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One Silber WayBoston, Massachusetts 02215www.bu.edu/research

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at Boston University

2008Frames of Mind

Spoken Words

Picture of Health

Beyond Minuscule

Research

Art Beat The Long View

In honor of the bicentennial of his birth, Boston Universitywill participate in a worldwide celebration of the life, work,and continuing influence of Charles Darwin (1809–1882).Preparations are underway in Boston University’s schools andcolleges to present a wide variety of Darwin-themed events,workshops, and courses to the Boston community through-out calendar year 2009, including educational outreach programs in partnership with the Boston Museum of Scienceand the Boston Public Schools.

Darwin 2009 Celebration Reflections on the life and legacy of Charles Darwin

www.bu.edu/darwin2009

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KAREN H. ANTMANPROVOST, MEDICAL CAMPUS

ROBERT A. BROWNPRESIDENT

ANDREI E. RUCKENSTEINASSOCIATE PROVOST AND VICE PRESIDENT FOR RESEARCH

Welcome to Research at Boston University 2008. It has been a year since

I joined Boston University as the Associate Provost and Vice President for

Research. My time here has coincided with a period of re-evaluation and

change, led by President Robert A. Brown, that has engaged the vision and

creativity of the entire BU community. As part of our ongoing planning

efforts, we are making great strides toward developing a University-wide

strategy for strengthening and focusing our research and scholarly activities.

This strategy aims to reinforce and enhance our strength in traditional

disciplines, which is essential for the health and vitality of our academic

enterprise and for supporting first-rate educational programs, while ensuring

that Boston University continues to be a relevant and valuable member of

both our local community and the increasingly interconnected world in

which we live.

Already, a series of campus-wide conversations has begun on the

kinds of complex, real-world problems that we as researchers and educators

are called to address: sustainability, alternative forms of energy, and the

environment; the impact of religion on modern society; technological and

biomedical applications of nanoscience and photonics; infectious diseases

and global health; public policy and social responsibility; and work and

process management in worldwide networks, among others.

Given the complexity of these challenges, academic institutions are

increasingly broadening the scope of their vision beyond traditional

disciplines. At Boston University, we are developing strong collaborative

programs and targeted initiatives to leverage existing strengths and foster

meaningful connections and conversations among departments and

colleges across our two campuses.

Such multidisciplinary approaches to research provide the basis for

training a new generation of scholars who have a deep knowledge of a spe-

cific discipline, and who are also capable of understanding how their field

fits into the big picture. Since the success of interdisciplinary programs—in

both their research and teaching missions—is inextricably tied to the

strength and vitality of the traditional disciplines involved, we must ensure

that these disciplines remain well supported and vibrant.

Ultimately, Boston University’s success rests with the world-renowned

researchers in our laboratories and classrooms. In the last year, I have had

the privilege to meet and interact with many of these talented and dedicated

teacher-scholars on both the Charles River and Medical campuses.

In this magazine, I am pleased to introduce you to some of these

individuals. While they comprise only a small fraction of the faculty as a

whole, I hope that their work will convey the remarkable depth and breadth

of research, scholarship, and creative activities currently underway in

Boston University’s seventeen schools and colleges.

For a fuller picture of research at BU, I invite you to visit our website

at www.bu.edu/research.

From the Associate Provost and Vice President for Research

“Research and scholarship are at the heartof Boston University’s mission. The facultyand students highlighted in this magazineonly begin to tell the story of the dynamicand exciting enterprise underway at ourUniversity.”

“Through interdisciplinary research andscholarly interaction among faculty andstudents, historically distinct yet inter-dependent disciplines are collaborating ona daily basis, stimulating innovative think-ing and critical problem solving across awide range of conventional fields.”

“By improving our understanding of disease,BU’s health sciences research provides targets for therapeutic intervention today,and prediction of personal risk and diseaseprevention in the future. Our laboratory,clinical, and public health research is underway locally and around the world.”

DAVID K. CAMPBELLUNIVERSITY PROVOST

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Coldwater Split

Christianity on the Move

Grassroots Innovators

Genetics: Fast Forward

Succès de Scandale

Award-Winning Faculty

Boston University at a Glance

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Neuroscience: Opening the Doors of Perception

Poetry: Shaping Words

Nanoscience: Big Solutions at the Nanoscale

Health: Health Care Without Exception

Arts: Regenerating the Arts

Pardee Center: Developing Our Future

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Howard Eichenbaum, director of the new Center forNeuroscience, uses red and yellow coloring to showwhich regions of the cerebral cortex are engagedduring mental activity. The six “slices” of the humanbrain seen here were produced using functionalmagnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

facts and figures

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Research: Neuroscience BY CHRIS BERDIK

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Opening the

As much as we think we share a common “real world,” infact, to a certain extent, we each live in our own reality,one created by billions of neurons in our brains con-stantly interpreting and intermingling the informationpicked up by our senses. Boston University faculty arelooking into the mysteries of how the brain processes thestimuli of everyday existence, and what happens whenthese complex systems go awry. From translating neuralsignals into words to reverse engineering the brains offish, researchers are embarking on new collaborativeinvestigations to find answers.

Doors of Perception

After nearly a decade of living with locked-in syndrome,Erik Ramsey is regaining his voice with help from Cognitive & Neural Systems Professor Frank Guenther.

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New Neuroscience

Psychology Professor Howard Eichenbaum knows that the best researchoften takes risks. With a goal of generating “breakthrough science,” helaunched the multidisciplinary Center for Memory & Brain in 2002 with aseed grant from the University. At CMB, psychologists, mathematicians, andbiomedical engineers collaborate to study the complex role of the hippo-campus from different angles. Four years after its modest beginning, thecenter was awarded a five-year grant of more than $9 million by theNational Institute of Mental Health, which named CMB a Silvio O. ConteCenter for Neuroscience Research.

Now Eichenbaum will have the chance to boost future interdiscipli-nary, pioneering research as the director of the new Center forNeuroscience, which opened its doors in the fall of 2007. The center takesadvantage of BU’s existing strengths on both the Charles River and Medicalcampuses, bringing together researchers from the departments ofPsychology, Computational Methods, and Cognitive & Neural Systems, aswell as the School of Medicine. As an intercollege, intercampus entity, theCenter for Neuroscience reports directly to Associate Provost and VicePresident for Research Andrei Ruckenstein. An Executive Committee rep-resenting participating departments and centers provides collaborativeleadership, with Eichenbaum as chair (see sidebar).

The center’s funding will support scientists searching for new ways tostudy how the brain perceives its world, how the aging brain changes, andhow breakthrough therapies can treat conditions such as Parkinson’s,autism, and Alzheimer’s. “We want to seed new collaborations and teamapproaches that bring a wide range of expertise to bear on the most complexproblems,” says Eichenbaum.

Turning Thoughts into Words

Before the accident, Erik Ramsey was “a typical teenager,”according to his dad, Eddie Ramsey. He liked to draw andskateboard. He liked sports and girls. But on a November nightin 1999, everything typical about Erik Ramsey’s life ended. Acar crash caused a brain-stem stroke that left him with“locked-in syndrome”—completely paralyzed but with totalcognitive and sensory awareness. Ramsey, now 24, has almostno voluntary control over his body, except for his eyes, whichhe uses to answer questions—by looking up for yes or down forno. Now, thanks to a collaboration between Neural Signals,Inc., a company in the Ramseys’ home state of Georgia, andFrank Guenther, a professor of cognitive and neural systems,Ramsey may one day regain his ability to speak. With fundingfrom the National Institutes of Health (NIH), researchers are creating a“speech prosthesis” that combines a wireless electrode and transmitterfrom Neural Signals, Inc. implanted in Ramsey’s brain, with a voice syn-thesizer run by software based on a computer model of the brain’s lan-guage centers developed by Guenther’s lab. Together, they aim to turnRamsey’s thoughts into words.

The collaboration is about two years old, but since 1992 Guentherand his lab team have been working on a computational model of howthe brain controls speech. Their model mimics the neural networksinvolved in producing words—from moving the jaw, lips, and tongue tobabbling to processing “auditory targets” stored in the brain of how aword is supposed to sound. Continually refined with data from func-tional magnetic resonance imaging of people’s brains performingspeech tasks, the model learns to control a computer-simulated vocaltract and translate neural signals into words.

In the summer of 2006, Guenther was contacted by Philip Kennedy,founder of Neural Signals, Inc., who had implanted an electrode about sixmillimeters long into Ramsey’s brain, in the area that controls the tongue,jaw, and lips. The electrode could wirelessly transmit the pulses of about40 neurons surrounding it. Kennedy’s team had collected extensive datafrom the electrodes, gathered when researchers asked Ramsey to imaginespeaking specific words. But they couldn’t decode it. Up to a billion neu-rons are activated when we speak, says Guenther, so to glean much fromjust 40, “you need to have extremely sensitive techniques.”

Guenther’s lab used their neural model of speech to guide thedesign of decoder software that learned to read Ramsey’s mind as heimagined saying vowel sounds. In a clinical trial last year, they wereable to predict what vowel sound Ramsey was thinking of with 80 per-cent accuracy, but not in real time. In February, they used an improveddecoder and a new training protocol in which Ramsey imagined“singing along” to a series of vowel sounds that moved, for example,from oooh to ahhh. Once the decoder had been “trained” to recognizeRamsey’s signal patterns, it was able to drive a synthesized voice thatproduced the vowel sounds as soon as Ramsey thought them.

“Everybody was just ecstatic that day,” says Eddie Ramsey—includ-ing Erik, who can still laugh, and did. The next step is consonants,which are more complex, because they involve the closing of the vocaltract. Meanwhile, Neural Signals, Inc., has FDA approval to implantelectrodes in four more patients, which would accelerate the develop-ment and refinement of the decoder software.

As for Ramsey’s chances of being able to speak again, his father hasno doubt it will happen. “It’s kind of equivalent to watching your babylearn to walk,” he says. “He’s got the first steps out of the way, and assoon as he’s got his footing under him, he’ll be off.”

Research: Neuroscience

A “brain-computer interface” system picks up signals from an electrodeimplanted in Erik’s brain and transmits them via FM radio waves to a Neuralynxrecording system. By means of a neural decoder and synthesized voice, vowelsounds are produced in real-time as Erik Ramsey thinks about each letter.

“It’s kind of equivalent towatching your baby learnto walk. He’s got the firststeps out of the way, andsoon he’ll be off.”

“We want to bring a widerange of expertise to bear onthe most complex problems.”

The center will assume the initial financial risk for projects that tra-ditional funders shy away from, in the hope that a good portion of thesepilot projects will prove themselves and draw outside support after a fewyears. Research projects being considered for the center include explo-ration of the links between smelling and sexual attraction, monkey stud-ies of the aging brain, and investigations of drug treatments that couldenhance memory or fight addictions.

Meanwhile, faculty from the Colleges of Arts & Sciences, Engineering,and Health & Rehabilitation Sciences, and the School of Medicine are currently developing a new undergraduate neuroscience major, whichexpects to enroll its first students in the spring semester of 2009.Although students in psychology and biology can already specialize inneuroscience, this will be BU’s first stand-alone undergraduate neuro-science program and one of the few of its kind in the nation. It will groundstudents in the cellular, biological systems, and cognitive/behavioralaspects of neuroscience, says Eichenbaum, and “culminate in a senioryear research experience that will match students with laboratories.”

As a slightly longer-term goal, and aligned with the center’s scien-tific mission, a new umbrella graduate program is being developed underthe leadership of director Shelly Russek, professor of pharmacology,which will link the three existing neuroscience graduate programs atBU—cognitive and neural systems, neuroscience, and biomedical neuro-science.

Overall, the mission is to open up opportunities for students to workwith faculty across these disciplines and to take fuller advantage ofdepartments’ resources. The University’s neuroscience initiatives willsimultaneously expand the reach of neuroscience research and educationand, Eichenbaum hopes, “create a unifying organization that can high-light our strengths.”

Center for Neuroscience Executive Committee

Howard Eichenbaum, Department of Psychology and Center for Memory & Brain, Chair

Domenic A. Ciraulo, Division of Psychiatry

David H. Farb, Department of Pharmacology & Experimental Therapeutics

Nancy Kopell, Department of Mathematics and Center for BioDynamics

Mark B. Moss, Department of Anatomy & Neurobiology

Barbara G. Shinn-Cunningham, Department of Biomedical Engineering and

Department of Cognitive & Neural Systems

Frank Guenther

Erik Ramsey rests between experimental sessions at Neural Signals, Inc., withEddie Ramsey (left), Philip Kennedy, and lab technician Jess Bartels.

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“Sharks have very goodeyes, but their importanceonly comes out after youeliminate the majorsense—the lateral line.”


Where Autism Begins: Tapping the Infant Mind

The infants in Helen Tager-Flusberg’s lab stare at alternating picturesof mommy and a stranger on a computer monitor. Later, a string ofword sounds—ta, ta, ta, ta—is emitted from nearby speakers. The babiesare wearing what look like white plastic hairnets, but are actually a setof electrodes on the scalp that record small voltage changes—calledevent-related potentials, or ERPs—due to brain activity. The hairnet-wearing babies are part of autism research funded by NIH and theAutism Speaks Foundation, aiming to identify children at high risk forautism well before the onset of the behavioral symptoms—trouble withlanguage, lack of eye contact, social isolation, and repetitive motionssuch as arm flapping—that have traditionally led to the disorder’sdiagnosis.

In recent years, the clinical definition of autism has broadenedinto a range of neurological impairments known as “autism spectrumdisorders,” affecting one out of every 150 children born in the UnitedStates, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.And while the causes of autism remain mysterious, Tager-Flusberg, aneurobiologist and director of the NIH Autism Research Center ofExcellence at BU, says that early behavioral interventions focused onlanguage and social skills can significantly lessen the disorder’s effects.

So, for about two years, Tager-Flusberg and Charles Nelson, a pro-fessor of pediatrics at Harvard University and research director of theDevelopmental Medicine Center at Children’s Hospital Boston, havebeen using ERP studies to look for telltale differences in infant braindevelopment. Every new picture or word sound creates an ERP wave“signature.” The researchers then analyze and compare the ERP patternsproduced by the brains of at-risk infants who have siblings diagnosedwith autism and the brains of control infants with siblings who have notbeen diagnosed with autism.

The babies are first tested at three months, and then again everythree to six months until two years of age. While findings are still prelimi-nary, some clear differences in brain development are already apparent.For instance, the younger infants, whether at-risk or controls, “findmom’s face to be so much more interesting than a stranger’s face,” saysTager-Flusberg, leading to a significant difference in the ERP wave signa-ture gathered when her picture appears. But by nine months, babies withtypical brain development have a greater interest in and sensitivity tostrangers’ faces than do at-risk infants.

Likewise, the brains of all six-month-old infants are primed tolearn any language, and thus process an English “ta” as a differentsound from the subtly distinct Hindi “ta.” But after several months, thetypically developing brain is a more efficient processor of speech, con-centrating language tasks in the Broca’s area of the left hemisphere andleveling many phonetic distinctions in favor of the infant’s native lan-guage. According to preliminary ERP results, the language processingof at-risk infants involves more areas of the brain, evidence consistentwith brain scans of older children diagnosed with autism. “It appearsthat they need both hemispheres of the brain to process language, so it’sa lot more effortful,” says Tager-Flusberg.

If the ERP research can identify autism risk signs in infants, thenext step will be developing intensive, “parent-based interventionsappropriate for such a young age group,” says Tager-Flusberg. “This is anew area of very cool baby neuroscience.”

Following the Flow

The fish tanks of the Boston University Marine Program laboratoriesgurgle in the background as Biology Professor Jelle Atema snaps open alarge, black case to reveal RoboLobster—a foot-long, battery-poweredtube on wheels that’s stuffed with sensors and processors. Atemahelped create this device in the late 1990s to mimic the way lobsterstrack odors that help them find food and identify both rivals and mates.Unfortunately, RoboLobster was nowhere near as good as a real lobsterin tracking an odor. The problem, Atema says, was that the swirls andeddies of odor plumes can get chaotic downstream from the source.Smelling alone was not enough, but it was all RoboLobster could do.Lobster brains, like those of many marine animals, need flow detectionto properly find their way.

In recent years, Atema has been looking into how marine animalsinterpret the flow of their watery world, and how these systems workwith other senses, such as olfaction and vision, to help them navigatethrough the depths and identify objects of interest. His findings couldlead to increasingly autonomous biomimetic robots designed for anynumber of underwater chores—from finding the source of a pipelineleak to stalking enemy ships for the military.

