College’s Goldwaters among Very Few Selected Nationwide

Vincent, Switzer and Roberts were among 317 undergraduate sophomores and juniors selected nationwide on the basis of academic merit to be the 2007 Goldwater Scholars. They were selected from more than 1,100 mathematics, science and engineering students from universities across the nation and were nominated by their institutions for the prestigious award.

Andrew J. Vincent has been working in the computational chemistry group headed by Dr. David Dixon, Ramsay Chair in Chemistry, for three semesters in the UA Computer- Based Honors Program.

Vincent has been a member of Freshman Forum, Alpha Epsilon Delta Premedical Honor Society, Lambda Sigma Phi Fraternity, an Intrafraternity Council representative and a National Merit Scholar resident mentor. He has just been named a fellow in the UA Blackburn Institute.

This summer he will be an intern at The University of Alabama at Birmingham in the pathology department’s PREP Program (Program for Research Experience in Pathology).

Vincent is planning a career in biochemical medical research “most likely dealing with newly appearing antibiotic resistant bacteria or complex, seemingly incurable, retroviruses,” he said.

Jackson R. Switzer has been active on campus as a member of the UA Blackburn Institute, the Other Club, a Gamma Sigma Epsilon Chemistry Honors Club officer, and a participant in the Chemistry Undergraduate Research Program. He also serves as a volunteer in the YMCA After School program, he works part-time at Phifer Wire, and he works for the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies. He was recently inducted into Omicron Delta Kappa, Anderson Society and Mortar Board campus wide honor societies.

Switzer plans to pursue his doctorate in biochemistry and a career of researching chemical weapons and their effects. “Through the study of chemical weapons I look to enhance methods for detection to stop their mitigation,” Switzer said.

This summer, Switzer will have an internship with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association’s Air Resources Laboratory Special Operations and Research Branch in Las Vegas, Nev. He will investigate the accuracy of a particulate dispersion model.

Daniel E. Roberts has plans to work as a research scientist focusing on finding effective treatments for neurodegenerative diseases. He said he will “seek to answer the fundamental scientific questions that underlie the abnormal conditions.”

At UA, Roberts has been conducting research on the genetics of neurological diseases using the fruit fly model.

Roberts has been a member of Phi Eta Sigma National Freshman Honor Society, Alpha Lambda Delta Honor Society, Gamma Beta Phi National Collegiate Honor and Service Organization, and the National Society of Collegiate Scholars. He is also an accomplished piano player.

Goldwater scholarships cover the cost of tuition, fees, books, and room and board up to a maximum of $7,500 per year.  Since 1989, the University has had 23 Goldwater Scholars with 20 majoring in the College of Arts and Sciences.

The Goldwater Foundation is a federally endowed agency established in 1986. The Scholarship Program, honoring Sen. Barry M. Goldwater, was designed to foster and encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences and engineering. The Goldwater Scholarship is the premier undergraduate award of its type in these fields.

The Council for International Exchange of Scholars announced recently that Dr. Kevin Redding, associate professor in the Department of Chemistry has been awarded a yearlong Fulbright Fellowship to continue his groundbreaking research on the chemistry of photosynthesis. The Fulbright provides recipients with funding to cover 10 months.

Only four other professors on The University of Alabama campus have received a Fulbright for the 2007-2008 academic year.  Redding is also one of only four UA professors to receive a Fulbright this year. 

Redding has chosen to work at the Institute of Physico-Chemical Biology (IBPC), in Paris.  He conducted research at IBPC previously while a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Geneva in Geneva, Switzerland.  IBPC is affiliated with the University of Paris, as well as with a network of related institutes in the city.
“The IBPC is a pioneer in using new techniques to study living organisms. They have built a pump-probe laser-flash spectrometer that can observe electron transfer within a specific protein on a nanosecond timescale in living algae.  No one else in the world can do that,” said Redding.

Redding will explore aspects of various bacteria and also expand his study of Heliobacteria, known as the most primitive photosynthetic organism in existence, according to Redding.

“Heliobacteria are the least complex photosynthetic bacteria ever found. They are like ‘living fossils’ of the bacterial world -- they look a lot like what we might imagine a very early photosynthetic bacterium would have looked like over 2 billion years ago,” said Redding.

