Millis Named Inventor of the Year

Albert Millis/Photo by Mark Schmidt

Professor Albert Millis, chair of the Department of Biological Sciences, has been named the 2002 Inventor of the Year for his method of altering cell migration by employing an antibody to glycoprotein, a promising tool for treating vascular diseases and, potentially, cancer.

Millis was chosen to receive the honor by the Eastern New York Intellectual Property Law Association (ENYIPLA) for U.S. patent 6,464,975, “Compositions and Methods for Altering Cell Migration,” issued in October 2002.

Millis, with Lisa M. Shackelton and David M. Mann, former pre-doctoral students, developed an antibody identified as anti-gp38k that binds to and inhibits the glycoprotein gp38k, an endogenous protein that causes the migration of potentially harmful sticky cells from within artery walls. These sticky cells, often released when stents or catheters are inserted, may adhere to blood vessel walls, causing more blockages.

“Anti-gp38k is a potent inhibitor of vascular cell migration, suggesting that its use might prevent occlusive vascular disease before it begins. We have great hope for the antibody,” said Millis, who has studied the pathologies of vascular diseases for more than 20 years.

“We first became interested in identifying processes that affect cell migration and adhesion, and for years we investigated the subtle properties of these cells and the molecules that regulate their biological functions,” he said.

While the new antibody therapy has not yet been tested clinically, it has shown early promise for the treatment of cancer. In particular, it appears to inhibit the migration of breast cancer cells.

ENYIPLA is a regional organization of patent attorneys and agents that honors an Inventor of the Year (or a group of inventors) with an award based on creativity, economic value, the difficulty of the solved problem, the contribution to the well-being of society as a whole, and the status of the invention and inventor in his field.

Avon-IFW Life Impact Scholarship Program

VP for University Advancement Robert Ashton (third from right) accepts a check from Avon Administrator Denise Yap to continue the Avon-IFW Life Impact Scholarship Program. Others attending included, left to right: Myrna Bridges, Avon-IFW Life Impact scholar; Sherry Jacques, Avon district manager; Yap; Ashton; Carol Bullard, IFW member; and Kathy Turek, Initiatives For Women chair. Photo by Mark Schmidt

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day
By Sarah McCarthy
On Thursday, April 24, the University at Albany will celebrate Take Our Daughters and Sons To Work Day. The theme of this year’s event, Calling All Dreamers, encourages girls and boys to imagine possibilities, set goals, and strive to achieve them. Take Our Daughters and Sons To Work Day is designed to focus on expanding future opportunities for all our children, in both their work and family lives.

An exciting day of events planned for the children of University at Albany faculty, staff, and students includes a Dream Weaving writing workshop with author Claudia Ricci and Reflections from a Dreamer, a workshop with children’s author Liza Frenette. The event will run from 8:30 a.m. until 4 p.m., with the main meeting site at the Campus Center Ballroom.

During the day, the children will be able to explore the diverse array of career opportunities available on the UAlbany campus. Sessions include “Teaching Assistant for the Day” at U-Kids Day Care, a visit to President Hitchcock’s office, Liberty Partnership, Albany NanoTech and the Study Abroad Office. The children will also be able to discover careers in sports, carpentry, or chemistry. There will be a session with a pool swim, the University Police and Canine Cody, the Ultimate College Challenge, and more. In addition, the children will take part in an ice cream social and prize raffle, and receive a bag of goodies.

“We are making this effort as an investment in the children’s future,” said Winsome Foderingham-Williams, event co-chair. “We can plant a seed and watch it grow.”

The Ms. Foundation for Women launched Take Our Daughters To Work Day in 1993 as a response to disturbing research which found that adolescent girls receive less attention than boys in school, suffer from lower expectations, and tend to like or dislike themselves based only on the aspects of their physical appearance. This year, the focus of the event has shifted to include both girls and boys. The Take Our Daughters and Sons To Work program emphasizes dialogue between girls and boys, between children and their parents, and between employees and employers.

Sponsors of this year’s on-campus event include the Department of Student Affairs, the President’s Office, the Provost’s Office, Creative Services, and several offices that have volunteered their time to participate. Registration is required and is limited to the first 100 children. Watch for notices in Today @UAlbany and in event fliers, which will feature our Web address.

