News
March
Ortiz Wins 2014 Charles H. Stone Award
03/31/2015
The Stone Award of the Carolina-Piedmont Local Section of the ACS is given every two years to the most outstanding chemist in the southeastern United States. This prestigious award recognizes contributions to the field of chemistry through activities in the scientific community, public outreach, education, and research. Previous winners from Auburn are Stewart Schneller (2001) and Dave Worley (2004).
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Goodwin wins 2015 COSAM Faculty Service/Outreach award
03/30/2015
Professor Doug Goodwin has been awarded the 2015 COSAM Faculty Service/Outreach award based on his leadership role in helping to bring STEM education to prisoners in Alabama under the umbrella of the Auburn Prison Arts + Education Project.
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Graduate student accepts instructor position with United States Navy
03/30/2015
Randall Gay, graduate student in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, accepted a position as nuclear power instructor with the United States Navy in Charleston, S.C. He will be commissioned as an officer in the Navy after this summer and will be stationed in Charleston at the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command. His major professor is Michel Smith.
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COSAM students receive Outstanding Graduate Student Awards
03/30/2015
Three COSAM students have been selected as 2014-15 Outstanding Graduate Student Award honorees. Burcu Ozden of the Department of Chemistry and Symon Gathiaka, of the Department of Physics, both received Outstanding Doctoral Student Awards. Yuxiang Zheng, of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, received an Outstanding Master's Student Award. The Outstanding Graduate Student Awards recognize Auburn’s most distinguished graduate students. Ten students are chosen at the master’s or educational specialist level, and 10 more are chosen at the doctoral level. Departments nominate students for the awards, and the winners are then chosen by a committee of graduate faculty. The students will be recognized with other award winners at the Graduate School's annual awards ceremony on Thursday, April 23, in the Student Center Ballroom.
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COSAM alumnus spotlight: Dr. George Hardy
03/30/2015
Long before Dr. George Hardy, ‘77, kept the mouths of Alexander City, Ala., healthy, he was an actor starring in the 1989 cult classic “Troll 2,” adoringly referred to as “the best worst movie ever.”
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Gay accepts the Nuclear Power Instructor (Navy) position in Charleston, South Carolina.
03/30/2015
Mr. Randall Gay was offered both the Naval Reactor Engineer job at the Washington, D.C., Naval Yard and the Nuclear Power Instructor (Navy) job in Charleston, South Carolina.
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Han selected as the recipient of the 2015-2017 Jack B. Brown Endowed Faculty Award
03/30/2015
Dr. Xiaoying (Maggie) Han has been selected as the recipient of the 2015-2017 Jack B. Brown Endowed Faculty Award with unanimous support from the 2015-2017 Jack B. Brown Endowed Faculty Award Committee and the approval from Dean Giordano.
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Yuxiang Zheng selected one of AU Outstanding Master's Students for 2014-2015
03/19/2015
Yuxiang Zheng has been selected as one of AU Outstanding master¹s students for 2014-2015. He received his MS degree in 2014 and Dr. Dmitry Glotov was his major professor. He is now a PhD student, again with Dr. Glotov as major professor.
Congratulations Yuxiang!
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Gathiaka Selected as Outstanding Doctoral Student
03/19/2015
Symon Gathiaka (Acevedo group) was recently chosen by the Graduate School as one of Auburn University’s Outstanding Doctoral students for this year.
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Students create app, win prize for “Is Toomer’s Corner Being Rolled Right Now” app
03/16/2015
Alex Byaly, Steven Clontz, Zachary Sarver and Ph.D. graduate, Daniel Brice, all from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, won first prize at the Smart City Hackathon, a competition hosted in Auburn where teams build smart tools for the benefit of the city. Their team, “Math Department Team Alpha,” competed against seven teams of programmers and won $750. The app, “Is Toomer’s Corner Being Rolled Right Now,” uses linear algebra to analyze edge-detected screenshots of the City of Auburn’s live feed of Toomer’s Corner in order to determine if it is being rolled with toilet paper. If it is being rolled, the program posts to Twitter and updates their website. The team will move ahead to compete in the Smart City Hackathon's global competition.
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Pate named Young Optometrist of the South
03/16/2015
Rob Pate, a 2002 graduate of the College of Sciences Mathematics, has been named Young Optometrist of the South by the Southern Council of Optometrists. The award recognizes an optometrist in practice for less than 10 years who has already made a significant impact in the field of optometry. Pate graduated from the University of Alabama School of Optometry in 2007 and joined EyeCare Associates in Hoover, Ala., as an associate. In 2014, he became a full partner of the practice. Pate is involved in both state and national optometric organizations including the Birmingham Area Optometric Society, the Alabama Optometric Association’s InfantSee committee and the Alabama Special Olympics Opening Eyes program. While at Auburn, he was a four-year starter for the football team. He has written, “A Tiger’s Walk: Memoirs of an Auburn Football Player,” and is a radio broadcaster hosting a live, weekly show providing commentary and analysis on Auburn football.