In addition to research, Redding will present guest lectures at the IBPC and affiliated University of Paris campuses.

“I’m really looking forward to using the Fulbright to strengthen the existing ties between UA and the IBPC and to expand the frontiers of what we know about photosynthesis, nature’s first version of solar power.  We know that Heliobacteria can make hydrogen and they might serve as an ideal platform for producing hydrogen using sunlight, if we can engineer them.  But before we can do that, we need to understand how they tick” said Redding.
In addition to the Fulbright fellowship, Redding has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Early Career Award, an award worth $670,000 over a five-year period. Redding will use funds from both awards to aid his research in Paris. He has also received a Robin Hill Award, an award given by the International Society of Photosynthetic Research which honors Dr. Robin Hill, a British researcher who used chemistry and physics to investigate photosynthesis.
Redding received his Bachelor of Arts in biochemistry from Rice University in 1983.  He received his doctorate in biochemistry from Stanford University. Redding has been a member of the UA faculty for nine years.
For over 50 years the Fulbright Scholar Program has offered grants for college and university, as well as for professionals and independent scholars. It has provided more
than 273,000 participants-chosen for their leadership potential-with the opportunity to observe each others' political, economic, educational and cultural institutions, to exchange ideas and to embark on joint ventures of importance to the general welfare of the world.

“A Night at The Algonquin” Showcases Creative Writing

Silent and live auctions, poems written on demand by graduate students, dinner, a special appearance by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Rick Bragg and a presentation of Arty Party writing awards to undergraduates highlighted the annual fundraiser for the fine and performing arts, sponsored by the College’s Leadership Board. 
           
Undergraduate students, Kristi Wilcox, Lee Fanning and Elizabeth Reeves Powell were honored as part of the Arty Party Student Creative Writing Competition Awards in non-fiction, fiction and poetry.  

The Arty Party began at 6 p.m. in Smith Hall on the UA campus.  Patrons, table sponsors and event benefactors received special recognition at the event.

The auctions offered a selection of popular goods and services donated by local artists and businesses.  They included a trip to New York City and lunch with Sports Illustrated senior writer Franz Lidz, dinner for four at The Highlands Bar and Grill, a two-day Shoal Creek Club golfing experience for two with Esquire magazine golf writer Tom Chiarella, a football autographed by Nick Saban, all-inclusive hunting trips, dinner for 25 catered by Full Moon Barbeque, a week at an island home in the Bahamas, jewelry, the opportunity to be a character in Pulitzer Prize winning author Rick Bragg’s upcoming novel and football tickets to the President’s Box in Bryant Denny Stadium, among other items. 

Artists featured in the auctions included Lowell Baker, William Dooley, Frank Fleming, Peter Ivy, Maureen Shotts, MoJo Weaver and Gail Windham.

Thomas Family Honors Internationally Recognized Researcher on Mental Deficiency

Dr. Norman R. Ellis, retired professor of psychology, has been honored by his daughter and son-in-law with an endowed scholarship in the Department of Psychology. Scholarships will be given to undergraduate students majoring in psychology.

Norman R. Ellis received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Howard College in 1951, his Master of Arts degree in psychology from The University of Alabama in 1953 and his doctorate in psychology from Louisiana State University in 1958.  Ellis taught at Peabody College before joining the UA faculty in 1964 where he received the Burnum Distinguished Faculty Award in 1984 and the Outstanding Scholar Award in 1986.  He retired in 1991.

An internationally recognized researcher in the fields of mental deficiency and memory, Ellis edited the groundbreaking 1963 publication Handbook of Mental Deficiency and served as editor of the journal Aberrant Development in Infancy.  Ellis also founded and served as chief editor of the International Review of Research in Mental Retardation.

During his career, Ellis received the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Award and the Edgar A. Doll Memorial Award for distinguished contributions in research, training and leadership.  He was a finalist for the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. International Awards.

Ellis was invited to the White House in 1967 for the signing of the Mental Retardation Bill and was honored in 1972 by the American Association on Mental Deficiency as “one of the world’s leading behavioral scientists in mental retardation.”

Norman Ellis is married to Kay Ellis.  Their daughter, Susan Ellis Thomas, graduated from UA with a bachelor of science in nursing in 1983. She is married to Hugh Rowe Thomas who graduated from UA with a bachelor of arts in communication in 1987. He is a managing partner for staffing company InStaff Personnel.  The Thomases have three children.  

Caldwell Also Winner of Numerous Awards and Honors

Caldwell is director of the UA Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Rural Science Scholars Program and a fellow of the Blount Undergraduate Initiative in the College where she teaches a course on the societal impact of the Human Genome Project.  Her research interests are centered on the molecular understanding of human brain diseases, including Parkinson’s disease, dystonia and epilepsy.   She is a former National Institute of Health National Research Service Award Fellowship recipient and was a Revson Fellow of The Rockefeller University.  A self-affirmed “microscope guru and queen of cytokinesis,” Caldwell  is also the adminstrative liason of the Department of Biological Sciences’ HHMI grant.  She designed and teaches an introduction to research for HHMI student interns called "The Language of Research." 

Biology Professor Provides Insight into Suspected Parkinson’s Trigger

Janis O’Donnell, professor of biological sciences, has discovered genes that may influence future propensity to Parkinson’s disease and which are connected to the chemical weed killer paraquat.   

“We found these genes do affect how susceptible these individuals are,” O’Donnell said. “Our hope is we can use this observation to discover other genes that might be influencing how these models, or human beings, might be more or less susceptible to these toxic agents.”

The research focused on select genes that influence dopamine synthesis and the release of dopamine from brain cells. The genes identified include those that regulate tetrahydrobiopterin, a compound that is required to make dopamine, as well as those involved directly in dopamine synthesis. Dopamine controls muscle movement.

O’Donnell, and current and former students and post-doctoral researchers working in a UA laboratory with her, studied these genes following the animal model’s exposure to the chemical paraquat, an herbicide commonly used throughout the world.

Previous studies have shown elevated Parkinson’s rates within particular agricultural communities. “It was thought that paraquat might be the causative agent,” O’Donnell said, “because the chemical structure of paraquat looks a lot like dopamine, and perhaps it might confuse the cells. But not everybody that lives in these communities gets Parkinson’s. What is it that’s different about different individuals that would alter their susceptibility?”

O’Donnell and her colleagues use fruit flies, known in biological circles by their scientific name, Drosophila melanogaster, in their research. Flies share with humans, and other mammals, many biochemical similarities, particularly in regard to chemicals produced within their brain cells.

Each fly has about 200 neurons within its brain that produce dopamine. The simplicity of the fly’s brain lends itself to manageable tracing of experimental impacts on specific neurons. Yet, there are enough similarities in these animals to make them an acceptable model for studying human disease.

In Parkinson’s disease, a movement disorder affecting some 1 million Americans, neurons in the brain that make dopamine die. Recently, genes associated with some cases of Parkinson’s have been identified, but the root cause of most Parkinson’s disease is not understood. The disease is characterized by rigid and tremoring limbs, difficulty in movement, and impaired reflexes.

The UA researchers analyzed the flies’ brains after the models had ingested low concentrations of paraquat. Within 12 hours, dopamine neurons within particular regions of the brain began dying. Within 24 hours, many of the dopamine neurons were gone.

“Part of our study was to show that it seems to be, initially at least, specifically those neurons that paraquat impacts and not that it’s just a generic cell killer. Later, all kinds of cells are impacted.”

After ingesting paraquat, the flies also began to tremor. They moved slowly, if at all. “These animals are developing symptoms that almost precisely parallel most of the symptoms that doctors find in Parkinson’s patients.”

That wasn’t the only parallel. “Men seem to be about twice as susceptible to Parkinson’s disease, as women are,” O’Donnell said. “We were amazed to find that we see exactly the same effect in male fruit flies. The male fruit flies show symptoms earlier and die more rapidly than the females did—which means, perhaps, that we can exploit this system to help us understand why this discrepancy is there..”

Another surprising find came in how mutating genes impacted the experiment’s results. “Under certain conditions, dopamine can react to the extent where it becomes damaging to some of the cell structures. We think of these dopamine neurons as being more susceptible to this kind of damage, called oxidative damage, because they have more dopamine.”

However, in the study, flies with a mutated gene that made too little dopamine became very susceptible to paraquat while mutants who made too much dopamine were resistant.
In some cases, flies with a particular mutated gene showed no neuron damage despite ingesting the paraquat.

“That’s exciting because it tells us that perhaps there are ways to exploit this, to identify different ways that people could be treated to help slow down the progress of this disease.”

The lead author of the study, parts of which were initially funded by NASA and the National Institutes of Health, is Dr. Anathbandhu “Andy” Chaudhuri, a former post-doctoral researcher at UA. Current UA graduate students Kevin Bowling, Hakeem Lawal and Arati Inamdar are co-authors, as are UA graduates Christopher Funderburk and Zhe Wang.

Professor Emeritus Mike Cava Creates Chemistry Lectureship

Through their $35,000 contribution, Dr. Michael  Cava of Tuscaloosa and Aldrich Chemical Company of Milwaukie, Wis., have established the Michael P. Cava Endowed Support Fund in the College as a way of showing Cava’s enduring dedication to the field of chemistry.
 
The endowment will establish and support the Michael P. Cava Lectureship Series, classroom activities, and maintain books and journals, in a multipurpose classroom established in honor of Cava.  

Cava was the first endowed Robert Ramsay Chair in chemistry at the College from 1985 until his retirement in 2004 and is currently Ramsay Professor Emeritus.  Cava has performed extensive research in Switzerland, Brazil and France and has been a Fellow at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.  He has also served as the Sir C.V. Raman Visiting Professor at Madras University in India, and has been the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, which allowed him to study at the University of Paris.

Cava worked for five decades in the field of organic chemistry and contributed to the understanding of the synthetic chemistry of sulfur, selenium, and tellurium compounds, and, in recent decades, to the study of organic conductors in collaboration with materials scientists.

Cava has authored or co-authored numerous scientific papers and two textbooks and has served on the editorial boards of several journals.  Cava was honored by the University in 1992 with the Burnum Distinguished Faculty Award and in 1996 with the Frederick Moody Blackmon-Sarah McCorkle Moody Outstanding Professor Award for his numerous scholarly achievements, dedication to the art of teaching, and the extraordinary contributions he has made to his field.

Cava, a native of Brooklyn, was born on February 13, 1926.  He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1947 and a Master of Science degree in 1948 from Harvard University.  After receiving his doctorate from the University of Michigan in 1951, Cava was an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard from 1951 to 1953. 

During his long career, Cava has served on the faculties of The Ohio State University, Wayne State University, and University of Pennsylvania and has been a visiting professor at University of Illinois and University of California, Santa Barbara.

Alabama Film Expert Receives Tribute From Son

Everett S. and F. Dianne Havard Jr. of Pensacola, Fla., have established the E.S. Havard Family Endowed Scholarship to honor Everett Havard's father.

The scholarship will provide support to incoming freshmen students enrolled full-time in the College. The scholarship may be renewed for subsequent years provided a student maintains a minimum "B" grade average and remains enrolled full-time in The College of Arts and Sciences.

Everett S. Havard, Sr. was born in 1911 in Perdido, Ala. He attended and played football at Escambia High School. As a young man interested in photography and film, he earned money showing movies in rural areas and later purchased a movie theatre in Bay Minette, AL. He married Bennie Elizabeth Stuart who was from Bay Minette.

After World War II , Havard opened his own business, Havard's Film Library, which rented, sold and repaired 16mm films and equipment. He had four children, all of whom attended and graduated from the University of Alabama. Havard died in 1963.

Everett Havard Jr., received his bachelor of science degree in biological sciences from the The University of Alabama in 1956, and his doctor of medicine degree from Tulane University Medical School. He worked for many years at Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola and is presently retired.

Please send comments and news suggestions to:

Rebecca Florence
Director of College Relations
College of Arts and Sciences
The University of Alabama
(205) 348-8663

rflorenc@as.ua.edu