Most recently, Atema has focused on the shark’s lateral line, a sys-tem of canals under the skin near the animal’s head and along thelength of its body that admit water through very fine pores and senseflow by detecting slight changes in water pressure. Atema and formerBU biology grad student Jayne Gardiner, now a doctoral candidate atthe University of South Florida, tested the ability of small sharks toswim to and strike a source of squid odor flowing down an eight-meter-long tank with a turbulence-causing brick just downstream of thesource of squid juice. In some trials, they eliminated the sharks’ visionby testing them under infrared light, or they disabled the lateral linewith an antibiotic. Sometimes, they impaired both sensory systems.

Electrodes measure small voltage changes caused by brain activityas a 15-month-old control subject in Helen Tager-Flusberg’s studyis exposed to word sounds and images.

“It appears that at-risk infantsneed both hemispheres of thebrain to process language.”

The nostrils of a smooth dogfish shark are seen clearly,left, as it executes a tight left turn in search of food. Small pores midway between the eye and gill slit, below,form part of the shark’s flow detection system.



“Sharks have very good eyes,” says Atema. “But theirimportance in this task only comes out after you eliminate themajor sense—the lateral line.” He plans to use these findings asa basis for an upgraded biomimetic aquatic robot—whether itbe a RoboLobster or a RoboShark—using multiple sensoryinformation channels.

Of course, he says, no matter how well you mimic an ani-mal’s sensory systems, the result will always pale in comparisonto the complexity of the real thing, a fact that hit home withRoboLobster. After all, he says, “The joke is that this is the onelobster we don’t eat after research.”

One result reinforced the notion that olfaction and flow detectionare closely linked. The sharks were much more interested in the brick, asite of both odor and turbulence, than in the nonturbulent odor nozzlejust upstream. Still, turbulence alone, without odor, was ignored. Plus,while light or dark conditions made no difference in the ability of sharkswith an intact lateral line to find the odor target, vision became veryimportant to sharks with disabled lateral lines. In the light, these disabledsharks had about 70 percent the success rate of unimpaired animals infinding the brick. In the dark, the success rate of these sharks, left withjust their sense of smell, plummeted to 30 percent—and despite theirintact noses, these animals could not find the odor source at all.

Type “water anomalies” into Google, and yourfirst hit will be a website that describes 64unusual characteristics of the Earth’s most com-mon liquid. You’ll read about dielectric constantsand coefficients of expansion, diffracted x-raysand NMR spin lattice relaxation.

But to understand what’s so strange aboutwater, we need only turn to the experience of afive-year-old child, says H. Eugene Stanley, aUniversity Professor of physics, chemistry, bio-medical engineering, and professor of physiol-ogy in the School of Medicine. Hand that child aglass of water in which ice cubes sank to thebottom, and she would likely exclaim, “What’swrong with this?” Likewise, many of us take forgranted one of water’s most basic peculiari-ties—that it becomes less dense when it freezes,a property shared by very few other liquids.

Stanley has always been fascinated bywater’s quirky characteristics, and research heconducted with the help of two former graduatestudents has led to a groundbreaking discovery:liquid water can actually exist in two differentstates, low- and high-density. At temperaturesbelow about –50°C, the molecular structure ofliquid water moves from a state of loosedynamism to one of increased rigidity.

Few stories of scientific accomplishmenthappen overnight, and Stanley’s is no exception.His first major breakthrough came in 1992when—working with then–graduate studentPeter Poole—he was the first to show, throughcomputer simulations, that liquid water at verylow temperatures could exist in both high- andlow-density states. The resulting paper was asensation and has been cited in more than 450peer-reviewed publications, evidence of itstransformational effect.

Coldwater Split

BY JASON WARSHOF

“It’s one thing to take part in a discovery as afaculty member,” says Poole, “but it’s a particularthrill to do it as a graduate student.”

Thirteen years passed before Stanley’s theoryof two states of liquid water—which was based oncomputer data—would be verified by means ofactual experimentation.

While gathering important experimental dataon the so-called phase transitions of cold (or“supercooled”) liquid water, a team at MIT led bynuclear engineer Sow-Hsin Chen faced the toughtask of interpreting their findings. That’s where thetheoretical work, again based on computer simula-tions, of Stanley and graduate student Limei Xubecame especially useful. Their illuminating resultson water on the “warm” side of the critical point atwhich it changes continuously from a low- to ahigh-density-like liquid helped explain the MITresearchers’ experimental results, in essence con-firming Poole and Stanley’s initial hypothesis.

“For me,” says Xu, “this was a chance to seethe effect of real experiments, not just the puretheoretical stuff I’d been working on.”

While it’s still early to begin identifying con-crete applications, the implications of liquidwater’s two phases are vast. Already, scientists insuch fields as biology, chemistry, and materialsengineering have shown interest in exploring theeffects of supercooled water on DNA, proteins,and other substances—which could lead, forinstance, to enhanced methods of preservingsperm, oocytes (female reproductive cells), andother biological matter. Researchers are far fromhaving a comprehensive understanding of thehuman body, and water always figures in theequation. “Water is ubiquitous,” says Stanley.“We’ll really never understand life until we under-stand water.”

By delivering small puffs of odor to each nostril via a stereo headset attachedto the shark, biologist Jelle Atema can determine which features of an odorplume are most important to the shark’s navigation. Here, graduate studentJayne Gardiner programs the next experiment.

H. Eugene Stanley

Water’s quirks are apparent at the molecular level andvisible to the naked eye. Three-dimensional yellow con-tours, left, represent the probability of finding anotherH20 molecule near a central red H20 molecule, for (A)low-density water and (B) high-density water. Below 4° C, the low-density form predominates, which is why a thermometer in a glass of ice water reads 4° abovefreezing: the denser, warmer water sinks to the bottom.

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Anticipating those who might view research andpoetry as disparate, English Professor Robert Pinskypoints out that the root for the word “research” is thesame as the root for “circus.” In that sense, he says,poets and students of poetry have much in commonwith researchers in hard and social sciences: “Theyare all circling around looking for something central.”


Research: Poetry BY JUDY RAKOWSKY

Shaping Words

“A quality, quilled, a learned freshness”—Robert Pinsky

Robert Pinsky’s line is from “On ‘Eve Tempted by the Serpent’ by Defendente Ferrari, and in Memoryof Congresswoman Barbara Jordan of Texas.” In the background are lines from Walt Whitman’s“Song of Myself,” one of the many poems found on the Favorite Poem Project website.

Creative Writing faculty Robert Pinsky andMaggie Dietz are restoring poetry’s place inthe curriculum, one educator at a time.

Hear ordinary Americans and influential figures read the poems that broughtthem inspiration, comfort, and hope at the Favorite Poem Project’s website:www.favoritepoem.org.


Poetry for PosterityAs U.S. Poet Laureate in 2000, Pinsky, who teaches in the Arts &Sciences Creative Writing program, undertook a historic projectto record people from all walks of life reading their favoritepoems. “Poetry is a physical art,” he says. “It’s meant to be saidaloud.” The Favorite Poem Project’s enormous popularity has ledto the creation of a video series and a website that fostersFavorite Poem readings everywhere.

The project has also evolved to include a summer institutefor schoolteachers that furthers Pinsky’s goal of ushering poetry into ordinary lives. “My sense is that the arts, poetry inparticular, have become less popular in the typical Americanclassroom,” says Maggie Dietz, a poet and lecturer in CreativeWriting, as well as the co-editor with Pinsky of three FavoritePoem anthologies.

In its seventh year, the Poetry Institute for Educators is thriv-ing, thanks in part to generous funding from individual donorswho share Pinsky’s vision. A weeklong celebration of verse for ele-mentary and secondary teachers, and even the occasional princi-pal, the institute offers readings by BU faculty and visiting poets, aswell as lesson-planning sessions with Co-director Lee Indrisano, aprofessor of literacy and language, counseling and development inthe School of Education, and other teacher-leaders.

Teachers often ask if they should require students to memo-rize poetry. Pinsky stresses letting students choose the poemsthey recite. If a poem moves them, they will want to recite it. “Apoem is primarily something that is moving or delightful whenyou read it over,” he says.

The institute brings 50 educators to the BU campus in Julyfor what began as a New England laboratory and now drawsparticipants from across the country and, this year, from twoAmerican schools abroad, in London and The Hague.

“Many teachers come to us with the belief that children andadolescents are limited in their capacity to understand andappreciate poetry,” says Indrisano. “They leave us with an under-standing that many of the classic and contemporary poets writefor a more general readership than they had assumed.”

“The poets who come are not talking about teaching poetry;they’re talking about poems,” says Dietz. “David Ferry mighthave a wonderful talk about Robert Frost and the line, for exam-ple, and Mark Doty might look at a May Swenson poem and talkabout metaphor and image.”

At the end of the week, the groups share lesson plans, whichthey develop collaboratively at the institute, and read favoritepoems, which are then collected and copied for all attendees.Each participant also receives Pinsky’s The Sounds of Poetry andtwo Favorite Poem anthologies, An Invitation to Poetry andPoems to Read. “We not only give permission to copy the lessonplans and the anthology,” says Indrisano, “we urge them to copyand distribute these resources to others in their school districts,thus increasing the numbers of teachers and learners who bene-fit from the institute.”

“It’s inspiring to see how much the teachers appreciate thepoets,” says Pinsky. “I love doing it. The teachers play thisimportant role.”

Research: Poetry

“Poetry is a physical art. It’smeant to be said aloud.”

Unlocking Ovid

Though verses penned long ago in Latin might seem distant, onceunlocked by scholars they can offer meaning and inspiration to under-stand our own times. In her new reading of three central episodes fromthe Roman poet Ovid’s epic masterpiece Metamorphoses, ClassicsProfessor Patricia Johnson shows how great artists and their works suf-fer when political winds shift and expression is restricted. “In somerespects, Ovid was living in a time similar to our own,” says Johnson.“Late Augustan Rome followed a period of intense cultural develop-ment and great dialogue, as in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.”

For Ovid, however, these circumstances had changed. While in thepreceding era, rich patrons supported a high culture of poets—such asVergil, Horace, and Propertius—in Ovid’s day art began to be overtakenby a pragmatic agenda of pleasing the powerful. “He’s cornered,” saysJohnson, so he tells his story in a different way. “After a career of writ-ing openly irreverent poetry, he retreats into mythology, yet he carrieswith him his world view, which is deeply cynical.” But by the time Ovidunderstood how far artistic freedom had truly diminished, it was toolate. He was overtaken by censorship and exiled from Rome in 8 A.D.

Though Ovid understood that times were changing, his writing hasoften confused or been misinterpreted by scholars. “You can’t quite tellwhen he’s kidding—this is a common strategy in Ovid’s poetry,” says

Johnson. But, she adds, “There are manydoors and many keys.”

Using Ovid’s language to unlock meaning,Johnson finds numerous puns, jokes, allusions,and other “verbal pyrotechnics” in theMetamorphoses. But it is his “combination of avery critical and cynical perspective with anoften humorous tone,” she says, that has madeOvid particularly popular with writers strug-gling under totalitarian regimes or the duressof censorship. His writing resonated withSoviet-era authors and others who were perse-cuted or whose works were banned.

Johnson is preparing a proposal for a translation edition of Ovid’sMetamorphoses with extensive notes, study aids, and scholarly appen-dices, which she hopes will become part of Pantheon Books’ LandmarkSeries. She is also studying echoes of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in porno-graphic handbooks produced in the early Renaissance and the paintingsof the first Renaissance palace in Germany at Landshut, as well as in thepoems of Edmund Spenser.

As a classicist, Johnson finds cross-disciplinary study “endlesslyinteresting.” She says, “We are not just a literary field. I study poetry,but I also have to study art history, archaeology, and social history, ifI’m going to understand anything I read now.”

Patricia Johnson

“There are many doorsand many keys.”

An etching of Athena transforming Arachne into a spider, oneof the best-known stories from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.


Editorial work is rigorous, requiring immense attention to detail—as Ricks says, making the concession that even the best editing is noteverything, “You narrow your eyes and you see more of less.” It is time-consuming too, with critical editions often years or even decades in themaking. But the results of these painstaking efforts typically endure.While novels and even literary criticism can become passé, Burnettsays, “A big scholarly edition never goes out of style.” And by bringing tolight revelations about an author’s influences and process of revision,critical editions can change the world’s perception of that writer.

Last year, Burnett published The Letters of A. E. Housman, aBritish poet, critic, and classical scholar, who was himself a keen editor.Burnett’s scholarly edition contains more than 2,200 letters—four tofive times as many as any previous compilation of Housman’s corre-spondence. He spent 14 years tracking down and editing the letters, aswell as reading all the books in Housman’s library and noting where hemade markings in the margins. “I don’t tell you what to make of an allu-sion or echo, I just tell you what the allusion or echo is,” says Burnett.“I’ve done my editorial job when I give you the information I think youshould have. It’s all strictly explanatory.”

Now Burnett has turned his attention to Philip Larkin, arguablythe most popular British poet of the last half of the 20th century. Anearlier collection of his work, published in 1988, had a print run of50,000 copies—almost unheard of for a book of poems. Larkin, whopassed away in 1982, was a librarian at the University of Hull inEngland, where Burnett conducted research last summer.

Ricks, too, has an extensive résumé as an editor of poetry, includ-ing 1997’s highly regarded Inventions of the March Hare, a critical edi-tion of unpublished poems by T. S. Eliot. But he credits his work on ThePoems of Tennyson with having impressed Valerie Eliot, the poet’swidow, enough for her to grant permission for a long-awaited full criti-cal edition of her husband’s poetry. Approaching Ricks after a lecture,she told him, “Tom would have loved your edition of Tennyson.”


Folio Forensics

Poetry is the literature of highest aspiration—that much is clear fromthe very words. “Poetic is good and prosaic is bad,” says ChristopherRicks, the William M. and Sara B. Warren Professor of Humanities andco-director of the Editorial Institute at Boston University, adding thathe regrets the slight habitually made to great prose. So it matters whena great poet—or prose writer—changes, excises, or adds a word.

It falls to textual scholars like Ricks to investigate why, forinstance, T. S. Eliot made a change after publication to the poem“Morning at the Window,” altering the lines, “I am aware of the dampsouls of housemaids / Hanging despondently at area gates” to read, “Iam aware of the damp souls of housemaids / Sprouting despondently atarea gates.” What possessed Eliot to make such a change? After all, saysRicks, he was not an endless reviser of his own work after publication,like Walt Whitman or Robert Lowell, who often made numerouschanges then.

It takes knowledge of a poet’s entire body of work, as well as theliterary influences on him or her, to come up with explanations. Todraw an analogy, a cartoon in the satirical British newspaper PrivateEye where a computer screen reads, “Call me E-mail,” asks that you be

familiar with the opening line of MobyDick—“Call me Ishmael”—to understandexactly what the cartoonist is doing. A goodeditor guides the reader through such alter-ations and allusions.

“An editor is someone who comes alongand tells you what will help you to see thepoint,” says Ricks, who is in the fifth and finalyear of his term as the Professor of Poetry atOxford University. Editing a poem fromhandwritten drafts or deciding whether torestore excised words in a subsequent publi-cation is a job for only the most careful andexacting scholar, one who is prepared toweigh the merits of even very minor changesbetween differing versions of a text.

At the Editorial Institute, Ricks and Co-director Archie Burnett are engaged in twovery ambitious editorial undertakings. Ricksis editing the complete poems of T. S. Eliot,while Burnett is at work on an edition of thecomplete poems of Philip Larkin. At the sametime, they are teaching graduate studentsand postgraduate fellows to apply the higheststandards of textual scholarship to otherwriters.

The institute was co-founded in 2000 by Ricks and UniversityProfessor Emeritus of English Literature and Religion Geoffrey Hill,whose own poetry has earned him a reputation as the greatest lyricalpoet since Yeats. While a handful of institutions, including theUniversity of Virginia and the University of Washington at Seattle, offercourses in editorial scholarship, BU’s institute is unique on theAmerican academic landscape in offering a full, degree-granting pro-gram in editorial studies at both the master’s and doctoral levels.

Research: Poetry

Sonnets, or “little songs,” from the Italian sonneto, have only14 lines, but, as a group of young Boston Scholars discoveredover the summer, they can be powerful. For starters, at theirBU orientation program in June, poet Meg Tyler read to themShakespeare’s “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”(Sonnet 18) and she saw their faces brighten. “They just lovedit,” she says. “The sonnet is such an approachable form.”

