Photogrammar Project Garners Support from NEH

The Photogrammar Project, an initiative of Yale's Public Humanities Program and Photographic Memory Workshop, has received a grant from the Office of Digital Humanities at the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Lauren Tilton (American Studies) and Taylor Arnold (Statistics) have created this interactive, interdisciplinary website that will make some 170,000 historic images accessible to a new generation of scholars and educators.    

Linking Human Rights and Climate Change

A lawyer trained in international relations, Sébastien Jodoin (Forestry & Environmental Studies) uses approaches and methodologies drawn from law, political science, and social psychology to shed light on the role that human rights norms play in the governance of climate change. He works closely with the Governance, Environment and Markets Initiative at Yale, which brings together faculty members and graduate students from Yale and beyond to pursue innovative research that will ameliorate global environmental challenges and promote sustainability.   

In Search of the Last Dinosaur

A team of scientists, including graduate students Tyler Lyson (Geology & Geophysics) and Stephen Chester (Anthropology), has discovered the remains of the youngest dinosaur ever found. The location of their finding strongly suggests that dinosaurs did not go extinct prior to the catastrophic meteor impact that struck the earth 65 million years ago and gives further evidence that the impact was in fact the cause of their extinction.   

Whiting Fellowship Dinner Celebrates Research in the Humanities

Whiting Fellowships are among the most prestigious student honors awarded in the United States. Funded by the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, these fellowships are given to a small number of students at seven universities that have outstanding graduate programs in the humanities. At Yale, a faculty committee appointed by the Dean selects the very best students from among those who have been nominated by their departments to be Whiting Fellows. This year's cohort was honored at a dinner with their faculty advisors and Dean Pollard on October 28.   

Kudos

Brian J. Fried (Political Science) and Atheendar S. Venkataramani (PhD 2009, EPH) recently published an article titled “Effect of Worldwide Oil Price Fluctuations on Biomass Fuel Use and Child Respiratory Health: Evidence from Guatemala” in the September issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

Alison Nugent (Geology & Geophysics) was co-winner of the Best Student Presentation award for her discussion titled “Orographic Precipitation in the Tropics: Seeding the Convection” at the Fourteenth Conference on Mesoscale Processes sponsored by the American Meteorological Society.

Led by Monika Weber (E&AS), members of the Yale School of Engineering and Applied Science have received the grand prize in a national competition for their design of a new way to detect bacteria that cause food-borne diseases and help doctors diagnose infections.   

Nock Wins MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant

Matthew Nock (PhD 2003, Psychology) has won a fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Nock's research is aimed at advancing the understanding of why people behave in ways that are harmful to themselves, with an emphasis on suicide and other forms of self-harm.

Nock combines epidemiology, laboratory experiments, measurement of implicit mental associations, and real-world, real-time biological and psychological assessments to document the nature, severity, and duration of the emotional states of individuals considering or engaging in self-injury. His current work includes cross-national studies of suicidal behavior that seek to discern those aspects of suicidal thinking and behavior that are universal and those that are dependent on cultural context and environment.   

Brownstein Receives Presidential Early Career Award

John S. Brownstein (PhD 2004, EPH), assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, has won a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). This is the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers.

Brownstein works on statistical modeling and medical informatics approaches for accelerating the translation of public health surveillance research into practice. His group focuses on two major areas: the design, evaluation, and implementation of public health surveillance systems and the statistical modeling of public health surveillance data to improve prevention and control activities.  

Bloom Publishes Anatomy of Influence

Yale University Press recently published the latest offering from Harold Bloom (PhD 1956, English), titled The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life. This acclaimed work is a sustained meditation on a life lived with and through the great works of the Western canon, with extended analyses of thirty of the world's most iconic writers from Shakespeare to James Joyce.   

Graduate Student Assembly Update

The Graduate Student Assembly (GSA) has begun an exciting and productive year, meeting with President Levin to discuss current projects, continuing efforts to find office space for graduate students, hosting departmental meetings, and soliciting feedback from students regarding the two reports that Dean Pollard released earlier this semester about the state of graduate education at Yale.   

Please contact Gila Reinstein with news items.