplishments relatively early in their careers. A team of transplant surgeons at the Medical Center performed the world’s first fully minimally-invasive liver resection for living-donor transplantation using robotic surgical techniques. Pier Cristoforo Giulianotti, chief of general surgery, assisted by Fabio Sbrana, used the da Vinci Robotic Surgical System to remove 60 percent of a patient’s healthy liver to replace the diseased liver of the recipient. Enrico Benedetti, professor and head of surgery, and Jose Oberholzer, director of cell transplantation, performed the actual transplant. Gary Slutkin of the School of Public Health and his nationally renowned CeaseFire program were the subjects of the cover story in the May 4 edition of the Sunday New York Times Magazine. CeaseFire, the Chicago Project for Violence Prevention, seeks to understand and treat urban violence as a public health issue applying principles normally associated with disease prevention. Distinguished civil rights leader James Compton, who led the Chicago Urban League for 34 years, has been awarded the Vernon Jarrett Fellowship by the Great Cities Institute. The two-year fellowship is named for the nationally prominent journalist who served as a Great Cities Institute fellow from 1996 until his death in 2004. The annual Richard J. Daley Urban Forum was a great success. Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and 50 municipal leaders from around the world gathered at the UIC Forum to address the challenges and opportunities of mass population growth in cities. Forum panelists included mayors from Lahore, Pakistan; Amman, Jordan; Casablanca, Morocco; Doha, Qatar; Algiers, Algeria; Baakline, Lebanon; Mosul, Iraq; Windsor, Ontario; Mobile, Alabama; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and other cities. Many of these leaders also attended Mayor Daley’s First U.S. Arab Cities Forum. Renowned experts and scholars in the field of mass urbanization also participated in the four panel discussions. Special thanks to Clark Hulse, associate chancellor and dean of the Graduate College, who directs the steering committee that plans and organizes each year’s Forum. Congratulations to the UIC women’s tennis team for earning its 12th consecutive Horizon League championship and 10th consecutive NCAA berth. It’s been 12 years since the tennis team has lost a dual match in the Horizon League. Ilinca Cristescu was named 2008 Horizon League Player of the Year and Newcomer of the Year and Head Coach Shannon Tully was named 2008 Horizon League Coach of the Year for Women's Tennis, an honor she also received in 2003, 2005, 2006 and 2007. My best wishes for a safe and enjoyable summer. Sincerely, Eric A. Gislason Interim Chancellor From: Urgent Official Announcement Date: May 19, 2008 11:19:45 AM CDT To: URGENT_FACULTY@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Subject: [URGENT] Crime alert Reply-To: cappitel@uic.edu Saturday at 8:57 p.m., a UIC student was the victim of an off-campus aggravated robbery in the 1400 block of West Flournoy St. The victim was approached by a black male, described as 19 years old, 5-foot-6, slender build, dark complexion, wearing a plaid hat and jeans. The offender placed a hard object to the back of the student's head and demanded her purse. The student complied, and the offender fled northbound on Loomis Street to an awaiting maroon vehicle. The student did not receive any injuries. UIC Police strongly recommend complying with an armed offender's demand for property or valuables, as the victim did in this case. Other security tips: --be aware of your surroundings --try to travel in groups when possible, particularly after dark --use well-lit walkways --on campus, look for the location of the nearest emergency call box (there are more than 1,000 across campus) --the emergency number for UIC Police is 5-5555 or 312-355-5555, which should be set on speed-dial on your cell phone The crime will be investigated by the UICPD/CPD Joint Robbery Task Force. Anyone with information is asked to call UIC Police at (312) 996-2830. From: Official Announcement Date: May 23, 2008 11:53:00 AM CDT To: OFFICIAL_FACULTY@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Subject: [OFFICIAL] Evacuation drill Reply-To: mnava@uic.edu On Wednesday, May 28, the Environmental Health and Safety Office will be conducting an evacuation drill of Student Center West (938 bldg., 828 S. Wolcott Ave.) at 2:00 p.m. At the conclusion of the drill the building will re-open for regular activity. Marilyn Hau Director of Environmental Health and Safety From: Official Announcement Date: May 28, 2008 5:23:45 PM CDT To: OFFICIAL_FACULTY@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Subject: [OFFICIAL] traffic congestion Reply-To: karengs@uic.edu Dear Members of the UIC Community, Construction projects at Rush University Medical Center will reroute traffic on Harrison Street near UIC. The following changes are expected to continue through the end of the year: --Harrison Street between Ashland Avenue and Paulina Street will be a one-way street, with traffic heading west. --Eastbound traffic on Harrison Street will be detoured south on Paulina Street to Polk Street. --The south side of Congress Parkway will be closed between Paulina Street and Ashland Avenue Based upon the first few days of the pattern, both Paulina (between Polk and Harrison) and Polk (between Ashland and Paulina) are very congested and should be avoided if possible. For more information, visit www.rush.edu or call 888-352-RUSH. Sincerely, Joseph Muscarella Vice Chancellor for Administrative Services From: Official Announcement Date: May 30, 2008 4:51:30 PM CDT To: OFFICIAL_FACULTY@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Subject: [OFFICIAL] Dean of Engineering Reply-To: bil@uic.edu Dear Colleagues, I am very pleased to announce that Peter Nelson has been named dean of the UIC College of Engineering effective July 28, pending approval by the Board of Trustees. Out of a nationwide field of strong candidates, Pete, who has been serving as interim dean since last August, was the clear choice. He has demonstrated administrative and intellectual leadership and is a significant researcher with a record of attracting over $15 million in grants on issues of importance like computer-enhanced transportation systems, manufacturing and design optimization and bioinformatics. He understands Chicago and its needs, has a firm grasp of the trajectory of engineering, and has had interactions with the business community that will prove essential to advancing the College. Pete’s research interests span a broad interdisciplinary spectrum. In 1991, he founded UIC's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, which specializes in applied intelligence systems projects in fields such as transportation, manufacturing, bioinformatics and e-mail spam countermeasures. In 1994-95, his laboratory, sponsored by the Illinois Department of Transportation, developed the first real-time traffic congestion map on the World Wide Web. It now receives more than 500 million hits a year. Projects carried out at Pete’s laboratory have been funded by organizations such as the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Argonne National Laboratory and Motorola, among numerous other corporations. In 2006-07, Pete served as one of the seven founding members of the joint UIC-University of Chicago-Northwestern University Chicago Biomedical Consortium Proteomics and Informatics Scientific Board. Pete joined UIC's department of electrical engineering and computer science in 1988 as an assistant professor and rose to the rank of full professor in 2000. He was named head of computer science when electrical and computer engineering split off into a separate department in 2001, and remained in that position until becoming the interim dean. Pete received his B.A. in computer science and mathematics from North Park College in Chicago and earned M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from Northwestern University. He replaces Prith Banerjee, who went to Hewlett Packard last year as senior vice president for research and head of HP Labs. On behalf of the campus, I extend my thanks to the search committee, chaired by Stefanie Lenway, dean of the College of Business Administration. Please join me in congratulating Pete on his new position. Sincerely, R. Michael Tanner Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs