Departments
Noteworthy & New
Sumerlin Receives Prestigious NSF Award
Brent Sumerlin, assistant professor in the Department of
Chemistry in Dedman College, has earned a prestigious National
Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Award.
The award is given to junior faculty members who exemplify the
role of teacher-scholars in American colleges and universities.
Sumerlin will receive $475,000 over five years for two nanotechnology
research projects – one relates to diabetes treatment
and the other involves self-healing polymers. The award includes
support for an education
outreach
program to help
prepare and attract
underrepresented
minority students
for SMU chemistry
internship positions.
He is working
with Dallas
area school districts
to identify academically qualified students.
Sumerlin works with an SMU team of postdoctoral research
associates, graduate and undergraduate students who fuse the
fields of polymer, organic and biochemistries to develop novel
materials with composite properties.
With one project, he hopes to combine two aspects of diabetes
treatment – blood-sugar monitoring and medicating with insulin
– into a single feedback-controlled mechanism. The other project
entails making polymers with the ability to come apart and put
themselves back together again – a technique that Sumerlin believes
can be used to make materials that are self-repairing.
Both research projects utilize “the same interaction; we’re just
taking it in two different directions,” he says.
For more information:
faculty.smu.edu/bsumerlin
Industry, Universities Form Research Consortium
SMU is a partner in the National Science Foundation research
consortium aimed at building both military and commercial superiority
by making technology faster, better and smarter.
The Net-Centric Software and Systems Industry/University
Cooperative Research Center will focus on improving how complicated
information is gathered, shared and used from the battlefield
to the boardroom.
The consortium is one of approximately 40 such centers nationwide
that develop long-term partnerships among industry, academia
and government. Academic partners are SMU, the University
of North Texas and the University of Texas at Dallas. The center’s
industry partners are Boeing, Cisco, Codekko Software, EDS/HP,
Fujitsu, GlobeRanger, Hall Financial Group, Lockheed-Martin
Aero, Raytheon, Texas Instruments and T-System.
“Net-centric” describes a continuously evolving, complex community
of people, devices, information and services interconnected
by a communications network that can instantaneously
measure and apply all available resources to a particular challenge.
It is becoming increasingly important for the realization of important
defense, commercial, health care, education, communication,
social networking and entertainment applications.
“We envision this consortium becoming a leading research
alliance in the United States,” says Jeff Tian, associate professor of
computer science in SMU’s Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering.
“Because we can cooperate with the expertise of academic institutions
and high-tech companies, we have much greater research
capabilities than any one institution working alone.”
For more information:
netcentric.cse.unt.edu
Desert Ways
Renowned archaeologist and SMU Professor Emeritus of Anthropology
Fred Wendorf has put down his trowel to record the
adventures of his 60-year career. His book,
Desert Days: My Life
as a Field Archaeologist, has been published by SMU Press in
cooperation with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest
Studies in Dedman College.
Wendorf is notable for many important
discoveries, including most of what is
known about the Stone Age prehistory of
Northeastern Africa. He also helped preserve
archaeological sites in the American
Southwest when natural gas pipelines
were laid in New Mexico.
His excavations
in that state unearthed the remnants
of Fort Burgwin, established by
the U.S. Army in 1852 near Taos. He
reconstructed the fort based on the
archaeological evidence he found of the original vertical log
buildings. Today, Fort Burgwin is the site of SMU-in-Taos.
The author of more than 30 books, Wendorf joined the University
in 1964. In 1987, he became the first SMU faculty member
elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
For more information
or to obtain a copy of the book, visit
www.tamu.edu/upress/ BOOKS/2008/wendorf.htm.