Annually up to 58 topnotch Boston high school studentsare awarded full-tuition, four-year scholarships to attend theUniversity. In preparation for their matriculation this fall, thenewest Boston Scholars explored the many aspects of evolu-tion, from the development of political institutions to theimplications of Darwin’s theories.

Tyler, an assistant professor of humanities at the Collegeof General Studies, highlighted the evolution of lyric poetryover 600 years, from Petrarch to Seamus Heaney. After sam-pling sonnets by the masters, the new students eagerly wrotesome of their own—“some comic, some love, and some verypassionate,” says their gratified teacher.

Tyler’s research interests include the history of lyricpoetry. With funding from the BU Humanities Foundation, sheis completing work on her upcoming book, Broken Sonnets, oncontemporary British, Irish, and American poets, includingHeaney, Geoffrey Hill, and Alice Oswald.

Along with poet and translator Rosanna Warren, Tylerfounded a poetry reading series on campus, free and open tothe public, which generates excitement for contemporarypoets and gives a human voice to the words on the page. Theseries begins this fall with a reading by David Ferry from hisforthcoming translation of Vergil’s Aeneid.

Evolving Scholars

“You narrow your eyes and you see more of less.”

A manuscript page from TheWaste Land by T. S. Eliot, left,bears pen and ink revisions byboth Eliot and poet Ezra Pound.

Meg Tyler sees her students’ enthusiastic response to sonnetsboth old and new as a “testament to the power and lastinginterest of the form.”

Christopher Ricks

Archie Burnett

BY JEAN HENNELLY KEITH


In the 21st cen-tury, the concept ofmission continues toevolve. “It’s estimatedthat 1.5 million NorthAmericans went on so-called mission tripsin 2005,” says Robert.“You have Christianand Jewish youth onmissions to encounterthe poor. There are alsopeople who say they’regoing on mission trips,

and they’re atheists. There’s something thatpeople are seeking, some kind of fundamentalencounter with the ‘other.’”

The identity of missionaries is alsochanging. Many are non-Western, including an estimated 40,000 to 80,000 Indian mis-sionaries in India. “But you might not recog-nize them as ‘missionaries,’” she explains.“They don’t necessarily have financial backing;they just go. It’s part of globalization andmigration.”

The movement of people and ideas ishardly new. “When people migrate,” saysRobert, “they take their religion with them.Throughout history, when people migrated,religion spread. Christianity spread along theSilk Road, from Iraq to China, in the 600s and700s. Christianity spread in the British Empire.Whenever you allow the movement of people,their ideas and beliefs go with them.”

During the past one hundred years, Christianityhas steadily lost followers in Europe, while winning a multitude of new converts in Africaand beyond. At the turn of the 20th century,70 percent of the world’s Christians wereEuropean; by 2000, that number had fallen to28 percent. In 25 years, Africans and LatinAmericans are expected to make up the major-ity of the religion’s followers.

This changing demographic has promptedDana Robert, professor of world Christianityand history of mission in the School ofTheology, to reexamine the religion’s spreadand the role of missionaries who carried itacross the globe.

“My core interest is how Christianitybecame a world religion that today is largelynon-Western,” she says. “What does this meanfor Christianity? What does it mean for his-tory? What does it mean for culture?”

For the past 14 years, Robert has trav-eled frequently to Zimbabwe and SouthAfrica, where she studies African Christianity.She is also involved in collaborative projects,including a book series, African Initiatives inChristian Mission, working with scholars inseveral different countries to conduct fieldresearch on emerging churches. “It’s veryhelpful to have a comparative perspectivewhen doing research on the meaning of worldChristianity,” she says.

Robert has written and edited a numberof books that seek to explain Christianity’schanging face, including Converting Colonialism,

Christianity on the Move

BY SHERYL FLATOW

a collection of essays by leading scholarsexploring the relationships between colonial-ism and missionaries, and between indigenousconverts and the colonial contexts in whichthey lived. Her forthcoming book, ChristianMission: How Christianity Became a WorldReligion, is concerned with three thematicissues: mission and colonialism, mission andgender, and the role of the missionary in con-verting communities.

Arguing that we need to look at instancesof “cultural exchange” to see the missionary as“a bridge from here to there,” she acknowl-edges that many people simply “can’t relate tothe motive” behind missionaries’ work. Robertcites the “very close relationship between mis-sion and human rights discourse” as one wayto make her research subject more accessible.

“One of the things I find most compellingis the way that missionaries have broughtback information about people sufferingaround the world, and have been on the cut-ting edge of human rights issues in the West.It was missionaries living with indigenous peo-ple who started to defend their human rights.In the early 19th century, the first really strongargument against the slave trade was basedon eyewitness accounts of missionaries inWest Africa.”

The same, she notes, has been true morerecently: “When we learned about people inthe Congo being massacred, or Pol Pot killingpeople in Cambodia, missionaries got theword out.”

400 A.D. 1600 A.D. 2010 A.D.

The spread of Christianity is shown as a percentage ofpopulation by current United Nations regional boundaries.

0 0.4 2 5 10 40 60 75 85 90 95

Research: Poetry

A Terrible Beauty

“As ideas that once provided motivation for soldiers—honor, glory, andeven liberty—lose their force, comradeship continues to be a very pow-erful motive for combat,” says James Winn, describing a theme heexplores in his compelling 2008 study, The Poetry of War (CambridgeUniversity Press). Poems that conjure the strong bonds between sol-diers are among the most affecting types of war poetry, he says. Takethis stanza, from a poem written by Robert Graves to his friend and fel-low officer Siegfried Sassoon:

Show me the two so closely bound As we, by the wet bond of blood, By friendship blossoming from mud, By Death: we faced him, and we found Beauty in Death,In dead men, breath.

“By calling the force that binds the two men ‘the wet bond of blood,’”Winn says, “Graves acknowledges the softer aspects of his feelings forSassoon. A friendship blossoming from mud suggests the conventionalmotif of the flower that springs from a grave, but it also allows the twomales a metaphorical fertility.” But the poem makes clear that the truebonding force is death. “By staring Death in the face, the two men foundbeauty,” Winn says.

Over the millennia that separate Homer from Bruce Springsteen,Winn says, poets have found a powerful subject in war. Great poetrydoes more than comfort, mourn, or condemn, however; it acts as anantidote to “the mindless simplifications of war propaganda,” he says,making us wiser judges of present and future battles.

“Poetry is an ideal form for expressing ambiguity,” Winn says,“and thus for describing the heroism of the vanquished, the intolerablecost of so-called victory, and above all, the complex and contradictoryfeelings of all those touched by war.” In chapters exploring themes ofhonor, shame, empire, chivalry, and liberty, in addition to comrade-ship, Winn looks closely at how poets have resolved, or not, the contra-dictions inherent in war’s nobility and brutality. By setting whatHomer has to say about shame next to poems on shame from theVietnam era, for example, the book illuminates poems from eachepoch in new ways.

Poetry gives us a language to transcend war’s horror, Winn says;as in the Graves poem, it often evokes beauty from violence. “For poetsin many periods, war was a prime instance of the sublime,” says Winn.“It was an experience bringing together awe, terror, power, and rever-ence on a grand scale. When Yeats writes of the ‘terrible beauty’ of theEaster Rising of 1916, he may be thinking of the way the English putdown the revolution by indiscriminately shelling the center of Dublin,starting fires that burned much of the city.” By acknowledging thebeauty inherent in fire and destruction, Yeats places himself in a tradi-tion that stretches back to antiquity, Winn says.

“And 18th-century poets, convinced that ‘good wars’ could advance the inevitableprogress of mankind toward freedom,democracy, and brotherhood, often con-nected the magnificence of warfare to thesupposed nobility of its aims,” he says. “Theirwords helped create the idea of a ‘war to endall wars.’” The continuing power of libertyand democracy as a justification for war isdue in good part to the power and eloquenceof those poets, Winn says, making poetryabout war as essential and relevant as ever.

“War was an experience bringingtogether awe, terror,power, and reverenceon a grand scale.”

BY BARI WALSH

James Winn

Dana Robert

R

R


American Philosophical Society, they spent amonth in Ibiraiaras interviewing leaders of thewomen’s movement, visiting schools, and attend-ing political events and community gatherings.

Returning home with 24 hours of video-taped interviews and reams of notes, they devel-oped a curriculum for middle school and highschool students. The four-part course, Music,Land, and Women’s Rights: Citizens MakingChange in Brazil and the United States, wasaimed at debunking myths about Brazil. Insteadof seeing the stereotypes of poverty or romanti-cized portrayals of Carnival often found in curric-ula on Latin America, the students “used songs,skits, and the creation of artistic products” toexplore the ways in which Brazilians “took actionto make change in their societies,” says Rubin.

The curriculum weaves the women’s storiesinto an account of Brazil’s contemporary historyto give students a vibrant, human insight into ademocratic movement in action. Students arealso encouraged to think about how these storiesmight relate to the issues and organizations intheir own communities.

“My interest,” says Rubin, “is in places wherepeople have come up with innovative solutionsthat have brought people into the system andthereby strengthened democratic politics.”

Since his visit in 2004 and in betweenreturn visits to Brazil, Rubin and his daughterhave given BU students a firsthand insight intotheir collaborative research process in hisModern Latin America and Latin AmericanSocial Movements courses. He has shared themessage outside the BU community as well,leading workshops for secondary school educa-tors at universities across the United States.During the sessions, teachers engage in hands-on activities from the curriculum and explorehow to adapt the course for use in colleges andsecondary school classrooms.

According to Rubin, there are many similarities between activists in the UnitedStates and Brazil, such as a shared dilemma ofwhether to protest against or work within thesystem. And although substantial disparitiesremain—for a woman in rural Brazil, leaving thehouse without permission could be a landmark

victory—those links have helped Rubin bringback lessons on the difference an individual canmake in his or her society. Of the women whofirst took to the streets of Ibiraiaras as teenagers,one became head of the local health depart-ment, while another rose to be the first femalepresident of the farmers’ union.

With support from Boston University’sInstitute on Culture, Religion & World Affairs andthe American Philosophical Society, Rubin useda recent sabbatical to expand the curriculumproject, continue his work on social movementsin Brazil, and co-author a book with his daughterhighlighting their distinctive research methods.

He also began a new research project,funded by the Open Society Institute, on theresponses of businesspeople in Latin America toprogressive socioeconomic and political reform,looking at case studies from Argentina, Bolivia,Brazil, and Mexico.

“This is an unexplored area,” Rubin says.“What people with economic power think anddo matters in whether or not Latin Americansocieties reform and conditions get better.”

With 11 researchers in 6 cities, Rubin hopesthe project—Enduring Reform—will uncoverwhether the sometimes fledgling democracies ofLatin America are prepared to embrace thechanges being made on a local level by activistsand regional governments. Arguing that “reformthat lessens inequality and promotes decentstandards of living” is urgently needed on thecontinent, he warns that the region will eitherprovide a model for other young democracies orbecome another global focal point for funda-mentalism and violence.

“The idea is to see how businesspeoplethink about, respond to, support, or opposethose reformist efforts. We want to start a discussion about what would make it possibleto get the private sector on board, to createenergies that make things work in improvingpeople’s lives rather than obstructing promis-ing reform.”

For now, Rubin’s research has ensured thatthe voices of the women who have used activismto try to shape a democracy are preserved andshared.

The law doesn’t always apply to women inrural Brazil. The military dictatorship may havecrumbled more than 20 years ago, but manystill don’t have birth certificates or equality inthe home. Denied basic rights, they also haveto battle a culture of systemic violence andrepression.

But the women of rural Brazil have beenfighting back, organizing their own politicalmovements to demand the most fundamental ofhuman rights. Jeffrey W. Rubin of the College ofArts & Sciences has been a close-up witness totheir grassroots campaigns. The history profes-sor has shot hours of videotape chronicling pres-sure groups and the lives of the women leadingthem, using their stories to transform the waypolitical activism is taught in America’s schoolsand colleges.

His connection with the women of Brazilbegan in 2001, when he traveled to the coastalcity of Porto Alegre to conduct research—fundedby the MacArthur Foundation and the FulbrightProgram—on four social movements that weretransforming the country’s political landscape.

Grassroots Innovators

BY JASON WARSHOF

Joining Rubin on that trip was his teenagedaughter Emma Sokoloff–Rubin; although just anobserver then, on later trips she was to provideRubin with unparalleled access to the women’slives. He says that as a father-daughter team,they were given insights into everyday life hewould never have been offered as a solo aca-demic researcher.

One of the most prominent groups Rubinhas worked with is the Movement of RuralWomen Workers, which has been fighting forsocial and economic rights for women since itsinception in the small southern town of Ibiraiarasin the 1980s. Many of the original memberswere just teenagers when they started the group.

“Most of them had a fourth- or fifth-gradeeducation,” says Emma, “and yet they haddone extraordinary things to change their communities” by helping secure basic rightsfor women, including pensions, maternityleave, and even simple documentation, such asbirth certificates.

Rubin and his daughter returned in thesummer of 2004. With a grant from the

“What people with economic power think and do mattersfor the future of social reform in Latin America.”

Grassroots activism in rural Brazil, left to right: Farmer Mônica Marcheziniand daughter Milena; locally grown vegetables; farm life workshop partici-pants; activists block the road in front of the State House in Porto Alegre;wooden houses dot the fertile countryside; sisters-in-law Rosani and Edenisrun a pharmacy offering herbal medicines and a place for women to discusstheir problems and share strategies for making their voices heard.

Jeffrey W. Rubin and Emma Sokoloff-Rubin

R


Sized smaller than a bacterium, extending between one and 100 billionths of a meter, nanostructures arespearheading two gigantic technological trends. First,because of their tiny dimensions, they possess distinctmechanical, chemical, electrical, and optical propertiesthat could be exploited in new, more powerful materialsand platforms for computing, communications, imaging,and other applications. Second, since the nanoscale isthe same domain at which most biological processesoccur, nanostructures may ultimately revolutionize ourunderstanding of human biology and quicken the pace ofhealth care innovation.

For the past four years, experts in science, engineer-ing, medicine, and business at Boston University havecollaborated in a growing body of nanoscience and nanotechnology research aimed at furthering both technological trends. Organized by the Center for Nano-science & Nanobiotechnology (CNN), this research isalready bearing fruit. From new design techniques for theever-shrinking integrated circuit to fast, accurate, needle-free vaccination and drug delivery, CNN is working tobring the benefits of the very small to society at large.


Research: Nanoscience BY MARK DWORTZAN

Big Solutions at the Nanoscale

An enhanced image of a prototype for an electrostaticnano-pulse method of delivering drugs and vaccinesthrough the skin, now being developed by researchers inthe College of Engineering and the School of Medicine.


Nano Quest

Since 2004, the Center for Nanoscience & Nanobiotechnology (CNN)has served as the virtual address for all nanoscale research at BostonUniversity. Led by Director Bennett Goldberg, professor of physics andelectrical, computer, and biomedical engineering; Associate Director M. Selim Ünlü, professor of electrical engineering; and Associate Director Joyce Wong, associate professor of biomedical engineering,the center brings experts from disparate disciplines together inresearch projects, seminars, conferences, and other programs toenhance interdisciplinary nanoscale research.

By integrating all campus-wide nanoscale research within oneorganization, CNN has boosted the rate of discovery and developmentof powerful new technologies. Drawing on faculty members in eightdepartments and four schools and colleges, the center’s primarystrengths are in nanophotonics and nanobioscience.

Nanophotonics is the study of how light can be used at very shortlength scales, such as within the home or office, where electrons nowserve as the primary media of information transfer. One applicationthat could emerge from this study is a new generation of higher-speed,lower-power personal computers. “We’d like to figure out how we canuse photons in the space where we’re using electrons now,” saysGoldberg. “If you could use light to communicate along well-definedmetal structures that could direct light on very small length scales effi-ciently, you could replace electrons as a communications medium atmany different points.” Such technology would radically increase pro-cessing speed and reduce thermal limitations in computer chips andother electronic devices.

Nanobioscience, the study of biological processes with nanostruc-tures sized small enough to probe biological molecules and proteinsand their interactions, is poised to advance our understanding of sub-cellular processes, biomolecular function, and human physiology. “Thisis a space that’s more application-driven, partly because the pull fromhuman health care is strong,” Goldberg observes, noting close tiesbetween CNN and the Medical Campus. “Among other things, we lookforward to the prospect of nanoscale drug delivery and imaging tech-niques for more accurate clinical diagnostics.”

After four years of operation, the center reports hundreds of jour-nal publications and invited presentations on topics ranging fromhigh-precision inspection of integrated circuits to dynamic monitor-ing of biological interactions at the molecular level, seven newnanoscience and nanotechnology courses covering advanced topics innanophotonics and nanobioscience, a dramatic increase in nanoscaleresearchers on campus, and an industrial liaison program.

Today CNN members and graduate students are collaborating onmore than 12 funded research projects in labs scattered across cam-pus. While the projects have diverse aims, such as high-throughputDNA sequencing and more accurate detection of antibodies inpatients’ blood, they draw upon a common set of techniques andequipment. “We now hope the center will grow to the point wherewe’ll have a central laboratory with high-end nanofabrication andnanocharacterization (nanoscale investigation of a material) tools,”says Goldberg.

Meanwhile, ongoing CNN projects promise to vastly improve ourability to observe and manipulate nanostructures and nanoscale phe-nomena in pursuit of advances in health care, electronics, and othertechnology-driven fields.


Needle-Free Inoculation

Today’s drug and vaccine delivery methods have their drawbacks.Hypodermic needles can hurt and require high volumes to get goodresults; patches take a long time to diffuse medications into thebloodstream; and ultrasonic methods can be slow and damaging tothe skin. None do the job with great speed and precision. But what ifa physician or nurse could place a device on your arm just like StarTrek’s Dr. Bones, and psht!—you’re inoculated?

Now a team of three Boston University researchers is develop-ing an electrostatic nano-pulse method for rapidly delivering vaccines and drugs through the skin and directly into the body’simmune system. Funded in its pilot stage by the Center forIntegration of Medicine & Innovative Technology (CIMIT), the team aims to develop a clinical device for the widespread, inexpensive, and hygienic dosing of a broad spectrum of medica-tions and vaccines.

Potential applications include low-cost, needle-free inocula-tion of mass populations in developing countries; rapid infusion ofantidotes to large populations in response to bioterrorism; andpainless, instantaneous injection of patients who loath conven-tional needles.

The idea—conceived by co-principal investigators MarkHorenstein, professor of electrical engineering, and David Sherr, pro-fessor of environmental health—is to encapsulate a drug or vaccineinside biodegradable nanoparticles with diameters about the size ofskin pores and apply an electrostatic voltage pulse strong enough todrive them through the skin precisely where a fleet of specialized skincells called dendritic cells are standing by. Acting as sentinels for theimmune system, the dendritic cells carry the nanoparticles to lymphnodes, where an immune response is generated.

Horenstein is developing the electrostatic nano-pulse tech-nique. One of his challenges is to separate the nanoparticles, whichtend to cling to one another the way sugar clumps in a jar. Anotheris to design a device that can drive nanoparticles into the skin withfewer than 50 volts of electricity, the maximum level thought to besafe for human subjects. “Usually when you’re trying to drive parti-cles with this level of force, you need kilovolts, that is, thousands ofvolts,” says Horenstein. “So it all comes down to designing the rightmethods and structures to allow you to effectively get these parti-cles through the skin layer.”

Under the supervision of CNN Associate Director Joyce Wong,graduate student Graham Houtchens is producing the nanoparti-cles from a biodegradable polymer. Using an ultrasonicator probe,he’s encapsulating a fluorescent dye “vaccine” inside the particles sothey become green under a microscope’s fluorescent light, thusenabling the investigators to track the path of the vaccine-totingnanoparticles inside the body.

Sherr has developed plans to evaluate the nano-pulse methodin laboratory mice by tracking the fluorescent nanoparticles andadjusting the pulse strength. “If we can get the nanoparticles justbelow the skin at about one-fifth the depth of a typical human hairand into a layer of skin called stratum corneum,” he says, “that layerhas a direct line to the lymph node system.” The team will soonembark on a six-month pilot study to test the concept.

Research: Nanoscience

Mark Horenstein, left, and David Sherr examine a proto-type of their nano-pulse patch, which would deliverdrug-laden nanoparticles (seen through a scanningelectron microscope, above left) through the skin.Fluorescent dye (shown under UV light, above right)helps track the movement of nanoparticles throughthe body.

High-frequency sound waves interact with an emul-sion containing polymer, medicament, and fluorescentdye to form spherical nanoparticles, which are thenharvested, charged, and applied to foil-backed film.After applying this film to the skin (A), a pulsed elec-tric field opens pores and drives nanoparticles towardthe waiting dendritic cells (B). Diagrams not to scale.

Director Bennett Goldberg, right, and Associate Director M. Selim Ünlü of theCenter for Nanoscience & Nanobiotechnology. A

B


reflected off of the tip and sample and we measured the much higherfrequency response. As a result, we could see the surface clearly at amuch faster speed—about 100 to 1,000 times faster than the conven-tional approach.”

This increase in the pace of data collection not only opens up thepossibility of seeing much faster phenomena on surfaces at theatomic scale, but also paves the way for the efficient measurement ofsurface temperature variations at the nanoscale. Measurements ofthe temperature (based on the noise of the tunneling electrons) onthe surface at atomic resolution could provide an important indicatorof problematic hot spots within integrated circuits and devices. “Asyou scale circuits smaller and smaller, heat has trouble escaping effi-ciently,” says Ekinci. “We want to measure the surface temperature towithin an atomic resolution to pinpoint the location of heat transferproblems.”

Because Ekinci’s first radio-frequency STM experiments lackedcontrols on surface cleanliness, temperature, and other environmen-tal factors, his group is now building a new instrument enclosed in anultra-high vacuum chamber. Ekinci expects new, more accurateresults later in the year.

Faster, Cheaper Biomolecule Analysis

Over the past decade, Amit Meller, associate professor of biomedicalengineering and physics, has used nanopores—akin to wedding ringsbut only one to five nanometers across—to detect and characterizeDNA, RNA, and other biological molecules at the single-molecule level.The pores are sized at about the same scale as the cross-sections of themolecules they are to probe. Among other things, this technology couldsomeday enable physicians to “read” the four bases of a sick patient’sDNA molecule as it is quickly threaded through the nanopore, enablingrapid mapping of large sections of that individual’s genome and a moreprecise treatment plan. Today Meller’s work promises to bring aboutdramatically faster and cheaper experimental methods in genomics,bioinformatics, and other biomedical disciplines.

Using a high-end transmission electron microscope, Meller’sgroup punches the nanopores in extremely thin solid-state films andapplies an electric field across the films as target molecules arethreaded, one by one, through the nanopores. Upon entry, each mole-cule occludes some of the ion-current flowing through the pore andoutputs a very distinct electrical signal. Within minutes the group canacquire and analyze signals from thousands of individual biomolecules.“This process allows us to distinguish different molecules, measuretheir lengths, and study how they interact with other biological mole-cules, such as DNA-binding proteins,” says Meller.

He now directs four major nanopore-related projects that couldstreamline several critical biomedical procedures. The first, funded bythe NIH, uses nanopores in a high-throughput DNA sequencingmethod aimed at bringing down the cost of per-genome sequencing to$1,000. To achieve that goal, the group will use dense arrays of hun-dreds of nanopores, through which DNA segments will be threaded andread in parallel using optical signals.

“DNA sequencing requires millions of dollars and months of laborbecause the genome is so vast,” notes Meller. “The NIH envisions anunder-$1,000-per-genome sequencing method to have a significantimpact on health care and personalized medicine.” Another potentialboon to personalized medicine, Meller’s second project uses nanoporesto identify single-nucleotide differences between two genes. Pinpoint-ing small variations between genomes could help physicians predicthow individuals will react to specific drugs and therapies.

The two other projects could impact our understanding of themolecular machinery of biological processes in the cell, yielding knowl-edge of how genes are switched on or off, and producing new drugs tointerfere with these processes.

Supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the thirdproject explores how DNA molecules interact with transcription fac-tors—proteins that bind to specific points on the DNA and regulategene expression. “By examining the electronic signature of a singleDNA molecule threaded through the nanopore, we hope to determinewhich transcription factors are bound to the DNA at a given time,” saysMeller. The fourth project, supported by the Human Frontier ScienceProgram, uses nanopores to apply mechanical forces on biological mol-ecules, particularly mRNA, which tends to fold into complicated struc-tures that determine its function within the cell. “By threading themRNA molecule through a very small nanopore, we can unfold it andexplore how it forms secondary structures,” Meller explains.


High-Speed Micro-Mapping

An essential research tool in nanoscience and nanotechnology, scan-ning tunneling microscopy (STM) is a powerful imaging techniquethat positions a sharp metal wire to within a nanometer above a mate-rial’s surface. As the wire probe scans the surface, a tunnel of electronsis sent between the probe tip and the surface. Changes in this current,which is sensitive to the presence or absence of atoms, are then mea-sured. Collectively, these measurements generate an atomic-scale map of the surface, which can be used, for instance, to reveal criticaldefects in the integrated circuits that control personal computers andother electronic devices.

At the dawn of the nanotech era 25 years ago, the invention ofSTM enabled scientists to image atoms one-by-one on a surface, movethem around at will, and assemble small nanostructures. While STMhas propelled many advances in nanotechnology, its slow data collec-tion rate has rendered it ineffective in imaging high-speed phenomenaat the atomic scale. “The STM can’t go fast because its circuit limitsyou to a maximum measuring speed,” explains Kamil Ekinci, assistantprofessor of mechanical engineering. “If you want to scan the surfacefast, you can’t see much because the STM technique has limited timeresolution.”

Ekinci and his group—in collaboration with radio frequencyexpert Keith Schwab, a physicist at Cornell University—launched aNational Science Foundation–funded project to scan the surface fasterthrough the use of radio frequency waves. Their research on radio-frequency STM, published in Nature, demonstrates the use of radiofrequency electronics techniques to increase STM data collectionspeed and improve imaging resolution.

“We sent radio waves—which have a high frequency—through thetip and sample of a standard STM,” Ekinci explains. “The radio waves


Mechanical engineer Kamil Ekinciuses a scanning tunneling micro-scope (STM) modified with a circuit component, left, to viewindividual atoms on a surface atmore than 100 times the speedconventionally attained with STM.

An electrical field is used to draw negatively chargedbiopolymers, in this case DNA molecules, through ananopore fabricated in an ultra-thin silicon substrate.Biomedical engineer Amit Meller uses such nanoporesto probe the interaction of individual DNA moleculeswith other biomolecules.

Kamil Ekinci

Amit Meller


Inspecting the Ultra Small

Is there a limit to how much data you can fit in your PalmPilot? Theanswer may lie at the nanoscale. Over the past decade, as PCs, iPods,and other consumer electronic devices have packed more and moreinformation into faster, higher-density chips, the smallest feature sizeused in semiconductor circuit fabrication has shrunk by a factor ofthree. While manufacturers aim to deliver chips free of processingfaults and semiconductor defects, today’s nanoscale feature sizes aremaking semiconductors impossible to inspect with conventional opti-cal imaging methods.

Since 2000, however, M. Selim Ünlü, CNN associate director andprofessor of electrical and computer engineering, has been developingand refining a spherical microlens which enables the inspection ofsemiconductor circuits at a much higher resolution using existingmicroscopes. Funded by the Defense Advanced Research ProjectsAgency, the U.S. Air Force, and the NSF, this research effort has con-sisted of several projects in the Optical Characterization andNanophotonics Laboratory in collaboration with CNN DirectorBennett Goldberg and Professor of Electrical and ComputerEngineering Anna Swan. The group’s findings could enable the nextgeneration of microprocessors.

Semiconductor circuits are fabricated in dense, multilayermetallic/dielectric structures using very short, ultraviolet (UV) wave-lengths of light to “write” under-100-nanometer-wide features onto thesurfaces of each layer. To inspect and analyze a circuit, engineers eithercollect light from it or excite it with light and monitor the electricalresponse, focusing the light to a point comparable to the smallest featuresize. Since top inspection is prevented by the dense metallic multilayerstructure, backside imaging through the silicon substrate is necessary.But silicon doesn’t transmit visible or UV light to buried features, so

engineers must rely on longer, infrared wavelengths that exceed onemicron (1,000 nanometers)—making the focal point far greater than thefeature sizes.

“Feature resolution scales with wavelength, so whatever you’vewritten with UV photolithography, you cannot ‘read’ it anymore at wave-lengths allowed by the silicon substrate,” Ünlü explains. “But we’vedemonstrated in the past five years that you can regain some of this res-olution using our microscopy technique on the backside of the circuit.”

In Ünlü’s most recent paper, his group demonstrated a resolutionof 200 nanometers with their novel microlens in wide-field imaging, anearly five-fold improvement on current optical technology. The grouphas licensed the new technology to Hamamatsu, a microscopy firm thatbuilds instruments for semiconductor analysis.

Ünlü next plans to use his advanced inspection technique to per-form high-resolution thermal imaging of semiconductor chips. “One ofthe bottlenecks of semiconductor chips is that as you shrink a device,you increase the clock speed and generate more heat in its operation,”says Ünlü. “I dare you to touch the Pentium chip in your computer!” Byobtaining a high-resolution heat distribution map of a chip, Ünlü hopesto help engineers to better identify and reduce semiconductor hotspots.


The Numerical Aperture Increasing Lens (NAIL) technique developed byM. Selim Ünlü and colleagues has demonstrated a nearly five-foldimprovement over current optical technology. Figure A shows a frontsideimage in which the semiconductor circuit is partially obscured by its owndense, multilayer metallic structure. Backside imaging through the siliconsubstrate with a conventional near-infrared microscope in Figure B revealsthe obscured features, but results in degraded resolution. The same struc-tures imaged with the patented NAIL technique, Figure C, show signifi-cant improvement in both resolution and visibility.

power. The result would be a more efficientantibiotic that can be given in smaller doses.

“Now you can imagine a small moleculethat could be added to Cipro to make super-Cipro, or to ampicillin to make super-ampicillin,and so forth,” says Collins. “All with onemolecule.”

In addition to cell death pathways, bacte-ricidal antibiotics stimulate a common defensepathway in cells—called an SOS pathway, afterthe distress call used by ships at sea—whichhelps repair the microbe’s DNA. Becauseerrors in DNA replication are what cause newstrains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria toemerge, Collins and his team have also identi-fied a way to shut off this SOS pathway geneti-cally by knocking out one of its on switches.“We get the second whammy by shutting offthe SOS pathway,” he says. “We reduce theemergence of resistance.”

It’s the kind of opportunity that comes alongonly once in a lifetime—and for biomedicalengineer James Collins, once may be enough.As the first BU researcher to be named aHoward Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI)Investigator, Collins will receive several milliondollars over the next five years and the possi-bility of renewed funding for postdoctoralresearchers and other lab assistance in thefuture. “This money will allow me to go aftercutting-edge, innovative, and long-term inves-tigations that would be difficult to get fundedthrough normal mechanisms,” he says.

Collins was one of 56 HHMI Investigatorschosen this May, from a pool of more than1,000 applicants nationwide. He sees hisselection as evidence of a paradigm shift inmolecular cell biology toward research thatcrosses traditional disciplinary boundaries. A physicist and medical engineer by training,his own career has followed an increasinglyinterdisciplinary path in recent years.

A transition to molecular biology ledCollins to systems biology, where he applied areverse engineering approach to genomes, pro-teins, and signaling pathways to develop amethod of identifying the targets of drug com-pounds, which can reduce the costs of devel-oping new drugs and vaccines. From there, hehelped found the field of synthetic biology,which builds on systems biology to “forwardengineer” genes, proteins, and DNA and RNAfragments, creating novel biological circuits inthe lab. Among Collins’s creations was the first“genetic toggle switch”—a molecular devicethat can turn specific genes off and on, reveal-ing how they interact with different cellsthroughout the body.

There are no signs that Collins, whoreceived a MacArthur Fellowship in 2003,plans to narrow his focus any time soon.Looking ahead, he tells HHMI that the interest-ing problems in biology will lie “at the interfaceof mathematics, physics, and bioengineering.”

Right now, the problem Collins finds mostfascinating has to do with the specific mecha-nisms by which bacteria respond to antibiotics.A better understanding of how antibioticswork is a prerequisite for developing much-needed, more effective ways to fight infections.Already, he and his colleagues at BU’s AppliedBioDynamics Laboratory have begun to lay thegroundwork for increasing antibiotics’ potency.

“Our platform and our discoveries give anice base for extending the life of existing

Genetics: Fast Forward

BY CASSANDRA NELSON

antibiotics,” Collins says, “enhancing theireffectiveness while restricting the emergenceof resistance.”

