President Brody joins U.S. education delegation to Asia

U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and Assistant Secretary of State Dina Habib Powell are this week leading the first high-profile delegation of American college and university presidents to Japan, Korea and China.

Johns Hopkins President William R. Brody is part of the 14-member delegation that will meet during International Education Week, Nov. 10 to 18, with student, university, government and business leaders and carry the message that the United States welcomes and values international students.

This pairing of government and higher education leaders follows a commitment made in January at the U.S. University Presidents Summit on International Education, which was co-hosted by Spellings and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs is organizing the high-level delegations of college and university presidents, each led by a senior government official, to key world regions to promote the value of higher education in the United States and to engage in discussions on the future and importance of international education.

 

APL engineer named to top 50 list by 'Scientific American'

Protagoras "Tag" Cutchis, a senior engineer at the Applied Physics Laboratory, has been named to the "Scientific American 50," the magazine's annual list of leaders in science and technology, which will appear in its December issue.

The list, compiled by the magazine's board of editors and outside advisers, recognizes research, business and policy leaders in several technological categories. The winners will be honored Nov. 16 at a celebration at the New York Academy of Sciences.

Cutchis is part of a team in APL's Biomedicine Business Area that is working to develop a mechanical arm that mimics a real arm as much as possible. He was selected for developing a device that may enable amputees to communicate desired movements simply by thinking about them.

Stuart Harshbarger, who leads the APL team, said, "This is a challenging task, and the team is exploring various methods for doing neural integration. Tag's expertise, as both an engineer and a medical doctor, has allowed him to come up with this innovative contribution that may be considered as part of the team's solution."

Cutchis' invention involves an array of electrodes implanted radially around the sheath of a peripheral nerve, recording pulses that travel up and down nerve endings and thus recreating precise stimulations that could be used to control the prosthesis. His novel electrode array was among the inventions recognized this year by APL's Invention of the Year Award program.

 

JHU, Princeton LAX teams to face off at M&T Bank Stadium

The college lacrosse season will start with a splash this year. The four teams that have won every NCAA championship since 1991 — defending champion Virginia, Johns Hopkins, Princeton and Syracuse — will meet in a double-header on March 3 at Baltimore's M&T Bank Stadium.

The inaugural Face-Off Classic, presented by the Inside Lacrosse media company, takes place in the venue where the championship game will be played in May. Johns Hopkins will take on Princeton, and Virginia will meet Syracuse. Tickets will go on sale in early December; information is online at www.insidelacrosse.com.

The Blue Jays' first game will be played at home a week earlier, at noon on Feb. 24 against Albany.

In announcing the 2007 lineup last week, Coach Dave Pietramala said, "Our scheduling philosophy has been and always will be to build the strongest regular season schedule possible so that we are prepared to compete in the NCAA tournament each May."

Six of the 13 games will be played on Homewood Field; other home matchups are Hofstra, Virginia, Duke, Navy and Loyola.

 

APL is awarded Air Force Space-Sensor contract

APL has been awarded a contract for initial design work on the Lightweight Electro-Optical Space Sensor program, managed by the Air Force Research Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. LEOSS would be one of the largest telescopes ever built by APL.

During this phase of the contract, an APL-led team will study the use of lightweight electro-optical technology and data products for searching, acquiring, tracking and characterizing resident space objects. The LEOSS program will serve as a pathfinder for future Department of Defense geosynchronous space situational awareness sensors.

APL is designing the experiment, developing system requirements and managing risk-reduction efforts. Teaming with APL, SSG Precision Optronics, of Wilmington, Mass., will design — and possibly build in a later phase of the project — the optical system, sensors and electronics for large- and small-aperture telescopes.

In approximately three months, the team will present its proposed system requirements to the Air Force and, in five months, its proposed design. Future phases of the project could include developing the LEOSS instrument and conducting a flight experiment.

 

'The Gazette' will not be published Thanksgiving week

The Gazette will not be published on Nov. 20 because of the Thanksgiving holiday. This week's Calendar includes listings for events through Nov. 27. The deadline for submissions for the Nov. 27 issue is today, Nov. 13.

 

Lt. Gen. David Petraeus addresses 'Soldiering and the Schoolhouse'

Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commanding general of the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center, will give the Third Annual Alvin H. Bernstein Lecture at SAIS on Thursday, Nov. 16. In a talk titled "Soldiering and the Schoolhouse," he will reflect on his experiences in Iraq and the importance of graduate school opportunities and education for Army officers.

Petraeus oversees the Command and General Staff College and 17 other branch schools and training centers in the United States.

The event will be at 5 p.m. in the Nitze Building. Non-SAIS affiliates should RSVP to 202-663-5831 or cmata@jhu.edu.

 

Correction

The law firm with which general counsel Stephen Dunham was formerly associated, Morrison & Foerster, is headquartered in San Francisco. A story last week about the firm's foundation naming a scholarship in honor of Dunham incorrectly said Denver, which is where Dunham was based.

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