Volunteers and chaperones are needed to make this day a success for the children. This year’s event co-chairs are Winsome Foderingham-Williams and Jane Kessler. If you would like to know more about Take Our Daughters and Sons To Work Day, or if you would like to help with the day’s activities, please call 442-3830.

UAlbany In the News By Lisa James Goldsberry The February 27 edition of Newsday featured comments by Bonnie Steinbock, bioethics professor and chair of the Department of Philosophy. The article, “Cloning Claims Cloud the Issues,” discussed the debate in Congress over bills to decide the fate of human cloning experiments in the U.S. and how competing cloning groups are clouding this highly charged issue. According to the article, Steinbock said the task is to evaluate the motivations behind different kinds of cloning research and to delve beyond visceral reactions. The March 2 edition of The New York Times featured a profile of Stephen Adly Guirgis (BA ’90). The article, “The Sound of Fury,” called him an overgrown kid who may be the best playwright in America younger than 40. It focused on how in his plays, character after character has a moment of detonation in which the fury at being dealt a bad hand erupts. The stories involve physical violence, but onstage the only violence is verbal. The article also mentions that while here at UAlbany, Guirgis became a famous campus character, and it was here that he had a chance to pursue his interest in acting. The March 2 edition of The Buffalo News featured information about UAlbany’s Center of Excellence. “Jeffrey Skolnick Super-star: Can a Short Jewish Kid from Brooklyn Who Used to Tinker with Chemistry Sets Help Buffalo Build a New Economy?” focused on Skolnick’s new position as head of the University at Buffalo’s Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and all that is expected of him. It stated that because UAlbany’s center has already attracted a Toyko Electron plant, which will pay 300 people average salaries of $100,000, bioinformatics is much more than an academic program. The March 9 issue of the Los Angeles Times featured quotes from Richard Nathan, director of the Rockefeller Institute of Government. “Bush Budget Has a Long Reach: If Enacted, the Tax and Spending Plan Would Be an About-face on a Scale of those by LBJ and Reagan” stated that the president’s new tax package would make Bush the biggest tax cutter in at least two decades, topping even former President Ronald Reagan. Nathan, described in the article as a former Nixon administration budget official, was quoted as saying Bush’s plan to revamp Medicaid and other programs would be “one of the biggest pullbacks in federal responsibility we’ve ever seen.”

Obituary
Walter Zenner
Walter Paul Zenner, 69, died at his home in Albany March 17, 2003. Zenner was born in Nuremberg, Germany October 18, 1933 and emigrated to the U.S. in 1939. Raised in Chicago, Ill., he moved to Albany upon accepting a faculty position in the Department of Anthropology at the University at Albany in 1966.

Zenner earned a B.A. in anthropology from Northwestern University, where he was admitted to Phi Beta Kappa, the undergraduate honors organization. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D in anthropology from Columbia University. He also held a Master of Hebrew Letters in Judaica from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

Zenner was a distinguished and accomplished academician and scholar. In addition to teaching anthropology, he was the author or co-author of 12 books, including A Global Community: The Jews from Aleppo, Syria; Minorities in the Middle, a Cross-Cultural Analysis; Persistence and Flexibility; Anthropolo-gical Perspectives on the American Jewish Experience; Urban Life (with George Gmelch); numerous other book chapters and hundreds of journal articles throughout his career. He wrote the introduction and assisted with the research for the recently published Guide to Jewish Cemeteries in Northeastern New York, compiled by the Jewish Historical Society of Northeastern New York, of which he was a past president and founding member. Zenner was also one of the founders of the Department of Judaic Studies at the University at Albany, one of the first Judaic Studies departments at a public university in the United States.

Zenner also served on the faculty of Lake Forest College in Lake Forest, Ill., and was a visiting faculty member at the University of Haifa in Israel and at the Max Weinreich Center for Advanced Jewish Studies at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York. In 1987, he was awarded an honorary doctorate in Hebrew Letters from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America for his body of research on Jewish communities throughout the world. In 1990, he was a Resident Fellow at the Annenberg Research Institute in Philadelphia, Pa. In 1997, he was awarded the Distinguished Sklare Memorial Lecturer award from the Association for the Social-Scientific Study of Jewry. Zenner retired from the University at Albany in September 2002.

