Associate Professor of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Eloise Brière was elected at the Modern Language Association's December 2004 convention to represent the Division of Francophone Literature in the MLA Delegate Assembly. She will serve a three-year term.

A grant from Québec's Ministry of Foreign Affairs allowed the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures to invite Haitian author Marie-Célie Agnant to UAlbany for a one-day residency April 27. Agnant, who writes prose fiction, poetry, and children's literature and now resides in Montréal, visited an intermediate French class where students were reading her novel, Le Livre d'Emma, and a graduate seminar. Her afternoon public lecture addressed the situation of French Caribbean women.

Edward Schwarzschild, an assistant professor of English, has published his first novel. Responsible Men (Algonquin) tells the story of a 41-year-old salesman, Max Wolinsky, his business, and his family relationships. As a boy, Schwarzschild accompanied his father, a textile salesman, on road trips. The older man encouraged his son not to follow in his footsteps, but "to do something better."

Associate Professor of Educational Theory and Practice Joseph Bowman, Jr., was one of 16 State University of New York Educational Opportunity Center graduates honored at the first-ever EOC Distinguished Alumni Awards event in Albany Feb. 20. Bowman, a UAlbany alumnus, also directs UAlbany's Center for Urban Youth and Technology. Also in February, Bowman received the 2005 Johnson Communications/ Palace Theatre Community Service Award for working to improve the lives of Capital Region children and families.

Robert J. Gluck and his collaborator, visual artist Cynthia Beth Rubin, recently displayed their multimedia work "Layered Histories" at the Jewish Museum in Prague, Czech Republic. The exhibit, the imaginary story of a 13th-century illuminated Hebrew manuscript now known as the Bible of Marseilles, allowed visitors to create "unique combinations of sound and image that reflect the manuscript's possible journeys," noted Gluck, director of UAlbany's electronic music studio. "Layered Histories" has also been shown this year at major arts and music conferences in Los Angeles, Miami, New York, and Providence, R.I.

Gov. George Pataki recognized Assistant Professor of Nanoengineering Fatemah (Shadi) Shahedipour-Sandvik for her contributions to scientific research at the 10th Annual Women of Excellence Awards, held in conjunction with Women's History Month. Shahedipour-Sandvik, a Ph.D. graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia, specializes in optoelectronics and compound semiconductors. She recently was awarded a $150,000 grant from General Electric Corp. to fund research in developing next-generation devices for lighting and power applications.

Associate Professor Emeritus of History DeWitt C. Ellinwood, Jr., has published Between Two Worlds: A Rajput Officer in the Indian Army, 1905-21 (Hamilton Books). The book describes both the British governmental and military society and the regional Rajasthan aristocracy of 20th-century colonial India.

Ian Davidson and Sekharipuram Ravi of the Department of Computer Science received "best paper" honors from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) for "Clustering With Constraints: Feasibility Issues and the k-Mean Algorithm." The paper, one of 278 submitted for consideration, was singled out for recognition at SIAM's 2005 International Data Mining Conference, held in April in Newport Beach, Calif.

"Molding Atomic Structures into Intermediate-Resolution Cryo-EM Density Maps of Ribosomal Complexes Using Real-Space Refinement," a paper by Professor Joachim Frank and his colleagues from Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Health Research, Inc., at the Wadsworth Center and the Department of Biomedical Sciences wrote the paper, was published in the March 2005 issue of the journal Structure.

Margaret Reich is now director of International Student Services in UAlbany's Office of International Education. Other recent appointees include Director of Study Abroad and Exchanges James Pasquill; International Student Adviser Annie Heavener; and Linda Miller, secretary.