Students compete in Collegiate Inventors Competition

A medical student and two undergraduate teams from Johns Hopkins are among 12 finalists competing this week for a sizable cash award and the prestige of being named the nation's best collegiate inventor.

The Collegiate Inventors Competition, sponsored by the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation, recognizes inventions that show practical applications to meet pressing needs in society.

Curtis Chong was selected for identifying itraconazole, a drug typically used to treat fungal infections, as an effective antiangiogenic agent for treating cancer and diabetic retinopathy. Joshua Liu, Gayathree Murugappan, Kevin Yeh and Vicki Zhou devised SurgyPack, a novel means for bowel packing. Joshua Lerman, Hanlin Wan and Swarnali Sengupta created the ICU Mover Aid.

Judging will take place Nov. 19 in Kansas City. Prizes of $15,000 will be awarded to the top undergraduate and graduate finalists, and the grand prize winner will receive $25,000. The academic advisers for each winning team will also receive a cash prize.

 

Nursing schools at JHU, King's College London to collaborate

The Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing and the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery at King's College London — with their clinical partners, the nursing departments at The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Guy's and St. Thomas' Hospitals — have agreed to develop and launch a formal collaboration.

According to Martha Hill, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, and Anne Marie Rafferty, head of the King's College London School of Nursing, the collaboration will strengthen the research, practice and educational programs at all the institutions. The framework for collaboration will support joint research and evidence-based practice projects that lead to scholarly publications, curriculum development and faculty, staff and student exchange and mentorship.

 

Author Michael Olesker to talk about 'The Colts' Baltimore'

Baltimore, 1958. For football fans, that date means only one thing — the year the Baltimore Colts defeated the New York Giants in sudden-death overtime.

In The Colts' Baltimore: A City and Its Love Affair in the 1950s, his new book just published by the Johns Hopkins University Press, journalist Michael Olesker reflects on that time and what it meant to the city where he grew up. It's a snapshot, he says, of an American city in the late 1950s, a time defined by race relations, white flight, rock 'n' roll, teenage rebellion and athletes who had to hold "regular" jobs to support their families. At 7 p.m on Tuesday, Nov. 25, Olesker will read from and sign copies of the book at Barnes & Noble Johns Hopkins.

 

Catherine DeAngelis endows fund at Children's Center

Catherine DeAngelis, professor of pediatrics, former vice dean for academic affairs and faculty in the School of Medicine and now editor in chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association, has won a $100,000 Medical Award of Excellence from the Ronald McDonald House Charities for her contributions to pediatrics. She has directed that the money be given to the Johns Hopkins Children's Center to establish the Dr. Cathy DeAngelis Endowment Fund and encourage others to contribute to the Child Life program, which provides entertaining activities for hospitalized children to help them overcome their worries about hospitalization.

 

Pilot gunshot detection system installed in Charles Village area

A pilot project for a new safety system in the Charles Village area will undergo its final test this week. The Secures gunshot detection system was developed by Planning Systems Inc. in Reston, Va., and is being tested here in collaboration with JHU Campus Safety and Security at Homewood, iXP Corp. and the Baltimore Police Department.

Ninety detector boxes have been installed, on street lights and elsewhere, in the area bordered by University Parkway on the north, 25th Street on the south, Barclay on the east and Charles Street to the west with the exception of 25th to 29th streets, where Howard Street is the western border.

When the system is operational, a gunshot in that area will be detected and triangulated, triggering an audible alert in the university's communications center and visually alerting its staff to the address where a shot has been fired. The staff will then alert the Northern District police dispatcher via a direct link to the Baltimore Police Department, which will respond. The sensors' technology can differentiate between fireworks, a vehicle backfire and a gunshot.

The system, which does not record sound, will provide another layer of high-tech security to the Homewood campus.

 

No 'Gazette' next week because of Thanksgiving break

There will be no Gazette next week because of the Thanksgiving break. The calendar in today's issue lists events scheduled through Dec. 1, the date of our next publication. The deadline for calendar and classified submissions for the Dec. 1 issue is noon on Wednesday, Nov. 19.

 

JH Tech Transfer honored with Deal of the Year award

The Johns Hopkins Technology Transfer Office has received the Deal of the Year award in technology and biotechnology from the Maryland chapter of the Association for Corporate Growth. The award cites the 12 startup companies that JHTT helped launch in fiscal year 2008, based on technology breakthroughs at Johns Hopkins. ACG, with 12,000 members nationwide, is the world's leading association for professionals involved in corporate growth, development and mergers and acquisitions.

GO TO NOVEMBER 17, 2008 TABLE OF CONTENTS.
GO TO THE GAZETTE FRONT PAGE.