Zenner is survived by his wife, Linda, of Albany; two daughters, Rachel Zenner and her husband, Bradley Kane, of Berkeley, Calif. and Abigail Zenner of Albany; and his sister, Eve Veis, and her husband, Arthur, of Skokie, Ill. A memorial service will be held at Congregation Ohav Shalom. Memorial contributions may be made to Congregation Ohav Shalom in Albany or the Jewish Historical Society of Northeastern New York, P.O. Box 9176, Niskayuna, N.Y. 12309-0176, or the charity of your choice.

Faculty & Staff By Greta Petry Kecskes Appointed Editor Professor Istvan Kecskes of the Department of Educational Theory and Practice has been appointed editor-in-chief of a new linguistics journal, Intercultural Pragmatics, which will start publishing in 2004. Intercultural Pragmatics is being launched by Walter de Gruyter: Berlin and New York, a prestigious international publisher. The journal will be a forum for researchers from several disciplines, including linguistics, communication, second language acquisition, psychology, and education, who are interested in intercultural communication and the use of language in multilingual settings, and look for new techniques, tools, and methods to investigate the role of pragmatic skills and knowledge in cross-cultural interaction and bilingual and multilingual language use and development. Monfasani Wins Fellowship Professor of History John Monfasani has received a fellowship from the Harvard University Center for Byzantine Studies, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C., for the spring semester of 2004 to complete his three-volume study of the Plato-Aristotle Controversy of the Fifteenth Century. Richard Hamm Wins NEH Summer Stipend Grant Richard Hamm /Photo by Mark Schmidt Associate Professor of History and Public Policy Richard Hamm has won a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) summer stipend for his project, “Arthur Garfield Hays and American Civil Liberties in Times of Crisis.” The $5,000 grant will be used to defray his research costs this summer. From the 1920s into the 1950s, Arthur Garfield Hays was a leading advocate of civil liberties in American society. Hays, the grandchild of German-Jewish immigrants, was a well-heeled Wall Street lawyer. During World War I, government persecution of pro-German advocates (including his law partners), radicals, and pacifists converted Hays to the cause of civil liberties. Through representation of clients, direct action, speeches, and writing -- often for the American Civil Liberties Union -- Hays sought to guarantee all Americans the rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights. He joined the ACLU in the early 1920s, was appointed co-general counsel of the organization in 1929, and remained active in the organization until his death in 1955. Hays thought free speech, the right to express any opinion, a positive good and would defend anyone’s right to assert it. In addition to working for clients and groups with whom he agreed, like John Scopes, opponents of censorship, and the NAACP, Hays routinely represented clients and groups whose ideas he abhorred, including Communists and American Nazis. Moreover, he constantly broadcast the idea that in protecting despised individuals’ and groups’ rights, Americans protected their own freedom. Beyond looking at Hays’s involvement in many controversies and causes, Hamm hopes his study will detail Hays’s role in advertising the cause of civil liberties. Hays, a master communicator for the cause of civil liberties, maintained an extensive speaking schedule, participated in many debates, and engaged in mock trials to further the cause -- most notably a mock trial of Adolf Hitler in 1934. Hays also wrote extensively about the topic. From law reviews through popular magazines and especially through a series of books, Hays decried lapses in civil liberties and advocated greater freedoms. He also used radio and later television to broadcast his message. His work as a communicator showed Hays’s faith in the democratic process, as it indicates that he hoped to sway public opinion and through that means change governmental policy. As he wrote about his involvement with the ACLU: “We believe that the American people can be trusted. We have an abiding faith in democracy. We hold no truck with those who would pretend to maintain democracy by first destroying it.” (Hays, City Lawyer, 221) Despite a good-sized literature on the ACLU, and studies of other civil libertarians, there is no study of Hays, Hamm noted. He will use the summer stipend to research a book on Hays’s contributions to the development of civil liberties in the U.S. By examining Hays’s career, Hamm hopes to underscore the idea that freedom of speech and other civil liberties were not born in quiet times, and emphasize that advocacy of civil liberties was not limited to the marginalized and radical in American society. Hays, while a political liberal, associated with lawyers and clients who were the richest of Americans. Most notably, he opposed the creation and operation of one of the most successful New Deal agencies, the Securities and Exchange Commission. Hamm’s previous works, Shaping the 18th Amendment (UNC Press, 1995) and Murder, Honor, and Law (UVA Press, 2003) focused on the interaction of law and society. The Hays biography will continue that focus.