He and two graduate students, DanielDwyer and Michael Kohanski, began by discov-ering a previously unknown cell death pathwaytriggered in response to bactericidal anti-biotics. Cell death pathways are mechanismsthat tell a cell to shut down—in this case byproducing oxidative agents called hydroxy radi-cals, which damage lipids, DNA, proteins, andother parts of the cell. (Hydroxy radicals arealso the reason why antioxidants are touted asingredients in everything from pomegranatejuice to wrinkle cream.)

Collins’s lab then identified several targetsrelated to this oxidative cell death pathway,providing a good basis for medicinal chemiststo develop a compound that could be added toexisting antibiotics to enhance their killing

“Now you can imagine a small molecule thatcould be added to Cipro to make super-Cipro,or to ampicillin to make super-ampicillin, andso forth. All with one molecule.”

A B C

“I dare you to touch the Pentium chip in your computer!”

R

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James Collins


Research: Health BY MAGGIE BUCHOLT

Karen M. Freund of the Patient Navigator ResearchProgram wants to make sure that disadvantaged andunderserved women won’t have to cope with thelogistics of cancer care alone.

The cost of the U.S. health care delivery system has everyone grum-bling: lawmakers, insurance companies, and the patients who sufferunder managed-care guidelines that seem in direct opposition to theHippocratic Oath taken by physicians. Understaffed hospitals andmedical centers are dealing with patient logjams in emergencyrooms and operating rooms, as concerns mount about quality of careand patient safety. To add to the already long list of complaints, thecost of life-saving vaccines and pharmaceuticals has soared for manyunderserved Americans, as well as for economically disadvantagedsegments of populations around the world.

Researchers at BU are studying ways to decrease costs; toimprove access, health care delivery, and treatment outcomes; toensure affordable global access to medications; and to promote thehealth and well-being of low-income, vulnerable families.

Health Care Without Exception


Coverage for All

Imagine receiving a voucher from the U.S. government each year topay for your health insurance premiums. No more worries about pay-ing for prescription drugs, home health care, and nursing home care,which are all covered, or about losing your health coverage if youswitch jobs, or being turned down by an insurer for a preexistinghealth condition.

Sound impossible? Not to Laurence J. Kotlikoff, an economicsprofessor, research associate of the National Bureau of EconomicResearch, and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciencesand of the Econometric Society. Or to the many government leadersaround the world, such as in Germany and the Netherlands, whohave successfully enacted universal health insurance.

A passionate advocate for health care reform, Kotlikoff laid outhis plan for a U.S. Medical Security System in The Healthcare Fix,published in 2007 by MIT Press. The premise is a simple market-based plan that every American can buy into, he says: insurance com-panies remain private enterprises and citizens have the freedom tochoose their own insurer. And no American, regardless of his or herhealth condition, is denied coverage.

The government, not insurance companies, must set reasonablefixed rates for basic health care services and for extra oversight ofpatients with chronic ailments, such as diabetes, hypertension, andheart disease. These patients would receive larger vouchers, therebygiving insurers financial incentive to accept sicker patients. Thatway, says Kotlikoff, “No insurance company will be able to engage in‘cherry-picking,’ selecting the patients who are the healthiest.”

Kotlikoff says 90 percent of the funding for his program isalready in place. All the government needs to do is rechannel what italready spends on health care—state and federal health care pay-ments, allotments for Medicaid and Medicare, and government taxbreaks. Right now skyrocketing health care costs for Medicare andMedicaid are threatening to bankrupt the U.S. government. By set-ting the annual voucher budget at a fixed share of Gross DomesticProduct (GDP), the country remains solvent, he says. Over time, anindependent government panel would determine additional newcoverage to the basic plan, allowing Americans’ health care benefitsto grow at a pace the nation can afford.

“The current system will surely collapse,” he says. “What I’mproposing sounds radical, but it’s the conservative option. Right now,what we’re doing is radical. We’re driving off a cliff.”

How much would each American receive on his or her healthcare voucher? That depends on the person’s objective health condi-tions. The amount of each voucher would be individually based on aformula known as risk adjustment, says Kotlikoff, perhaps the onealready in use by Medicare.

Over the years, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services(CMS) have experimented with risk-adjusted formulas in what isnow called the Medicare Advantage program for Medicare HMOs.The most attractive Medicare risk-adjustment formula at this timewas developed in the 1990s by Randall P. Ellis, an economics profes-sor, and his colleagues, Arlene S. Ash, a research professor at theSchool of Medicine, and Gregory Pope, of the Research TriangleInstitute. CMS refined and implemented the formula in 2000 and2004 to pay Medicare HMOs a fair sum to reflect costs.

Risk-adjustment methods—there is no one formula—are statisti-cal tools that help gauge medical costs for patients’ health condi-tions; they are used here in the United States and in high-income


Navigating the Maze of Cancer Care

It’s no secret that delays in timely treatment of breast and cervical cancer—all cancers, in fact—reduce the odds of successful outcomes. But if you’re adisadvantaged, underserved immigrant woman without friends or familyin one of Boston’s many diverse neighborhoods, you may have to choosebetween an oncology appointment and leaving your children home alone.

As Professor of Medicine Karen M. Freund discovered more than 10years ago, women from disadvantaged and underserved populations with-out a support network miss appointments with specialists, contributing todelays in care that may impact outcomes disparities, despite the advent ofsophisticated treatments with high success rates in white, educated women.

Freund, who is chief of the Women’s Health Unit and executive co-director of the Women’s Health Interdisciplinary Research Center, alongwith co-principal investigator Tracy Battaglia, assistant professor of medi-cine, and their colleagues received funding from the National CancerInstitute’s Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities and the AvonFoundation for the Patient Navigator Research Program. Their Bostonprogram is one of nine sites around the country examining the role andbenefits of an individual devoted to helping communities of racial and eth-nic minorities and of low socioeconomic status maneuver through thecomplicated logistics of cancer diagnosis and treatment. Six Boston com-munity health centers, each with one full- or part-time patient navigatorand a supervisor, are focusing on women with breast and cervical cancer.(Other centers around the country are also targeting colorectal or prostatecancer.) The multisite study will be completed in 2010.

The specially trained navigator arranges for services, such as financialsupport, interpreters, child-care during scheduled appointments, andtransportation. He or she also schedules appointments with health careproviders, coordinates services among medical personnel, and providesother assistance as needed to overcome access barriers. Each navigatorreceives culturally appropriate training compatible with Boston’s diversecommunities—including African American, Hispanic, Haitian, and Asianpopulations, to name a few.

“It’s a very exciting program,” Freund says. “It has real policy implica-tions for how we design health care delivery programs. The Centers forMedicare and Medicaid Services are looking at this program very closely asa model for future funding.”

Research: Health

countries that have universal health insurance, as part of the responseto marketplace economics and the insurers’ demand to “show me themoney.” High-risk patients need extra care, and extra care costs insur-ers money. Insurers are paid more for a 55-year-old female patient withdiabetes, for example, than for a woman of the same age with nochronic ailments. If the woman has additional health issues—emphy-sema, say, or high blood pressure, or heart trouble—extra payments aretacked on to the basic health plan cost for each health problem.

Today Ellis, a principal investigator or co-PI on numerous healthcare research projects funded by CMS and the Robert Wood JohnsonFoundation, is a consultant for the Federal Republic of Germany, whichis one of several countries that has moved from risk-adjustment formu-las using only demographics like age and gender to more complex,sophisticated diagnosis models. Risk-adjustment formulas are alsobeing used in other areas to assess provider quality, to meet targets forvaccines and screenings, and to offer financial bonuses for keeping hos-pital rates—and overall costs—low.

Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, and the Netherlands—all of whichhave private insurance companies and offer residents a choice amongcompeting plans—strive to regulate premiums and promote fair compe-tition, which may help explain why their universal insurance programswork so well, Ellis says. Ninety-nine percent of their populations areenrolled. The United States is unique among high-income countries: 47 million Americans, or roughly 15 percent of the population, do nothave health insurance.

“Companies in the Netherlands, for example, don’t avoid sick peo-ple,” Ellis says. “Yet they still do very well. In the United States, insurerscompete to avoid getting too many sick people, and that’s a sad state.”

Delays in care may impactoutcomes disparities, despitethe advent of sophisticatedtreatments with high successrates in white, educated women.

Co-principal investigators Freund andBattaglia are measuring the impact oftrained patient navigators—includingWanda Turner, Michele Whigham-Brown, and Pranvera Mahmutaj, right—on treatment outcomes for womenwith abnormal breast and cervicalcancer screening.

Laurence J. Kotlikoff

Karen M. Freund Tracy Battaglia

Randall P. Ellis

“No insurance company will beable to engage in ‘cherry-picking,’selecting the patients who arethe healthiest.”


waits, delays, medical errors—and also contribute to rapidly increasinghealth care costs.

At BMC, Litvak and Long began by rescheduling elective vascular sur-geries to reduce the congestion in the “stepdown” unit—where patientswho are not sick enough for the intensive care unit (ICU) are housed.Patient flow in the stepdown unit seemed to peak on Wednesday andThursday. Patients arriving from the operating room were competing forbeds with surgical patients being transferred in from the ICU. By spread-ing out the elective surgery schedule Monday through Friday and having adesignated operating room for emergencies, elective surgeries weren’tpostponed, and there was more time for additional elective procedures.The reorganized schedule also decreased the stepdown unit’s nursinghours; with no extra staff needed, overtime pay decreased.

Next they streamlined the cardiac surgery schedule, which alsopeaked midweek. With the cooperation of a surgeon, for example, a car-diac clinic day was moved to Wednesday in order to perform elective sur-geries on Fridays. The two revamped surgery schedules reduced variabilityin the stepdown unit by 55 percent, and nursing costs dropped by an annu-alized amount of $130,000.

Together with Brad Prenney, MVP deputy director, and KathleenKerwin Fuda, MVP data analysis manager, Litvak and Long have success-fully implemented their flow-management system at several hospitals,including Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, one of the nation’s leading pedi-atric hospitals. There, waiting time for emergent and urgent surgeriesdeclined by one-third, the number of scheduled surgeries increased by1,000 annually, and operating-room overtime decreased by 60 percent.

With strong endorsement of MVP findings by the Institute ofMedicine of the National Academies and the Joint Commission onAccreditation of Healthcare Organizations, MVP faculty have begun tooffer seminars across the country and around the world to teach clinicians,managers, and hospital executives how to implement the methodology.MVP researchers have received a grant from the Robert Wood JohnsonFoundation to study stress in nurses due to patient overcrowding.

“We want to verify our theory with real-life practices,” says Litvak.“When it works with real people, that’s definitely rewarding for us.”


Surgery—Without Delay

This year, Research Professor Eugene Litvak received a visit from thepresident and the chairman of the board of one of the United Kingdom’sflagship pediatric facilities, “GOSH”—the Great Ormond Street Hospital.They were seeking his advice on streamlining the hospital’s delivery ofhealth care services.

As director and co-founder of the Management of Variability inHealth Care Delivery Program (MVP) at BU’s Health Policy Institute,along with MVP co-founder Michael Long, Litvak and his team have beenin demand in recent years from around the globe—Australia, Singapore,and now the United Kingdom—for consultation on how to better managehealth services, in particular, scheduling surgeries. In hospitals through-out the world, emergency departments are chronically overloaded andpatients wait too long for surgeries. "It looks like a worldwide plot," hesays, "with the same problems, the same mistakes."

For example, Boston Medical Center (BMC), a BU-affiliated safety-net hospital for low-income, uninsured patients, treats nearly 120,000patients a year in its Emergency Department, and prior to 2004, the highvolume of emergency surgeries caused the postponement of 700 revenue-generating elective surgeries annually. A year later, implementing Litvak’sand Long’s MVP system, the annual number of postponed surgeries hadplummeted to seven.

In addition to a remarkable reduction in the OR logjam, BMC savedmoney and boosted the morale of overworked nurses in the process. Andthe number of elective surgeries increased by 20 percent, greatly aug-menting the medical center’s much-needed revenues.

The solution to BMC’s problems was the result of an underutilizeddiscipline: the science of flow management, also known as variabilitymethodology. Several years ago Litvak and Long made a startling discov-ery: reorganizing the scheduling of elective surgeries reduced the dramaticpeaks and valleys in bed occupancy being experienced at the hospitals andmedical centers they studied. These peaks in patient demand are at theroot of many problems—including emergency department overcrowding,

Research: Health

Dark red areas indicate a high incidence of cervical cancer mortality,with poorer regions of the world disproportionately affected.

simultaneously allow a generic version of the vaccine to be produced anddistributed through the Brazilian public health system to the poor.

The idea behind the GO License is to move away from charitabledonations of drugs and vaccines, which are often inadequate anddependent on continued generosity, toward a market-based licensingagreement that is as simple as possible and ensures that significantfinancial incentives remain in place for patent-based pharmaceuticalcompanies.

In February 2009, the American Journal of Law and Medicine—published in conjunction with the BU School of Law and the AmericanSociety of Law, Medicine, and Ethics—will sponsor a two-day confer-ence to discuss HPV vaccine needs in low- and medium-income coun-tries. Outterson has invited representatives of GlaxoSmithKline andMerck to attend.

“The two companies have publicly said they are considering theaccess issue,” explains Outterson, whose research was facilitated by asummer research grant from the School of Law. “If there are elementsthat need to be modified in the GO License, we’re eager to discuss them.Our goal is global access to the vaccine.”

The Plight of Prison Dads

Nine percent of American men will be imprisoned at some point in theirlives, if current incarceration trends continue: the prison populationexploded from 300,000 in 1972 to 1,500,000 in 2005. And more than halfof all 1.5 million inmates have at least one child under the age of 18.

Each year, the majority of individuals released from federal andstate prisons are male, black or Hispanic, poorly educated, nonviolentoffenders with a history of substance abuse. Many are moving back intohouseholds with their partners and children. The impact of incarcera-tion on these fathers’ physical and mental health could have significantimplications for the more than 2.4 million minor children with eitherparent—most are fathers—in state and federal prisons or local jails.

Social Work Professor Marah A. Curtis, whose doctoral and post-doctoral research focused on the impact of public policies on the well-being of low-income families, was shocked to learn how little analysishad been done on the impact of incarceration on health, especially onfathers’ health. Unwed fathers do not appear in most national data sets.Little research is conducted on how incarceration affects men’s long-term health status or is able to account for the fact that men with a his-tory of incarceration are more likely to be in poorer health at theoutset. Disentangling poorer health associated with social disadvantagefrom the impact of incarceration is tricky but necessary.

In 2006, Curtis received a Peter Paul Career Development Awardin recognition of her promising research efforts on the impact of publicbenefits—such as subsidized public housing and Temporary Assistancefor Needy Families—on vulnerable families. Now, with a grant from theRobert Wood Johnson Foundation, she is examining the effects ofincarceration on the health of fathers, using longitudinal data on urbanfathers from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing (FFCW) study.Her project focuses on a sample of urban fathers and information gath-ered from the mostly low-income, unmarried fathers as well as dataprovided by the mothers of their youngest children.

“I have to think that what I’m doing has pragmatic relevance onpublic policy,” says Curtis. “These fathers are a vulnerable group, andwe should care about them. Compromises to their health impede theirability to be good fathers.”

Global Incidence of Cervical Cancer

Life-Saving Vaccine for Women Everywhere

Cervical cancer kills more than 260,000 women around the world eachyear, yet an approved, effective cervical cancer vaccine may not reachthe women in poor countries who need it most, says AssociateProfessor of Law Kevin Outterson. The human papillomavirus (HPV)vaccine, used to prevent most types of cervical cancer, is the mostexpensive vaccine in history. At a cost of $360 per person, it is simplyout of reach for most people in low- and middle-income countries.

In an article in the journal Health Affairs, Outterson and his col-league, Aaron S. Kesselheim of Harvard, propose a new approach to intel-lectual property rights laws, called the Generic Open (GO) License. TheGO License allows generic companies to produce drugs and vaccines atcompetitive prices while ensuring a significant return on investment forthe pharmaceutical company that initially developed the drug. This mar-ket-based licensing approach streamlines licensing for patented productsand allows a fair royalty payment. The voluntary GO License would per-mit generic companies to manufacture the drug for sale in developingnations with no capital expenditures or liability risks for the originalpatent owner. Sales and intellectual property laws in wealthier marketssuch as the United States would not be affected.

