SAIS's Wolfowitz sworn in as deputy secretary of defense

Paul Wolfowitz, now former SAIS dean, was officially sworn in to his new post as deputy secretary of defense on the morning of March 2 so that he could assume his new duties that day. A formal swearing-in ceremony is set for March 16.

Wolfowitz, the school's dean for the past seven years, assumes the No. 2 position at the Pentagon, serving under Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

JHM and its CEO honored for juvenile diabetes research

Johns Hopkins Medicine and its CEO, Edward Miller, will be honored on Saturday, March 31, by the Maryland Chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation at its spring gala, Party Gras. The event will be held at 7 p.m. in the Hyatt Regency Hotel, Inner Harbor.

Johns Hopkins Medicine has long been a supporter and partner of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, whose mission is to find a cure for diabetes and its complications through the support of research. JDRF is the world's largest nongovernmental funder of research in diabetes, a debilitating disease which affects the eyes, heart, kidneys and nerves of patients.

For ticket and table information, contact Annie Bavar at 410-823-0073.

Type for Life marrow registration drive begins

Type for Life, a student-organized event that provides free registration with the National Marrow Donor Program, will take place from March 12 to 16 at the JHMI campus. Registration, which takes roughly 20 minutes, involves a short health questionnaire and a blood test called a "tissue type." According to the NMDP, at any given time an average of 3,000 patients are searching the organization's database for a match. Last year, 537 people were typed at Hopkins; three have been matched so far.

Registration is scheduled for March 12, School of Nursing, Carpenter Room; March 13, School of Medicine, 113/114 PCTB; March 14, School of Public Health, Anna Baetjer Room; March 15 and 16, JHH, Children's Zoo. Registration will be held from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day except March 16, when it ends at 4 p.m.

For more information call 410-502-7716 or go to http://www.typeforlife.org.

Homewood master plan video can be seen online

The implementation of the new master plan for the Homewood campus is well under way as evidenced by new pathways and the many beds awaiting landscaping. To help give a sense of the overarching plan, a 12-minute video has been produced by university staff and can be seen on JHUniverse.

The musically scored video, which includes archival photos and recently shot aerial views of the campus, details the reasons for the creation of the plan and the principles behind it. The video features interviews with university president William R. Brody; Adam Gross, principal of Ayers/Saint/Gross, the plan's architect; Stephen Campbell, director of planning and project development; Michael Beer, professor emeritus of biophysics, speaking on Homewood's natural systems; and Charles Village community leader Sandy Sparks.

Filmed and edited by the Whiting School of Engineering's Instructional Television Facility, the video was written and produced by Mike Field, assistant to the president, and Glenn Small, of the Office of News and Information.

To view the video, available both in RealMedia and QuickTime versions, go to http://www.jhu.edu/masterplan/final/video.html.

SOM prof gets grant to study viral hepatitis in children

Johns Hopkins Children's Center gastroenterologist Kathleen Schwarz received a $1 million research grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to study viral hepatitis in the children of injection drug users. These children are known to be at risk for hepatitis B and C infection via maternal-fetal and possibly other means of transmission.

The four-year project is designed to improve hepatitis B immunization rates and learn more about how the hepatitis C virus spreads.

Schwarz, an associate professor of pediatrics, sought funding for the project after learning of the high frequency of viral hepatitis in The Johns Hopkins Hospital's adult emergency room patients and in adult injection drug users visiting the hospital's Alive and Reach treatment clinics.

Schwarz believes that children of these patients may not be receiving appropriate hepatitis B immunizations and hepatitis C screenings. She says eradication of hepatitis B and C infection among U.S. children could save at least $200 million over the next 10 years.

Engineering hosts Conference on Information Sciences and Systems

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering will host the 35th annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems to be held March 21 to 23 on the Homewood campus. CISS began at Princeton in 1967, was moved to Hopkins during the late 1970s and now alternates between the two universities.

The purpose of the conference is to provide information sessions for new advances, applications and ideas in the fields of systems and control, communications, pattern recognition, statistical inference, computer engineering and signal, image and video processing,

This year nearly 200 technical papers are scheduled for presentation by faculty and graduate students from many major educational institutions.

For registration and program information, go to http://www.ece.jhu.edu/ciss.

Catch regular season Hopkins lacrosse on local TV and radio

Hopkins men's lacrosse team games will once again be prominently featured on local radio and television networks.

All regular season games, except the home contests vs. Villanova and Navy, will be broadcast on WJFK-AM 1300 in Baltimore. "The Johns Hopkins Lacrosse Game of the Week" includes a 15-minute pre-game show and a post-game analysis by Jody Martin and Larry Quinn.

The Blue Jays are scheduled to be televised five times this season on WMAR-TV 2 in Baltimore, with the possibility of a sixth game (vs. North Carolina) airing on Home Team Sports. WMAR's schedule includes Hopkins games vs. Virginia (March 24), Maryland (April 14), Navy (April 21), Towson (April 28) and Loyola (May 5). Since 1998, Hopkins has had 20 games televised and has posted a 12-8 record.

WMAR also will air the Hopkins women's lacrosse team's April 14 game against the University of Maryland, College Park.

Film and discussion at SAIS on banning landmines

The School of Advanced International Studies and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines will co-host a film screening and discussion about banning landmines from 7 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday, March 7, in the Kenney Auditorium, Nitze Building.

The event will include the screening of Land of Iron, a 20-minute documentary on the landmines situation in Korea, followed by a panel discussion. The panelists include Jeonghoon Jang, the documentary's director; Siwoo Lee, who has extensively photographed and interviewed Korean landmine victims and is featured in the film; and Joon Jin Ko, a landmine survivor.

The event, which is free and open to the public, is being held in conjunction with Ban Landmines Week taking place in Washington from March 5 to 11.

For more information, contact Felisa Neuringer at 202-663-5626 or fneuringer@jhu.edu.