January 9, 2003
Etc.
CAMPUS BOUNTY: The UW was even more generous to the University District Food Bank this year than it was last. Donation totals were 6,709 pounds, compared to 5,268 pounds last year, according to food bank director Lori Johnson. Among the campus departments participating, the top donor was Environmental Health and Safety, which gave 1,071 items. Some of this total was in the form of cash donations. Although the UW sponsors a food drive only at the holidays, the U-District Food Bank operates year round and has a wish list of both food and non-food items. Non-food items in demand are: toiletries of all kinds, diapers, pet food, baby formula, coffee, etc. Find the food bank at 1413 N.E. 50th, 206-523-7060.
STORY OF THE YEAR: A research project led by electrical engineering’s Karl Böhringer is featured in the current edition of Discover magazine as one of the top 100 scientific research stories of 2002. The project involves the use of microcilia, beds of thousands of tiny pulsating “hairs” just one-hundredth of an inch tall, to provide a precise method for steering and docking small spacecraft to larger vessels. Each cilium contains a titanium-tungsten heating element. When at rest, the cilia curve up and away from the silicon plate to which they are attached, but when current is applied to the heating element, the cilia are forced to flatten. By turning cilia facing the same direction on and off in sequence, Böhringer can prompt them to act like thousands of tiny fingers that move in pulsating waves to nudge objects in any of eight directions. The work was funded by the Air Force and the Universities Space Research Association.
ARCHITECTURE HONORS: The firm co-founded by UW architecture professor David Miller — Miller/Hull — has received the American Institute of Architects 2003 Architecture Firm Award, the institute’s highest award. Miller/Hull is the first Washington firm to win the award, which in the past has gone to such icons in the field as Cesar Pelli & Associates and Skidmore Owings and Merrill. The institute praised Miller/Hull for its restrained, environmentally responsible designs for the Bainbridge Island City Hall, Seattle Center Fisher Pavilion and many other Northwest buildings. Miller and Robert Hull founded the partnership in 1977. They will receive the award March 8 in Washington, D.C.
UW IN MEXICO: Speaking of architecture, Mexican President Vicente Fox and his wife, Marta Sahagun de Fox, inaugurated the Children’s Library in Joya Del Agua, Cuernavaca designed and built by the UW Design/Build Mexico Program. At the Dec. 11 ceremony, Mexico’s First Lady acknowledged the efforts of UW students and professors Sergio Palleroni and Steve Badanes of the College of Architecture and Urban Planning.
SUMMERTIME: It’s January. Why not cheer yourself up by looking ahead to the Summer Arts Festival. The festival’s Web site has been launched. Go to http://summerartsfest.org to find out what will be happening at the annual event, slated for July 16–19.
NEH FELLOWS: Two UW profs have been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The two were among 167 recipients of the fellowships, which typically carry a $40,000 stipend. Michael Honey, associate professor of liberal studies at the UW Tacoma, will research Martin Luther King Jr. and the Memphis sanitation strike. Eric Ames, assistant professor of Germanics, will study Carl Hagenbeck, Franz Kafka and early German cinema.
GARDENS FOR LANDLESS: India President Rashtrapati Bhavan met with law professor Roy Prosterman at the World Economic Forum in late November in Delhi. Prosterman’s Rural Development Institute — which leads land-reform efforts worldwide — is promoting a plan to provide small garden plots to millions of India’s landless agricultural workers.
KUDOS: Lillian C. McDermott, professor of physics, is the recipient of the 2002 Medal of the International Commission of Physics Education (an organization of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics) for her “contributions to international physics education which are major in scope and impact and which have extended over a considerable period of time” . . . Art Professor Mary Lee Hu is one of 12 artists in California, Oregon and Washington to receive a Flintridge Foundation Award for Visual Artists “in recognition of at least 20 years of continued artistic exploration and the development of a distinctive artistic voice.”
Do you know someone who deserves kudos for an outstanding achievement, award, appointment or book publication? If so, send that person’s name, title and achievement to uweek@u.washington.edu.