As an example, Outterson cited Brazil, which has extreme wealth andextreme poverty. Under GO guidelines, GlaxoSmithKline or Merck—thetwo companies manufacturing the HPV vaccine—could continue to sellthe vaccine to the upper crust of Brazilian society at their suggested retailprice and still reap significant revenues. However, the companies would

Eugene Litvak

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Kevin Outterson Marah A. Curtis


In his research on neoclassical England, UniversityProfessor of Art History and English Bruce Redford quotesa Greek saying: “When you know ancient things, you willclearly know new things.” Redford is one of a number ofscholars at BU demonstrating that innovation is as aliveand well in the arts as it is in the sciences. Artists andmusicians push the boundaries of sensory perception toextend what we are able to know, while historians of thevisual and fine arts seek new relevance for creative effortsfrom times past. Whether researching a centuries-oldacademic society or using new technology to adapt aclassic novel for the stage, these scholars and artistsreveal fresh insights through careful study and imagina-tive reinvention of the old.


Research: Arts BY AMY CHMIELEWSKI

Regenerating the Arts

Two images from “To Fly: ContemporaryAerial Photography,” an exhibitioncurated by art historian Kim Sichel.Above: Marilyn Bridges, Pyramid ofKhephren, Giza, 1993, gelatin silverprint, 24 x 20 in., courtesy of the artist.Left: Detail of David Maisel, The LakeProject #2, 2001–2003, C-print, 29 x 29 in., courtesy of the artist andMiller Block Gallery, Boston, Mass.


From Great Heights

When the French photographer Nadar captured the first aerialimages of Paris from a hot-air balloon in 1858, he discovered a newmeans of depicting the urban landscape. Since then, aerial photogra-phy has been employed for a variety of purposes: military reconnais-sance, land development, environmental monitoring, and evenentertainment, as anyone who has whiled away an hour with GoogleEarth can attest. But the practical value of aerial photography doesnothing to diminish its aesthetic value, as a recent exhibition at theBU Art Gallery shows.

“To Fly: Contemporary Aerial Photography,” curated by art his-torian Kim Sichel, contained more than 50 images by 13 photogra-phers, displaying the medium’s vast aesthetic possibilities. Sichel isinterested in aerial photography as a significant yet under-examinedpoint where art and technology intersect.

In her essay for the exhibition catalog, Sichel stresses the “trans-gressive nature” of aerial photography. To contemporary viewers, sucha claim may seem overstated, but in the mid-1800s aerial photographypresented an entirely new way of envisioning the Earth andhumankind’s relationship to it. Sichel explains that unlike conven-tional landscape views, which recede toward a “vanishing point,”

aerial views flatten the features of the land-scape, and they are not oriented to thespectator’s scale. Because aerial photogra-phy essentially discards the traditionalmethod of comprehending three-dimen-sional space through two-dimensionalimages, the works featured in “To Fly” canprovoke even modern viewers into seeingour surroundings from new perspectives.

Some photographs capture the beautyof the natural world by highlighting dra-matic features of the landscape or byemphasizing abstract patterns in the land.Others—such as Marilyn Bridges’s images

of Egyptian pyramids and other archaeologically significant sites—illustrate how humans have shaped, ordered, and damaged the land.For a few photographers, the destruction of nature yields unexpect-edly beautiful results. The brilliant red tone pervading David Maisel’sThe Lake Project #2, for instance, is the result of environmental andindustrial pollutants in the water.

Curating an exhibition like “To Fly” requires considerablepreparation, and for help Sichel turned to undergraduate and gradu-ate students in the Art History department and Museum Studies pro-gram. Approximately 15 students in her Curatorship seminar took ona diverse range of responsibilities, from preliminary research to loanacquisitions. Sichel calls the seminar “both a scholarly and a practicaltraining ground” that provides students with a crucial advantage inthe competitive job markets of museums and galleries.

The exhibition has also inspired Sichel’s next research project, amonograph entitled Aerial Vision: Aerial Photography and LandscapeRepresentation. In addressing what she calls a “large body of imagerythat has not entered the canon of landscape photography,” Sichelaims to extend her study of how aerial photography has “vastly influ-enced our way of perceiving the modern industrialized world.”

Inside the Mind of a Madman

The incorporation of technology with creative expression is by nomeans unique to the visual arts. Composer Joshua Fineberg’s latestproject, a multimedia adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s most notoriousnovel, not only required him to develop a score but also to design andperfect innovative computer technology necessary to realize his visionfor Lolita. Fineberg, a visiting associate professor in the School ofMusic, is no stranger to the use of technology in musical compositions,both to help compose acoustic music and to create original sounds andsituations. His production premiered in Marseille in April 2008.

Fineberg felt that music would be especially well suited to captur-ing the novel’s narrative voice, which possesses what he calls “the lyri-cism of a madman.” While previous dramatizations of Lolita focused onthe novel’s plot, he instead sought to give his audience unprecedentedaccess to the mental state of the protagonist, Humbert Humbert.Without an objective, omniscient narrator to guide them, readers expe-rience the story only through Humbert’s bizarre and possibly delu-sional account. Fineberg wanted to achieve a similar effect onstage, inorder to create what he calls an “imaginary opera.”

Realizing that a traditional operatic score would not do, he begandeveloping voice modification technology at IRCAM (Institut deRecherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique), in Paris, with col-league Axel Roebel. They created software that separates a recordedvoice into two components—a “source,” equivalent to the sound pro-duced by the voicebox, and a “filter” that mimics the effect produced byresonation in the nasal cavity—in order to create hybrid human voicesthat sound as if they could not exist, yet still sound natural.

By digitally manipulating this source and filter, known as a “spec-tral envelope,” Fineberg can alter the speaking voice of one individualinto a “sung” voice that can then be placed in the body of another. InLolita, for example, he transforms a middle-aged man’s spoken wordsinto song emanating from the virtual body of a young girl, creating an“impossible voice”—an ideal acoustic representation of Humbert’sinability to distinguish between fantasy and reality.

Visual components in the production also help to situate the audi-ence within Humbert’s psyche. Lolita’s video artist, Kurt d’Haeseleer,and scenic designer, Jim Clayburgh, use video to highlight the perfor-mative nature of Humbert’s narration. Three video cameras record theactor playing Humbert, and the images they capture are projected liveonto a semitransparent screen at center stage. Behind the screen,dancers, led by choreographer Johanne Saunier, give a corporal pres-ence to Humbert’s fantasies.

Like any adaptation, Fineberg’s Lolita takes creative liberties. Butby telling the story from Humbert’s perspective, Fineberg’s imaginaryopera captures the spirit of Nabokov’s original in a revealing new way.

Research: Arts

Top: Frank Gohlke, Aerial View: Looking South at Mount St. Helens Crater and LavaDome, Mount Hood and Mount Jefferson inthe Distance, Airplane in Crater, 1982, gelatinsilver print, 30 x 40 in., courtesy of the artist.Above: Esteban Pastorino Díaz, ∆HMAPX-EION, Skopelos, Greece, 2002, C-print, 16 x 20 in., courtesy of PDNB Gallery, Dallas, Tex.

Kim Sichel

Joshua Fineberg

Scenes from the Marseille premiere ofFineberg’s opera Lolita, a multimediaadaptation of Nabokov’s classic novel.


Filming los Bailaríns de Cuba

While Cuba seems poised to encounter immense social changes in thecoming years, many of the island’s traditions remain intact—includingits reputation for training internationally acclaimed ballet dancers.This is the subject of Associate Professor of Film Mary Jane Doherty’slatest project. Over a span of three years, she is documenting the livesof six children between the ages of 9 and 15, all of whom hope to star inCuba’s National Ballet. She chanced upon a newspaper article aboutCuban dancers who had defected to the United States and realized thatballet in Cuba, with its strong visual and emotional appeal, would be anideal topic for a documentary. “The movie came with visuals and musicbuilt in,” Doherty says. “I could show how Cubans move and hearmusic, the things you cannot describe in words.”

She compares ballet’s place in Cuban culture to that held by pro-fessional sports in the United States. Principal dancers are nationalcelebrities, and for many children and parents, ballet represents aticket out of a life in which ration cards determine access to basicneeds. Based on the Soviet model, Cuba’s system of ballet schools pro-vides talented youngsters with rigorous training at no cost. But it isextremely competitive.

Around the age of six, children audition for entry to local balletschools. If accepted, they spend hours in the studio every day in prepa-ration for another audition, at age 15, for entrance to the NationalSchool of Ballet. Over the course of the filming, several of Doherty’ssubjects will try for a coveted place at the National School; for those

Messiaen 2.0

Although the Internet is indispensable to any university’s functioning,its role in circulating academic discourse is still uncertain, with booksand articles remaining the preferred media for sharing new research.Andrew Shenton, a musicologist at the School of Music as well as direc-tor of the Sacred Music program at the School of Theology, is one of agrowing number of scholars looking to redefine the Internet’s relationto academe. In 2006 he founded the Boston University MessiaenProject (BUMP), a Web-based resource for the study of 20th-centuryFrench composer Olivier Messiaen.

Shenton calls his project a “cross-disciplinary event dedicated toscholarly discussion and performance of Messiaen’s music and torelated cultural, historical, and theological issues.” BUMP is an OpenAccess forum, meaning that its materials—including biographies,discographies, program notes, photos, downloadable scholarly articles,and even streaming audio clips—are entirely digital, publicly accessible,and free. Anyone can contribute to the site, but before being posted allscholarly information is peer reviewed to ensure a level of academicquality comparable to that found in refereed print journals.

Open Access can reach a wider audience than traditional academicpresses do, and is particularly useful for generating interest in topicsthat have received limited scholarly attention. The first biography ofMessiaen was not published until 2006—14 years after the composer’sdeath—and little material on him exists at present. His music is difficultto classify, as it employs complex rhythmic structures but is generallytonal, unlike much avant-garde music of the 20th century. It also differsthematically from that of his contemporaries. As an ardent Catholic,Messiaen often referenced the life of Christ in his work. He also lookedto the natural world for inspiration and frequently transcribed bird-song into his compositions.

Addressing the various influences on Messiaen’s work requirescollaboration among scholars of diverse backgrounds, including musi-cology, theology, and even zoology. BUMP enables active dialoguewithin an interdisciplinary community of academics, performers, andmusic enthusiasts who share an interest in the composer—and the elec-tronic format allows conversation to happen at a much faster pace thanwould be the case with traditional print publications. Such Open Accessmedia projects promise to make humanities research more collabora-tive and accessible in the years ahead.

who are unsuccessful, years of arduous train-ing will come to an abrupt end, along withtheir hopes for a better life.

Doherty’s primary intention as a film-maker is not to inform, but to engage. Likeher previous films, this project is a “narrativedocumentary” that aims foremost to reachthe audience emotionally. She avoids interact-ing with her subjects—whom she calls hercharacters—through interviewing or othermethods familiar to traditional documen-taries. The fourth wall, as it were, remains in

place, although the narrative unfolding behind it is entirely real. Narrative documentaries pose a distinct challenge to the film-

maker, who must capture significant moments in the characters’ livesand weave them into a coherent story line, without the benefit of pre-production or multiple takes. To do so, says Doherty, requires “anequal partnership between filmmaker and subject.” On each of herseven visits to Cuba in the first year, she has been greeted with a senseof trust and intimacy that she describes as “almost uncanny.” All sixdancers have invited her into their homes to film their private lives.But in order to maintain this trust and portray their lives honestly,Doherty must be careful to remain an observer and avoid manipulatingthe film’s narrative.

Having found what she calls “a natural story,” Doherty sees littlereason to interfere with the events unfolding before her. “For the firsttime in my life,” she says, “the film is walking into my camera by itself.”

Research: Arts

“I could show how Cubans move and hear music,the things you cannot describe in words.”

This year marks the centenary of Olivier Messiaen’s birth.Visit www.oliviermessiaen.net to learn more about theFrench composer’s life and music, and to view a calendarof upcoming performances of his works around the world.

Mary Jane Doherty


Amateur Antiquarians

With faculty appointments in two departments and specializations inEnglish literature and European art of the 17th and 18th centuries,University Professor Bruce Redford put several of his varied scholarlyinterests to use in his most recent project, an exhibition at the GettyVilla in Malibu, California, entitled “Grecian Taste and Roman Spirit:The Society of Dilettanti.” As Guest Curator, Redford worked withGetty Curator Claire Lyons to prepare a visual history of the Society ofDilettanti, a London drinking club dedicated to the celebration of clas-sical culture. The exhibition, which opened in August 2008, was accom-panied by the publication of Redford’s monograph, Dilettanti: The Anticand the Antique in Eighteenth-Century England.

The Society of Dilettanti was formed in 1734 by a group of youngaristocrats who had completed the Grand Tour. In 18th-centuryEngland, no young gentleman’s education could be considered com-plete without this journey through France and Italy, which focused onsites of cultural import and supplemented scholarly knowledge withfirsthand experience. According to Redford, the society began as a kindof “alumni association” for those wishing to “relive their happy memo-ries” of travel abroad.

Redford began to study the Dilettanti over a decade ago, aftercompleting his book Venice and the Grand Tour. Intrigued by thegroup, Redford visited its meeting place in London, where he encoun-

tered two group portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds—the most influentialBritish painter of the 18th century and himself a member of theSociety of Dilettanti—as well as 23 individual portraits of members byGeorge Knapton. Redford realized that these portraits, which hadreceived little scholarly attention before catching his eye, contained awealth of information about the Dilettanti’s interests and activities,alluded to in the sitters’ costumes, props, and gestures. His exhibitionat the Getty Villa includes several of these individual portraits byKnapton, along with prints of the group portraits by Reynolds andobjects owned by the society’s members.

With a love of classical culture matched only by their love of drink,the Society of Dilettanti at first focused on social, not scholarly, activi-ties. In the latter half of the century, however, the society made lastingcontributions to the study of classical architecture and archaeology byfunding expeditions to Athens and Asia Minor and by forming majorcollections of antiquities. The resulting folios they published—forinstance, Specimens of Ancient Sculpture—greatly added to knowledgeof the ancient world in England.

Although the Society of Dilettanti still exists today, its prestige suf-fered a serious blow in the early 19th century when, Redford explains,the “culture of the amateur” began to give way to an emphasis on pro-fessional specialization. The Dilettanti, he says, were “motivated bylove of learning and passionate curiosity” rather than by “academicrigor.” But, as Redford’s own research shows, curiosity and rigor canyield the most satisfying results when working in tandem.

uled carriages that carried mail all overEurope,” Goldsmith says, “and that’s whatmade it possible for the women to travel theway they did. When I first traced their trav-els, their routes didn’t make any sense tome. Then I realized they were connectingwith postal coaches, and they weren’t nec-essarily sure where the coaches would leadthem.”

Goldsmith finds the stories of thesewomen invigorating. “People tend to assumethat women from this period weren’t able tooperate freely at all,” she says. “And despitethe fact that these women had a very difficulttime on the road, there’s a kind of exuberanceto their stories that I find fascinating anduplifting. They really made something of theirlives and their educations in deciding to writeabout themselves and defend themselves andgo public with their stories.”

She hopes that historical figures like theMancinis can help readers see the eddies andwhirls in history’s flow. “People are surprisedto learn that progress in the area of women’sindependence does not move steadily fromthis dark period of the past toward this brightand open period of modernity. There are dif-ferent moments in history when you seeexamples of women being able to defy con-vention in interesting ways.”

It sounds like a plot dreamed up by a novelistwith a vivid imagination. Two sisters in 17th-century Europe leave their aristocratic hus-bands—one a Roman prince and the other aFrench religious zealot—and abandon theirfamilies. They spend their lives traveling, tryingto develop a network that will help sustainthem. Along the way, there are kidnappingplots, stalking, and other forms of danger.

But it’s all true. Hortense and MarieMancini are the central figures in a book cur-rently being written by Elizabeth Goldsmith,professor of French and academic affairs direc-tor at International Programs. Goldsmith firstwrote about the sisters in 2001 in PublishingWomen’s Life Stories in France, 1642–1720, whichexamines the memoirs of six 17th-centurywomen—three religious, three secular—andhow they came to be published.

“I was particularly intrigued by the secularwomen, who became notorious because theyleft their families and traveled,” she says. “Theywrote to defend their reputations. I startedlooking more into Hortense and MarieMancini, trying to figure out how they traveled,how they got around.”

The Mancini sisters had been brought upin the court of Louis XIV—Marie was the SunKing’s first mistress—and for different reasonsand at different times, both walked out on

Succès de Scandale

BY SHERYL FLATOW

unhappy marriages,even though it meantleaving behind theirchildren. “I’m inter-ested in howwomen’s travelrelates to the idea oftaking risks and theusefulness of takingrisks,” saysGoldsmith. “I alsowanted to know whywomen on the road

were so fascinating to everybody. The Mancinisisters were early media figures. Their travelswere documented in news gazettes and in cor-respondence, in addition to their own memoirs.”

