Informatics East, West buildings renamed Myles Brand Hall
Indiana University President Michael McRobbie announced during his State of the University address Sept. 24 that the buildings at the corner of 10th Street and Woodlawn Avenue, the Informatics buildings of the School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, were renamed Myles Brand Hall.
The decision commemorates the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the then-School of Informatics as well as honoring former IU President Brand, who passed away 10 years ago this month.
The Informatics East and West buildings have a long history on campus. The School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, which previously had been spread out across campus, found its first home in 2003 in Informatics West, which was built in the 1950s and previously served as a sorority house. In 2008, the school expanded into Informatics East, which was built in the 1920s and was a former fraternity house before undergoing more than $2 million in renovations that included a connecting corridor between the two buildings.
Stone Age Institute co-directors honored by Tbilisi State University
Nick Toth and Kathy Schick, co-directors of the Stone Age Institute and both faculty members in the Department of Anthropology, were recently honored by Tbilisi State University in the Republic of Georgia with honorary doctorates. The two traveled to Tbilisi State University for the ceremony Sept. 23.
As part of their work with the Stone Age Institute, Toth and Schick have partnered with Georgian prehistorians for more than a decade to make discoveries in the Dmanisi site, which holds the oldest evidence of human occupation in Eurasia, dating to 1.8 million years ago. They have also hosted several of these prehistorians in Bloomington.
Led by Toth and Schick, the Stone Age Institute has strong ties to Indiana University and is focused on the archaeological study of human origins and technological development. The institute works on research projects across the world as well as offers a world-class research library on early prehistory and extensive artifact collection in its facility in Bloomington.
Diplomacy Lab seeking faculty for collaboration with U.S. Department of State
The United States Department of State has released the latest list of projects for its Diplomacy Lab, a program designed to bring the resources of U.S. colleges and universities to bear on real-world foreign policy challenges, and faculty members at Indiana University Bloomington and IUPUI can apply to lead a lab.
Launched in 2013, Diplomacy Lab engages teams of students at U.S. universities in research related to critical policy issues in areas such as women’s economic empowerment, sustainable development, human rights, violent extremism, global health, energy security and international treaties.
As participating schools, IU Bloomington and IUPUI are each entitled to bid on up to six projects for the spring 2020 semester. Faculty members from all disciplines and any academic field are encouraged to apply to lead a Diplomacy Lab. Faculty interested in leading a Diplomacy Lab in the spring semester should submit an application on the IU Diplomacy Lab website before Oct. 13.
Arts and Humanities Council launches events calendar
The Arts and Humanities Council has launched a new calendar to promote events on the IU Bloomington campus. The calendar was developed to be a place where students, faculty, staff and the community can find activities from all of the campus’s organizations related to arts and humanities.
Events can be submitted through the new LiveWhale system. Anyone who has access to submit events to an IU Bloomington calendar can suggest an event for the Arts and Humanities calendar. Most of the events on the calendar will be Bloomington based, but some IUPUI events may be included as well.
EPA awards nearly $6 million to IU scientists for airborne pollutant monitoring of Great Lakes
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has awarded a $5,999,860 million grant to Indiana University to support long-term measurements of airborne pollutants near the Great Lakes.
The cooperative agreement will support the Integrated Atmospheric Deposition Network, in agreement with the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative Action Plan. The award will be distributed incrementally over the next five years and will be overseen by Marta Venier and Amina Salamova, scientists in the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs.
The Integrated Atmospheric Deposition Network, which has been managed at IU for the past 25 years, monitors toxic pollution at both urban and rural sites across the Great Lakes basin, including sampling stations in Eagle Harbor and Sleeping Bear Dunes in Michigan; Sturgeon Point, New York; Chicago; Cleveland; and Point Petre, Ontario. Samples collected from the stations help researchers better understand the lake-wide trends of persistent toxic chemicals entering the Great Lakes.
IU joins Purdue, Notre Dame to create new center for measurement science
Indiana University is one of three in-state universities to establish a new center to bridge the gap between academics and industry in the area of measurement science.
The Center for Bioanalytic Metrology, which officially launched Sept. 11, is a collaboration between IU, Purdue University and the University of Notre Dame. The center is supported by research awards to each university from the National Science Foundation’s Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers program, as well as memberships from industry partners, for a combined total $4.5 million over the first five years.
The ability to conduct precise measurements – and the instrumentation required for these measurements – is a critical factor for driving innovation in many major industries, including drug discovery, biotechnology, manufacturing, agriculture and energy. The new center will focus on challenges and solutions in these areas, as well as connect measurement science experts from across the state.
“The Center for Bioanalytic Metrology is a modern approach to measurement science open to the entire IU campus,” said Lane Baker, the James L. Jackson Professor in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Chemistry, who serves as the center’s site director at IU. “It will be an important catalyst for enhancing measurement science research collaborations between the three universities and industry, and combines the excellence in analytical chemistry that each possess individually, to create a problem-solving juggernaut. We are excited to work with industry in this capacity.”
Present groups involved in the center include researchers from the disciplines of chemistry, biology, informatics, physics and engineering. Through the planning phases, the center also received the support of the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute, the Office of the Vice Provost for Research and the College of Arts and Science.
The center is administratively located at Notre Dame. For more information, contact the IU center at iucbm@indiana.edu. To contact Baker, email lanbaker@indiana.edu.
Union Board to screen critically acclaimed documentary, ‘Hail Satan?’
Premiering to critical acclaim at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, “Hail Satan?” documents the rise of The Satanic Temple, a movement that is only six years old and already one of the most controversial religious movements in American history. The temple and its enigmatic leader, Lucien Greaves, are calling for a satanic revolution to save the nation’s soul. So are they serious or are they kidding? Yes and yes.
Union Board will screen the film at 7 p.m. Oct. 4 in the Whittenberger Auditorium at the Indiana Memorial Union. Following a free screening of the documentary, director Penny Lane will join IU professors Steve Sanders of the Maurer School of Law and Constance Furey, chair of the Department of Religious Studies. Together they will discuss the many fascinating and critical topics of freedom of expression covered in the film.