Center for Technology in Government Wins Grant
By Heidi Weber
The University at Albany’s Center for Technology in Government (CTG) has received a two-year, $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), to assemble a multidisciplinary team of researchers to examine government information integration projects. The research will develop a series of models to help researchers and government professionals better understand the social and technical processes that make up cross-organizational integration initiatives.

The study, Modeling Information Integration Initiatives, is funded by NSF’s Information Technology Research Program, one of the largest and most competitive research programs sponsored by the agency.

The research team includes University at Albany scholars from a range of disciplines including public policy, public administration, information science, information management, computer science and organizational communication.

“Government information integration initiatives are embedded in complex environments that include business processes, technical infrastructure, public policies, organizational culture, and a political context,” said CTG Director Sharon Dawes. “By looking at information integration initiatives from all of these perspectives, we are more likely to get a full picture of what makes them succeed or fail.”

“CTG has put together an innovative research design that will help us model the dynamics of interorganizational information integration over time,” said David Andersen, a distinguished service professor in the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy and a researcher on the project. Also involved are Francois Cooren, associate professor, Department of Communication; George Richardson, professor, Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy; Tomek Strzalkowski, associate professor, Department of Computer Science; and Giri Tayi, professor of management science and information.

The project will be carried out in three phases, according to Theresa Pardo, the project leader and CTG deputy director. In the first phase, CTG will partner with the New York State Police and the New York State Department of Environmental Conversation on mission-critical integration initiatives.

In phase two, CTG will lead a series of field investigations, during which researchers will examine similar integration projects in several other states. Phase three will include a national survey designed to validate the models of integration developed based on the results of phase one and two.

“As with all of our work, this project has been designed to produce results that can help people in government working on similar types of initiatives,” said Dawes. “The better we understand the many facets of a successful integration project, the more helpful our results will be to future government policy initiatives that depend on information integration.”

WRGB Featured Student Views on War with Iraq
Julian Zelizer, associate professor in the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, moderated a discussion with some 15 UAlbany students regarding their opinions on the war with Iraq on WRGB. The discussion was scheduled for the WRGB “Morning News Show with Ed O’Brien” from 5 to 7 a.m. on Monday, March 24.

Students who appeared included: David Friedfel, John Hojnazki, Seth Wienberg, Travis Wattie, Eric Dawes, Jeffrey Locke, Jacob MacDougall, Maureen Galvin, Dara Strophenberg, Stephanie Coon, Cecilia Ferradino, Deana Smith, Khayidanne Henry, and Priya Mehra.

Campus Draws Together in March 24 Family Gathering

Left to right, Kirk Douglass, president of the Student Association; Professor John Pipkin, head of the University Senate; and UAlbany President Karen R. Hitchcock hold hands. They lit three candles - one for American soldiers, one for all the victims of the war in Iraq, and one for the restoration of world peace. Since January 1, 18 UAlbany students and three staff members have been called to active duty in connection with the action in the Middle East./Photo by Mark Schmidt

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Writing History to Change the World”
The 23rd Annual Phi Alpha Theta
Distinguished Lecture
Friday, April 4, 3 p.m.
Campus Center Assembly Hall

Co-sponsored by the Department of History and the Phi Alpha Theta history honor society.

Speaker: Robin D. G. Kelley, professor of history and Africana Studies at New York University.

Kelley’s talk will focus on how African-American historians have tried to use history as a tool for social change in the 20th century. Kelley is the author of numerous books and articles on U.S. and African-American history, urban studies, working-class radicalism, and cultural history, including his most recent, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (2002). He has also published Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional! Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (1997); Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (1994); and Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (1990), winner of the Organization of American Historians’ Elliot Rudwick Prize for the best book on the experience of racial and ethnic minorities in the United States. The event is free and open to the public.