Eager to learn more about their experiences,Goldsmith searched the family archives of PrinceColonna, Marie’s husband, in Subiaco, Italy.There, she says, “I found an incredible number ofletters and documents that tracked her move-ments and the movements of her sister.”

Prior to researching Life Stories, she wasunsure how the women got from place toplace. Goldsmith’s work reveals that the sis-ters’ seemingly arbitrary paths were the resultof an early and often imperfect form of publictransportation—the postal system. “In thelate 17th century, there were regularly sched-

Hortense Mancini, left, and her sisterMarie gained notoriety in the 17thcentury for abandoning their familiesin favor of life on the road.

University Professor Bruce Redford examines volumes on Roman antiquities and sculpture by Giovanni Bellori, Andrea Palladio, and Giovanni Battista Piranesi—books likely to have found theirway into the private libraries of Society of Dilettanti members in the early 18th century—among the holdings in the Rare Book Collection at BU’s Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center.

Research: Arts

“The Dilettanti were motivated by love of learning and passionate curiosity.”

Elizabeth Goldsmith

R

R

The great problems of our time—like poverty, disease, and climatechange—share a common thread, according to international relations andenvironment expert Adil Najam: they are interdisciplinary, global, andlong-term. The challenge, he says, is to view these issues not as isolatedstudies in economics, medicine, science, or other fields, but to place themin the larger context of human well-being, and, thus, at the crossroads ofmultiple disciplines, places, and time frames.

Director of Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee Center for theStudy of the Longer-Range Future since November 2007, Najam hopes toapply this broad, interdisciplinary approach to researching an array ofsubjects related to human progress and global development. From spaceexploration to world trade and problems of governance, the Pardee Centergives scholars an opportunity to engage in a novel way of looking at andshaping the world.

Developing Our Future


Research: Pardee Center BY KARINE ABALYAN


“We are in the business ofanticipating the trends, oflooking at scenarios nowthat might affect the future.”

A recent conference on space explorationdrew scientists, humanists, and policymakersto BU‘s Pardee Center and began laying thegroundwork for a global space strategy.


How the Giant Strides

Three decades ago, mass exports of Chinese cars, washing machines, andcomputers seemed an unlikely scenario. Known at the time as “a prettymessy agricultural society,” says political economist Kevin Gallagher, Chinawas regarded as a backwater of technological innovation.

But the country Napoleon once called a sleeping giant was alreadybeginning to wake up. Using empirical analysis to study economic data,Gallagher, a Pardee Research Fellow, found that between the late 1970s and2005, China’s ranking based on its percentage of global exports in high tech-nology rose from 99th to first in the world. He is now asking what China’semergence in the global economy might mean for other countries.Particularly, he is interested in the relationship between China’s rapid

expansion and Latin America’s shrinking com-petitiveness in global high-tech markets.

“I’m examining how countries 35 or 50 yearsago put in place policies that got them to wherethey are today, and then I ask, ‘Well, to whatextent are these models that can be used in othercountries?’” he explains. “To what extent are successful long-run developers hurting those likeLatin Americans who haven’t been so farsighted?”

Called the Global Economic GovernanceInitiative, Gallagher’s investigation at the PardeeCenter also tracks how existing internationaltrade and integration frameworks impact devel-oping nations. Inaugurating the center’s “Issues

in Brief” series, Gallagher published a policy-oriented booklet summarizingthe challenges facing the World Trade Organization (WTO), which was wellreceived at the United Nations in April, when he addressed representativesof developing countries.

The lack of a level playing field combined with the WTO’s failure tohelp poor nations implement sound policies for long-range developmenthas created deadlock in recent talks, Gallagher argues in the brief. From sub-sidies for cotton and sugar to what he calls draconian intellectual-propertyand investment rules, developed countries undermine growth in poorernations. WTO’s future, Gallagher concludes, is hopeful only as long as it pro-vides developing countries today with enough flexibility in policymaking tocreate and deploy effective strategies for the future.

“If you look at some of the successful countries that have put togetherdevelopment strategies, their long-term view of development helped themgrow. In East Asia, and now China, average incomes have doubled every 10to 15 years,” says Gallagher. “Growth and development is a long-termprocess, but unfortunately, development policy is often overcome by short-term interests. So at the Pardee Center we will be examining the politicaleconomy of longer-run growth policy.”


From Sputnik to Space Tourism

The last half-century has brought a staggering number of achievementsin space research, from the launch of the first satellite, Sputnik I, in 1957to the introduction of space tourism in 2001.

With new possibilities have come new questions. How can work inspace help us avoid global military conflicts? What avenues exist forcommercial space projects? Can we meet our energy needs by miningminerals on the moon? Should we plan for space colonization? What arethe implications of discovering extraterrestrial life? In short, how canfindings in space be used to improve life on Earth?

To address these issues, the Pardee Center, with the leadership ofSupriya Chakrabarti, director of BU’s Center for Space Physics, and fund-

ing from the Secure World Foundation, organ-ized a three-day conference last spring on thefuture of space exploration. Marking the 50thanniversary of Sputnik’s launch, some of theworld’s top thinkers in the natural and socialsciences, as well as the humanities, gathered toreflect on five decades of research and to lookahead at the next chapter of journeying intospace.

What made the event unique, Chakrabartisays, was the opportunity not just to think ofspace exploration from an astronomer’s or anengineer’s perspective, but to consider it as awider human effort. A highlight was a session

on policymaking in the space-race era of the Cold War, with panelistsSusan Eisenhower, granddaughter of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower,and Sergei Khrushchev, son of Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev.Another was the keynote address, presented via satellite, by then presidentof India A. P. J. Abdul Kalam. An aeronautical engineer who led India’snuclear and space programs, Kalam told participants that it is imperativeto apply science to solving problems in developing countries.

“For me, this whole space exploration is more of a human endeavorthan about one country or one research group,” Chakrabarti says, addingthat despite the competitive nature of space research, there is room for the type of collaboration that can forge long-standing internationalpartnerships.

Conference participants identified critical focus areas, ranging fromthe need to establish governing rules in space to the value of increasingpublic participation in space-related discussions. Chakrabarti hopes theconference will serve as a model for future symposia on defining a globalspace strategy.

“In the past, we all sort of did things on our own. I find it fascinat-ing,” he says, “when we explore the connections among disciplines.”

Research: Pardee Center

Director of the Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future since November 2007, Adil Najam says, “Thereis a mismatch today between what the biggest problems ofour time are and how we are organized to systematicallythink about these problems.” The Pardee Center’s mission isto tackle that shortcoming by considering the larger themesof society’s global development over a wide range of parame-ters. And importantly, the goal is to reach policymakers whocan make use of scholars’ findings in the everyday world.

A brainchild of BU alum Frederick S. Pardee (SMG’54,GSM’54), the center promotes interdisciplinary collaborationand a global outlook, drawing on experts from fields as dis-tinct as international relations, astronomy, geography, publichealth, and social work, and bringing together professors andstudents for lectures, conferences, and other programs. Sinceits inception in 2000, the Pardee Center has built a reputa-tion for attracting some of the most accomplished names inacademia. Visiting professors have included Lord MartinRees, a professor of cosmology and astrophysics at theUniversity of Cambridge and president of the Royal Society,and Nobel Prize winners Murray Gell-Mann, in physics, andAmartya Sen, in economics.

Center research extends far beyond the borders of anyone nation by examining how circumstances in individualcountries influence patterns across broad regions. “Theworld really is a global community now,” says Najam, whogrew up in Pakistan. “What I do here in Boston does affectwhat happens in Africa. And what happens in China willaffect what happens to me here in Boston.”

The idea is not merely to share opinions, but to raisequestions and seek solutions collectively. To that end, thecenter recently launched a series of monthly seminars, at

A Center for Future Reality

continued on next page

Supriya Chakrabarti Kevin Gallagher

Sputnik I

“Space exploration is more of ahuman endeavor than about onecountry or one research group.”

Adil Najam


Hatice Altug (Electrical & Computer Engineering), Kristen Collins(Law), and Carrie Preston (English) were named Peter Paul CareerDevelopment Professors.

George J. Annas (Health Law) received the McDonald-Merrill-Ketcham Memorial Award for Excellence in Law and Medicine.

Andrew Bacevich (International Relations) joined the Council onForeign Relations.

John Baillieul (Mechanical Engineering) joined the Board ofDirectors of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers(IEEE). He was also elected Vice President of Publications Service andProducts for the IEEE.

Paul Barbone and Glyn Holt (Mechanical Engineering) were namedFellows of the Acoustical Society of America.

Cynthia Becker (Art History) received a Multi-Country ResearchFellowship from the Council of American Overseas Research.

Dan Berlowitz, Graeme Fincke, Lewis Kazis, and Amy Rosen(Health Services) received the International Society for Quality inHealth Care’s Peter Reizenstein Prize.

Irving Bigio (Biomedical Engineering) was appointed an honoraryGuest Professor at University College London.

Zvi Bodie (Finance & Management) received a Lifetime Achievementin Applied Retirement Research Award from the Retirement IncomeIndustry Association, and was named one of the “100 Most InfluentialPeople in Finance” by Treasury and Risk magazine.

Eamon Brown (Visual Arts) received a fellowship from the RhodeIsland State Council on the Arts.

Sara Brown (Physical Therapy & Athletic Training) was namedAthletic Trainer of the Year by Athletic Trainers of Massachusetts.

Frédéric Brunel (Marketing) was named an “Outstanding Reviewer”by the American Academy of Advertising’s Journal of Advertising andinvited to join the Advisory Board of the Word of Mouth MarketingAssociation.

William Carey (Mechanical Engineering) was awarded the SilverMedal in Underwater Acoustics by the Acoustical Society of America.

Gail Carpenter (Cognitive & Neural Systems) received the IEEENeural Networks Pioneer Award and was re-elected to the Board ofGovernors of the International Neural Network Society.

Christos Cassandras (Manufacturing Engineering) was elected aFellow of the International Federation of Automatic Control.

Sharon Cermak (Occupational Therapy & Rehabilitation Counseling)received Hebrew University’s Lady Davis Fellowship.

Christophe Chamley (Economics) was named a Fellow of theEconometric Society.

Aram Chobanian (Medicine and Pharmacology) was awarded the EllisIsland Medal of Honor by the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.

James Collins (Biomedical Engineering) won a Director’s PioneerAward from the National Institutes of Health and was also named aHoward Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.

Wendy Coster (Occupational Therapy & Rehabilitation Counseling)received a Certificate of Appreciation from the American OccupationalTherapy Association.

Thomas Cottle (Counseling & Development) received an honoraryDoctorate of Humane Letters from the Massachusetts School ofProfessional Psychology.

Mark Crovella (Computer Science) was elected Chair of theAssociation for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on DataCommunications.

Debbie Danielpour (Film) received the PEN New England DiscoveryAward for fiction.

Michele David (Internal Medicine) was appointed by Governor DevalPatrick to the Massachusetts Public Health Council.

Lydia Diamond (Theatre) was a Theatre Communications Group/National Endowment for the Arts (TCG/NEA) Playwright in Residenceat the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago.

Anne Donohue (Journalism), Elsie Vergara (Occupational Therapy &Rehabilitation Counseling), and Jay Wexler (Law) were awardedFulbright Fellowships.

Howard Eichenbaum (Psychology) was elected a Fellow of both theAmerican Academy for the Advancement of Sciences and the AmericanPsychological Association.

Thomas Einhorn (Surgery), Sol Eisenberg (Biomedical Engineering),and Maxim Frank-Kamenetskii (Biomedical Engineering) wereelected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medicaland Biological Engineering. Thomas Einhorn also received the 2008Alfred R. Shands, Jr. Award from the Orthopaedic Research Society andthe American Orthopaedic Association.

Kamil Ekinci (Mechanical Engineering), Emanuel Katz (Physics),Pinghua Liu (Chemistry), and Seymour Wang (Chemistry) receivedNational Science Foundation Early Faculty Development CAREERAwards.

Randall Ellis (Economics) was elected President of the AmericanSociety of Health Economists.

Terry Ellis (Physical Therapy) received an Outstanding Service Awardfrom the Massachusetts chapter of the American Parkinson’s DiseaseAssociation.

Adrien Finzi (Biology) was elected chair of the Biogeosciences Sectionof the Ecological Society of America.


which faculty members representing different departmentsaddress a single topic. For example, recent discussions havecentered on disease and development, and on internationaltrade. “The amazing thing was how much of what they weresaying was similar, but how their disciplines also made themtell the story differently,” Najam says, “and the connectionsthat emerged both among them and with the audience."

No stranger to interdisciplinary work, Najam teaches inthe departments of International Relations and Geography &Environment. He has studied public policy, conflict resolution,engineering, and the environment, and was a lead author ontwo of the four reports issued by the Intergovernmental Panelon Climate Change, the team of scientists that shared the2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.

Another feature that sets Pardee apart from otherresearch hubs is its focus on a 35-to-200-year time frame—ascale Najam says is especially suited to examining key societaltransformations. Rather than limiting work to a five-to-ten-yearperiod, as is typically done in policy research, the PardeeCenter seeks decision-making tools that will be relevantdecades, if not centuries, from today. “We are in the businessof anticipating and identifying the trends, of looking at the scenarios of things that are happening now that might affectthe future,” Najam says.

But restructuring the way institutions do research is onlyone part of Pardee’s work. To ensure that findings have animpact outside university walls, scholars must be mindful ofpublic policy needs. As Najam puts it, “It doesn’t matter ifwhat you’re saying is right if policymakers don’t understandwhat you’re saying.” That’s why in addition to traditionalscholarly articles published in academic journals, Pardeeresearchers prepare policy-relevant materials such asresearch briefs with reader-friendly summaries of findings.Research fellows also speak at organizations, such as theUnited Nations, and invite government officials, entrepre-neurs, and others who shape public policy to participate inseminars and conferences at the center.

Ultimately, Najam hopes to change the way people imag-ine the future. “We have been trained socially to think of thefuture as a fantasy,” he says, noting that Pardee’s task is toprepare a generation of scholars who will regard the questionsof long-range development as both an intellectual activity anda matter of practical importance.

Award-Winning Faculty

Research: Pardee Centercontinued from previous page

Democracy Builds Economies

A nation’s long-range development also depends on its type of government,according to Political Science Professor John Gerring, a Faculty Fellow atthe Pardee Center, whose research uncovers patterns not readily apparent

in previous studies of the subject.Most scholars zero in on the immediate effects

of democratic government and conclude thatdemocracy either impedes economic expansion orplays no role in the process. But Gerring suggeststhat long periods of democracy do, in fact, boosteconomic performance. Supported by the PardeeCenter and the Clinton Global Initiative, he and ateam of researchers are analyzing multinationaldata collected since 1900 showing that, over time,democratic governance fosters economic prosperity.

Pushing the idea further, Gerring asks how thetype of democratic rule—whether unitary or fed-

eral, parliamentary or presidential, proportional or majoritarian—impactsdevelopment. In their recently published book entitled A Centripetal Theoryof Democratic Governance, Gerring and coauthor Strom Thacker, an inter-national relations professor and also a Pardee Center Fellow and director ofBU’s Latin American Studies Program, present a range of empirical teststhat point to the benefits of “centripetal” democratic institutions. They con-clude that governments balancing central authority and broad inclusionenjoy more political, economic, and social gains than governments thatfragment power by distributing it among multiple institutions. One way toimagine the centripetal system, say Gerring and Thacker, is to think of apyramid, with the diverse interests of the electorate at the base of the slop-ing shape, and gradually filtering through the committees and subcommit-tees of the legislature and finally narrowing at a central lawmakingauthority. In other words, successful governance is achieved when power isdirected toward the center, not doled out to various organizations.

Drawing on the examples of established democracies, Gerring andThacker argue that in contrast to the power-sharing system of governmentembraced by the United States, in the long term, a centralist system of gov-ernment, like the one employed in the United Kingdom, is more likely toresult in increases in trade, longer life spans for citizens, and other benefits.

“We feel that the issues of governance are vastly important in improv-ing the quality of life in the developing world and, at the same time, are notwell understood,” says Gerring. “We’re not forecasting the future, but we’relooking at a causal relationship that will shape the future.”

“We’re not forecasting thefuture, we’re looking at acausal relationship thatwill shape the future.”