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American Geophysical Union highlights plasma research by DuBois
03/16/2015
Ami DuBois, a Ph.D. graduate of the Department of Physics, has been highlighted by the American Geophysical Union journals for her research on laboratory simulations of boundary layers in the Earth’s magnetosphere. Her work was performed using the Auburn Linear EXperiment for Instability Studies (ALEXIS), one of the suites of laboratory experiments in the Plasma Sciences Laboratory. DuBois and a team of researchers were the first to show that compressing a magnetized plasma could create broadband electrostatic noise. She is currently a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Click here to read her research highlight by the American Geophysical Union.
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Armbruster names catfish species after Star Wars character
03/16/2015
Jonathan Armbruster, biological sciences professor and curator of fishes for the Auburn University Museum of Natural History, has named a previously unknown species of catfish in honor of the enigmatic Star Wars fan favorite, Greedo.
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Cao delivers keynote talk 9th International Conference on Computational Physics
03/16/2015
Dr. Yanzhao Cao delivered a keynote talk at the 9th International Conference on Computational Physics, January 7-11, 2015 at the National University of Singapore, Singapore.
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Museum of Natural History and Department and Biological Sciences announce new scholarship program
03/16/2015
The Auburn University Museum of Natural History and the Department of Biological Sciences have a new annual scholarship program, Excellence in Environmental Sciences. The museum’s scholarship selection committee—which includes faculty and staff from the Department of Biological Sciences—will choose recipients based on academic excellence, relevance of applicant’s coursework to environmental and conservation science, extracurricular environmental activities and environmental career interest. Eligible applicants are encouraged to apply before the deadline, March 31, at 11:59 p.m. For more information, including a link to the on-line application, go to this website. For questions or assistance with the application process, contact Kay Stone at stonemk@auburn.edu.
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SCB and Honors Biology help control invasive plants on National Pi Day
03/16/2015
A small but mighty combined force of 5 students from our AU Society for Conservation Biology chapter and Honors Biology (BIOL 1037) traveled to Haines Island Park (Monroe Co. AL) to help the Alabama Plant Conservation Alliance control invasive plants. The event took place on March 14 (3/14/15), National Pi Day, when the date and time shortly following 9:26:53 would represent the value of Pi. We commemorated that moment by taking a group photo with everyone holding a photo of a Pi pie! Besides interesting biological findings, we helped control much invasive privet at the park. And of course during lunch we enjoyed some pie for dessert!
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03/12/2015
Once again it’s time to start thinking about your entries for the annual Davis Arboretum Photo Contest! It’s your photographs that give us the amazing selection of images to choose from for our Arboretum calendar.
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Bezdek to Deliver a Plenary Talk at the Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics, Budapest
03/12/2015
Dr. Andras Bezdek is invited to deliver a plenary talk at the conference "Intuitive Geometry, László Fejes Tóth Centennial,” to be held at the Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics, Budapest, June 22-26, 2015.
Our colleague Dr. Wlodek Kuperberg is one of the organizers of the conference.
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Hammer accepts Assistant Professor position with Cedar Crest College (Allentown, PA)
03/09/2015
James Hammer has accepted an Assistant Professor position with Cedar Crest College in Allentown Pennsylvania. He will be starting his job there in Fall 2015.
Mr. Hammer’s major professor is Professor Dean Hoffman.
Congratulations James!
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Peng Zeng Receives 2015 Dr. Marie Kraska Award
03/09/2015
Dr. Peng Zeng is the recipient of the 2015 Dr. Marie Kraska Award for Excellence in Teaching (Statistics). The Kraska Award Committee unanimously recommended Dr. Zeng for the award.
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Ortiz wins COSAM Dean’s Faculty Research Award
03/04/2015
Professor Vincent Ortiz from the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry has been honored with the 2015 COSAM Dean’s Research Award. Ortiz, an internationally respected quantum chemist, has worked at the forefront of internationally regarded research over the entire course of his 30 year career, has given unselfishly to the cause of diversity in STEM, has contributed to student success, and has offered his expertise to professional service.
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Graduate Student from Merner Lab Wins Fellowship
03/03/2015
Rolande Meudom, a second year graduate student in the research group of Dr. Bradley Merner, was recently awarded a Cellular and Molecular Biosciences Summer Research Fellowship. Congratulations Rolande!
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NSF Career Award for Patkowski
03/19/2014
Assistant Professor Konrad Patkowski has received a five-year CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation for his proposal, “Towards an accurate and illuminating theory of weak interactions between open-shell systems”. Dr. Patkowski, a theoretical chemist, has been at Auburn University since January 2011 and is an expert on the calculation of intermolecular forces and applications of these computational techniques to a variety of systems of interest in energy research.
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