Feb 27, 2007 - Claremont, Calif. - Four members of the Harvey Mudd College faculty were approved for tenure at the meeting of the Board of Trustees earlier this month: Marianne de Laet (humanities and social sciences), Melissa O'Neill (computer science), Michael Orrison (mathematics) and Elizabeth Orwin '95 (engineering/biology).

Approved for reappointment by the board were David Vosburg (chemistry), Christine Alvarado (computer science), Sarah Harris and Nancy Lape (engineering), Susan Martonosi (mathematics), and Debra Mashek and Chris Tirres (humanities and social sciences).

More faculty news:

Associate Professor of Mathematics Francis Su has been elected to the Council of the American Mathematical Society (AMS). The American Mathematical Society has over 30,000 members and was founded to further mathematical research and scholarship "through programs and services that promote mathematical research and its uses, strengthen mathematical education, and foster awareness and appreciation of mathematics and its connections to other disciplines and to everyday life." The Council is the body of the AMS that formulates the scientific policies of the society and acts in an advisory capacity to the board of trustees.

Recent faculty publications: 

• Kerry Karukstis has recently co-edited a book for The Council on Undergraduate research: Developing & Sustaining a Research-Supportive Curriculum: A Compendium of Successful Practices

• Tom Donnelly was a co-author on a recent Physical Review Letter, “Control of Strong-Laser-Field Coupling to Electrons in Solid Targets with Wavelength-Scale Spheres,” (98, 045001, 2007)

• Andy Bernoff, Jacob (Pugh) Wintersmith '06 and co-authors published “Domain Relaxation in Langmuir Films”  in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics  (571, 2007, pp 191-219)

• Angelika Niemz, Krisanu Bandyopadhyay, Eric Tan, Kitty Cha (undergraduate), and Shenda M. Baker recently published “Fabrication of Nanoporous Templates from Diblock Copolymer Thin Films on Alkylchlorosilane-Neutralized Surfaces” in Langmuir; 2006; 22(26). pp, 11092 - 11096

• Debra Mashek and co-authors recently published  “Inclusion of Community in Self Scale: A single-item pictorial measure of community connectedness” in the Journal of Community Psychology, 35 (2), 257-275.

• Debra Mashek and co-authors also recently published “Moral emotions and moral behavior” in the Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 345–72.

• Richard C. Haskell, David Liao, Adam Pivonka, Tera Bell, Brendan Haberle, Barbara Hoeling, and Dan Petersen published “Role of beat noise in limiting the sensitivity of optical coherence tomography” in J.Opt. Soc. Am. B, vol. 22, 2006.

• Vatche Sahakian and Anand Murugan published “Emergence of the fuzzy horizon through gravitational collapse” in Phys. Rev. D74 (2006) 106010.

• Steve Adolph and Jo Hardin published “Estimating phenotypic correlations: correcting for bias due to intraindividual variability” in  Functional Ecology 21: 178-184, 2007.

• Davis Asai and coauthors published “The dynein light chain family in Tetrahymena thermophila” in Cell Motil. Cytoskel.  64: 82-96.

• Karl Haushalter and David Asai published “Beyond Bio2010: If we build it, will they come?” in the CUR Quarterly 26 (4): 160-163.

• David Asai and other co-authors published “Macronuclear genome sequence of the ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila, a model eukaryote.” in PLoS Biology 4: 1620-1642.

• Hal Barron published "Rural America on the Silent Screen," in the fall 2006 issue of Agricultural History. This was also his Presidential Address for the Agricultural History Society.

• Weiqing Gu and Helen Moore published “Optimal therapy regimens for treatment-resistant mutations of HIV” in Contemporary Mathematics, Volume 410, 2006.

• L.G. de Pillis and Michael E. Orrison published  "Is Homework Grading on Your Nerves?," Teaching Time Savers section of MAA FOCUS Magazine, January 2007, pp.14-15.

• L.G. de Pillis and A.E. Radunskaya published "Some Promising Approaches to Tumor- Immune Modeling” in Mathematical Studies on Human Disease Dynamics: Emerging Paradigms and Challenges, AMS Contemporary Mathematics Series, Vol. 410, December, 2006, pp.89-112.

• C. Buckley, M. Jackson*, M. Youssef*, D. J. Irschick, and Steve  Adolph published “Testing the persistence of phenotypic plasticity after incubation in the Western fence lizard” in Sceloporus occidentalis. Evolutionary Ecology Research 9: 169-183, 2007.

• Geoff Kuenning and co-authors published "PARAID: A Gear-Shifting Power-Aware RAID” in the Proceedings of the 6th {USENIX} Conference on File and Storage Technologies, Feb. 2007.

• Arthur T. Benjamin and Michael D. Hirschhorn published “A Combinatorial Solution to Intertwined Recurrences” in Australasian Journal of Combinatorics Vol. 37 (2007), pp. 101-116.

• Cathy McFadden and co-authors have published “Pinnule-less polyps: a new genus and new species of Indo-Pacific Clavulariidae and validation of the soft coral genus Acrossota and the family Acrossotidae (Coelenterata: Octocorallia)” in Zootaxa 1400: 27-44, 2007.

• Cathy McFadden and co-authors have published “A molecular phhylogenetic analysis of the Octocorallia (Cnidaria: Anthozoa) based on mitochondrial protein-coding sequences” in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 41: 513-527, 2006.

• Cathy McFadden, two students (H. Johnsen*, and A. Rusmevichientong*) and co-authors have published “Phylogenetic relationships within the tropical soft coral genera Sarcophyton and Lobophytum (Anthozoa, Octocorallia)” in Invertebrate Biology 125: 288-305, 2006.

• Hal Van Ryswyk and co-authors have published “Extending the marine microcosm laboratory” in J. Chem. Educ. 2007, 84, 306-309.

• A host of Mudd faculty, students and collaborators presented a poster at the SPIE Photonics West Conference last month:  Barbara M. Hoeling, Stephanie S. Feldman*, Daniel T. Strenge*, Aaron Bernard*, Emily R. Hogan*, Daniel C. Petersen, Scott E. Fraser**, Yun Kee**, J. Michael Tyszka**, Richard C. Haskell, "Motion-sensitive 3-D Optical Coherence Microscope Operating at 1300 nm for the Visualization of Early Frog Development.”

• Robert Cave and Hal Van Ryswyk got together on a new paper:  Pheasant, S.; Kouzelos, J.A.; Van Ryswyk, H.; Cave, R.J. “Theoretical investigation of the electronic coupling element in bis-ruthenium porphyrin dimers.” Molecular Simulation 2006, 32, 677-693. 

• Gwen Spencer and Francis Edward Su just published "The LSB theorem implies the KKM lemma” in The American Mathematical Monthly, February 2007.

• The eighth edition of emeritus professor Bill Purves’s introductory biology textbook has just appeared. He was the senior author of the first seven editions.  The new edition is Sadava, D., H. C. Heller, G. H. Orians, W. K. Purves, and D. M. Hillis, Life: The Science of Biology.

Special thanks to "The Dean's Zine" author and Associate Dean for Special Projects Tom Donnelly, and the office of the dean of faculty, for assistance with faculty news.