John Gerring

R R


Allan Pierce (Mechanical Engineering) received the Stanley EhrlichGold Medal from the Acoustical Foundation (India).

John Porco (Chemistry) won the Merck Research LaboratoriesAcademic Development Program (ADP) Award.

Tyrone Porter (Mechanical Engineering) received the R. BruceLindsey Award from the Acoustical Society of America.

James Post (Strategy & Policy) was the inaugural recipient of theSchool of Management’s John F. Smith, Jr. Professorship.

James Pritchett (Anthropology) received a Special RecognitionAward from the African Studies Association.

Stephen Prothero (Religion) won the Quill Book Award in theReligion/Spirituality category for Religious Literacy: What EveryAmerican Needs to Know—and Doesn’t.

Jean Ramsey (Ophthalmology) was named to the American Academyof Ophthalmology’s Board of Trustees and elected vice chair of theBoard’s Advisory Council.

Z. Justin Ren (Operations & Technology Management) received anEarly Career Award from the Production and Operations ManagementSociety.

Christopher Roosevelt (Archaeology) was selected to be the RodneyS. Young Endowed Lecturer on Iron Age Turkey by the ArchaeologicalInstitute of America.

Marie-Hélène Saint Hilaire (Neurology) was named to the ScientificAdvisory Board of the American Parkinson Disease Association.

Joan Salge-Blake (Health Sciences) received the American DieteticAssociation’s Outstanding Dietetic Educator Award.

Loren J. Samons (Classical Studies) was named a Senior VisitingScholar at the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation.

Katherine Semrau (International Health) received the YoungInvestigator Award at the 14th Conference on Retroviruses andOpportunistic Infections.

Ganesan Shankaranarayanan (Information Systems) won the StuartMadnick Best Paper Award at the International Conference onInformation Quality.

Robert Sloane (Law) received the Hague Academy of InternationalLaw Diploma and a Certificate of Merit from the American Society ofInternational Law.

Temple Smith (Biomedical Engineering) received the InternationalSociety for Computational Biology’s Senior Scientist AccomplishmentAward.

H. Eugene Stanley (Physics) was awarded the 2008 Julius EdgarLilienfeld Prize.

Ashley Stevens (Technology Development) received the Bayh-DoleAward from the Association of University Technology Managers.

Bela Suki (Biomedical Engineering) was elected a Fellow of theAmerican Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.

Anne Sullivan Soydan (Rehabilitation Sciences) received a Mary E.Switzer Fellowship from the National Institute on Disability andRehabilitation Research.

Alfred Tauber (Philosophy) was awarded the Institute for AdvancedStudy’s highest honor, the IAS Medal of Science.

Selim Ünlü (Electrical & Computer Engineering) was named a distin-guished lecturer by the Australian Research Council NanotechnologyNetwork.

Lou Ureneck (Journalism) received the National Outdoor Book Award(NOBA) from the NOBA Foundation, Idaho State University, and theAssociation of Outdoor Recreation and Education for Backcast:Fatherhood, Fly-Fishing and a River Journey Through the Heart ofAlaska.

Mariann Verheyen (Theatre) received the Best Costume DesignAward from the Independent Reviewers of New England.

Sujata Visaria (Economics) was named an affiliate of the Bureau forResearch and Economic Analysis of Development.

Herbert Voigt (Biomedical Engineering) was named president-elect ofthe International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering.

Chihhung Wang (Pediatrics) was named a Robert Wood JohnsonPhysician Faculty Scholar.

Jenny B. White (Anthropology) was elected to the Board of Governorsof the Institute of Turkish Studies.

Merry White (Anthropology) received a Japan Foundation ResearchAward.

Gregory Williams (Art History) was awarded a postdoctoral fellow-ship by the Getty Foundation.

James Wiseman (Archaeology) received the Archaeological Instituteof America’s Gold Medal Award for Distinguished ArchaeologicalAchievement.

Philip A. Wolf (Neurology) received an honorary Doctor of Sciencedegree from the State University of New York Upstate Medical College.

Donald K. Wright (Advertising & Public Relations) received theArthur W. Page Society’s Distinguished Service Award, as well as theJackson Jackson and Wagner Behavioral Science Prize from the PublicRelations Society of America Foundation.

Katherine Zhang (Mechanical Engineering) received a Young FacultyResearch Award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.


Duncan Fitzgerald (Earth Sciences) received a fellowship from theGeological Society of America.

Susan Fournier (Marketing) won the Sheth Foundation Award forBest Paper in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.

Suzanne Freitag (Ophthalmology) received funding from theAmerican Society for Oculoplastic and Reconstructive Surgery for aSponsored Fellowship Training Program.

John Gittinger (Ophthalmology) was named editor of the Survey ofOphthalmology and Comprehensive Ophthalmology Update.

Sheldon Glashow (Physics) received an honorary degree, Laurea adHonorean in Physics, from the University of Bologna. He was alsoelected a Foreign Member of Italy’s National Academy of Sciences,Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, the world’s oldest scientific academy.

Paul Goldberg (Archaeology) received the Society for AmericanArchaeology’s Fryxell Award for Interdisciplinary Research.

Liah Greenfeld (University Professors Program) received the IrelandDistinguished Visiting Scholar Prize from the University of Alabama atBirmingham.

Stephen Grossberg (Cognitive & Neural Systems) was re-elected tothe Board of Governors of the International Neural Network Societyand re-elected as editor-in-chief of the journal Neural Networks.

Frank Guenther (Cognitive & Neural Systems) received the Willard R.Zemlin Lecture Award from the American Speech-Language-HearingAssociation.

Eric Hardt (Geriatrics) was named a Robert Davies Evans ClinicalEducator.

Robert Hefner (Anthropology) was named the inaugural Distin-guished Fellow by the Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Initiative, as wellas a Carnegie Scholar. He was also elected vice president of theAssociation for Asian Studies.

Janelle Heineke (Operations & Technology) was named a fellow of theDecision Sciences Institute.

Michael Howe (Mechanical Engineering) received the Institute ofAcoustics’ Rayleigh Medal.

Norman Hursh (Occupational Therapy & Rehabilitation Counseling)was named Outstanding Rehabilitation Educator of the Year by theInternational Association of Rehabilitation Professionals.

Brian Jack (Family Medicine) received an Award for Excellence inPatient Education Innovation from the Society of Teachers of FamilyMedicine.

Angela Jefferson (Neurology) received a Paul B. Beeson CareerDevelopment Award in Aging Research Program from the AmericanFederation for Aging Research.

Deborah Kahn and Fred Kleiner (Art History) were elected Fellowsof the Society of Antiquaries of London.

Steven Katz (Religion) won the National Jewish Book Award(Reference Category) for The Cambridge History of Judaism, Vol. 4: The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period.

Sam Kauffman (Film) received several awards for his film Massacre atMurumbi, including the Global Justice Award at the Media ThatMatters Film Festival, the Grand Prix Award at the Crested Butte ReelFestival, and the Best Documentary Film and Best in the Fest Awards atthe 10 or Less Film Festival.

Margaret Kelly-Hayes (Neurology) received the 2007 Stroke CouncilAward from the American Heart Association (AHA) and was invited togive the AHA Stroke Council Lecture.

Ronald Knepper (Electrical & Computer Engineering) was elected anIEEE Life Fellow.

Jennifer Knust (Theology) was named a Henry Luce III TheologyFellow.

Janusz Konrad (Electrical & Computer Engineering) was elected anIEEE Fellow.

Tom Kunz (Biology) received a Lifetime Achievement Award from theKarst Waters Institute.

T. R. Lakshmanan (Geography & Environment) received the EdwardL. Ullman Award from the Association of American Geographers’Transport Geography Specialty Group.

Christopher Lehrich (Religion) was awarded an American Council ofLearned Societies Fellowship.

Jon Lipsky (Theatre) won the Elliot Norton Award for OutstandingDirector of a Small Company.

Weining Lu (Nephrology) received the Pediatric Renal ResearchAward from the National Kidney Foundation of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Vermont.

Albert Ma (Economics) was elected president of the ChineseEconomic Association in North America.

Stephanie Oberhaus (Microbiology) won the Crest/Oral B/Proctor &Gamble Professional Oral Health Excellence Award for Teaching in theBasic Sciences.

Vincent Onyemah (Marketing) won the National Conference in SalesManagement’s Best Paper Award.

Rebecca Perkins (Obstetrics-Gynecology) received the AmericanCollege of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG)/Merck & CompanyInc. Research Award on Adolescent Health Preventive Services.

Pierre Perron (Economics) was elected a Fellow of the EconometricSociety.

Coldwater SplitAward-Winning Faculty


Boston University at a Glance

Enrollment and staffing figures as of fall 2007. All other figures as of June 30, 2007, unless otherwise specified.

Robert A. Brown, PresidentDavid K. Campbell, University ProvostKaren H. Antman, Provost, Medical Campus

Research Centers and Institutes

African Presidential Archives & Research CenterAfrican Studies CenterAlcohol and Drug Institute for Policy, Training

& ResearchAlzheimer’s Disease CenterAmerican Schools of Oriental ResearchAmyloid Treatment & Research ProgramAnna Howard Shaw CenterArchaeological Institute of AmericaArthritis CenterAssociation of Literary Scholars & CriticsBiomolecular Engineering Research CenterCancer Research CenterCardiovascular Proteomics CenterCenter for Adaptive SystemsCenter for Addictions Research & ServicesCenter for Advanced BiotechnologyCenter for Advanced Genomic TechnologyCenter for Anxiety & Related DisordersCenter for Applied Research in LanguageCenter for Archaeological StudiesCenter for BioDynamicsCenter for Biomedical ImagingCenter for Chemical Methodology &

Library DevelopmentCenter for Computational ScienceCenter for Congregational Research &

DevelopmentCenter for Ecology & Conservation BiologyCenter for Energy & Environmental StudiesCenter for Human GeneticsCenter for Information & Systems EngineeringCenter for Integrated Space Weather ModelingCenter for International Health & DevelopmentCenter for International RelationsCenter for Mathematical PhysicsCenter for Nanoscience & NanobiotechnologyCenter for NeurorehabilitationCenter for NeuroscienceCenter for Philosophy & History of ScienceCenter for Polymer StudiesCenter for Psychiatric RehabilitationCenter for Reliable Information Systems &

Cyber SecurityCenter for Remote SensingCenter for Research to Evaluate & Eliminate

Dental DisparitiesCenter for Science & Medical JournalismCenter for Space PhysicsCenter for Subsurface Sensing & Imaging SystemsCenter for the Advancement of Ethics &

CharacterCenter for Transportation Studies

Center of Excellence for Learning in Education, Science & Technology

Center of Excellence in Sickle Cell DiseaseCommunication Research CenterDanielsen InstituteEditorial InstituteElie Wiesel Center for Judaic StudiesFraunhofer Center for Manufacturing InnovationGerontology CenterHarold Goodglass Aphasia Research CenterHealth & Disabilities Research InstituteHealth Policy InstituteHearing Research CenterHoward Gotlieb Archival Research CenterHuman Resources Policy InstituteInstitute for Athletic Coach EducationInstitute for Astrophysical ResearchInstitute for Economic DevelopmentInstitute for Geriatric Social WorkInstitute for Human SciencesInstitute for Leading in a Dynamic EconomyInstitute for Philosophy & ReligionInstitute for Sexual MedicineInstitute for Technology Entrepreneurship

& CommercializationInstitute for the Advancement of the Social

SciencesInstitute for the Classical TraditionInstitute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology

& PolicyInstitute for the Study of Muslim Societies

& CivilizationsInstitute of Jewish LawInstitute on Culture, Religion & World AffairsInternational Center for East Asian

Archaeology & Cultural HistoryInternational History InstituteLearning Resources NetworkManagement of Variability ProgramMass Spectrometry ResourceMemory Disorders Research CenterMorin Center for Banking & Financial LawNeuroMuscular Research CenterPardee Center for the Study of the Longer-

Range FutureParkinson’s Disease & Movement Disorders

CenterPartners in Health & Housing Prevention

Research CenterPhotonics CenterPulmonary CenterScience & Mathematics Education CenterSherr LaboratorySlone Epidemiology CenterSuperfund Basic Research ProgramSystems Research CenterTanglewood InstituteWhitaker Cardiovascular InstituteWomen’s Health Interdisciplinary Research Center

Students

16,685 undergraduate; 13,123 graduate; 2,927 non-degree

Faculty and Staff

2,739 full-time faculty; 1,192 part-time faculty;5,050 full-time staff; 336 part-time staff

Campus

133 acres, 320 buildings; 481 classrooms; 2,006laboratories; 10,617 total residence capacity

Computing Facilities

SupercomputersIBM BlueGene/L supercomputer with 1,024 nodes IBM pSeries 690 with 112 processors IBM pSeries 655 with 48 processors IBM xSeries Linux cluster with 100 processorsIBM Blade Center Linux cluster with 88 processors

Specialized High-Performance Computer Laboratories

Deep Vision Display Wall Access Grid Conference Facility Computer Graphics LaboratoryLIVE: Laboratory for Virtual Environments

High-Performance NetworkingFiber Optic Metro Ring interconnecting

Boston University, Harvard, and MIT Northern Crossroads (NoX)Internet2

Computing LabsUNIX, Windows, and Macintosh labsResNet Computer LabsMore than 30 additional departmental

computer laboratories

Libraries

23 libraries and special collections; 2.5 million vol-umes; 45,264 periodicals; 4.7 million microformunits

Research

Sponsored Programs Revenue 2007/2008:$336,316,210

Financial Resources

Endowment: $1,138 millionTotal assets: $3.4 billion

Research at Boston University is published annually by the Office of the Provost to highlight research, scholarship, and creative activity in and across disciplines at Boston University, which received more than $336 million in external funding inFY2008. Opinions expressed do not represent the official view of Boston University.Use of trade names implies no endorsement by Boston University. For permission toreprint text from Research at Boston University, contact the Office of the Provost at 617-353-2230, [email protected], or One Silber Way, Boston, Massachusetts 02215.

For more information about research at Boston University, visit www.bu.edu/research.

Associate Provost and Vice President for ResearchAndrei E. Ruckenstein

EditorCassandra Nelson

Photography and Image CreditsPrincipal photography by Boston University Photo Services

Additional images:Cover photo by Len RubensteinPhotos and diagram courtesy of Frank Guenther (pages 2, 5)Images of water molecules courtesy of H. Eugene Stanley (page 9)Stills from www.favoritepoem.org courtesy of the Favorite Poem Project (page 12)Antonio Tempesta, “Arachne in araneam a Pallade convertitur (Athena Changing

Arachne into a Spider),” pl. 54 from the series Ovid’s Metamorphoses, 17th century,etching, 10.4 x 11.8 cm. Reproduced by permission of Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Mr. and Mrs. Marcus Sopher Collection, 1989.1.187 (page 13)

Photo of T. S. Eliot from BU archives; manuscript page reproduced by permission of thepublisher from T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land: A Facsimile and Transcript of the OriginalDrafts Including the Annotations of Ezra Pound, edited by Valerie Eliot (London:Faber and Faber, 1971), 10. © 1971 by Valerie Eliot (page 14)

Photo from Landov (page 16)Charts courtesy of Dana Robert (page 17)Photos of Brazil courtesy of Jeffrey W. Rubin (pages 18–19)Diagrams of nano-pulse patch and images of nanoparticles courtesy of Mark

Horenstein and David Sherr (page 23)Photo of circuit component courtesy of Kamil Ekinci (page 24)Image of nanopore courtesy of Amit Meller (page 25)Image courtesy of M. Selim Ünlü (page 26)Photo by Asia Kepka (page 27)Photo from Landov (page 32)Map courtesy of Kevin Outterson (page 33)Stills from Lolita courtesy of Joshua Fineberg (page 37)Photos courtesy of Mary Jane Doherty (page 38)Photo courtesy of Andrew Shenton (page 39)Images relating to Mancini sisters courtesy of Elizabeth Goldsmith (page 41)Image from NASA Multimedia Repository (pages 42–43)Photo of Supriya Chakrabarti by Chris Churchill (page 44)Photo of Sputnik I from Corbis (page 44)Photo of Shanghai from istockphoto (page 45)Photo of Adil Najam from Landov (page 45)Photo of spices courtesy of Pardee Center (page 46)Back cover photo from Wikimedia Commons

Designed and produced by Boston University Creative Services.

Member of the University Research Magazine Association (URMA).

Boston University’s policies provide for equal opportunity and affirmative action inemployment and admission to all programs of the University.

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