Faculty news

Emeritus professor of biology Bert Brehm was recently immortalized in botanical literature. A recently discovered fossil from eastern Oregon was given the name Meliosma brehmii by one of Brehm’s former thesis students, Elisabeth A. Wheeler ’65, professor of wood and paper science and forestry at North Carolina State University. The new species is described in Woods of the Eocene Nut Beds Flora, Clarno Formation, Oregon by E.A. Wheeler and S. R. Manchester (2002, International Assoc. of Wood Anatomists Journal, Supplement 3). When asked about this distinction, Brehm remarked that “one old fossil has now been named after another one.”

Reed received an extension of its previous study of mathematical models in epidemiology from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Richard Crandall, director of the Center for Advanced Computation and Howard Vollum Adjunct Professor of Science, Physics, is the project’s principal investigator, and Stephen Arch, L. N. Ruben Professor of Biology, serves as co-principal investigator. The initial study began in 2002 to research new tools to understand the movement of epidemics of deadly diseases such as smallpox, anthrax, ebola, and HIV through a population.

Assistant professor of anthropology Paul Silverstein been selected as a candidate for the 2003-04 Fulbright-Hays faculty research abroad program and awarded $17,465 for his project “Ethnic Struggle, Marginality, and Amazigh Consciousness in Southeastern Morocco.” Silverstein’s project, which consists of seven months of fieldwork, has also been awarded $12,135 by the United States Institute of Peace. Silverstein is studying the effect of oil discovery in Errachidia—and its accompanying global discourse of multiculturalism and rights—on the economically depressed Berberophone population.

Steven St. John, assistant professor of psychology, has been awarded a Medical Research Foundation seed grant in the amount of $27,000 from the OHSU Foundation for a project studying the role that taste plays in the ingestion of fats. Recent research suggests that fats are experienced through taste as well as smell and texture, and St. John aims to establish this role through behavioral and electrophysical techniques. His research has implications for the understanding of the development of obesity and the synthesis of successful fat substitutes.

A conference in February at the University of Chicago will mark the publication of The Fullness of Time (Jerusalem, 2003), a volume edited and annotated by Steven Wasserstrom, Moe and Izetta Tonkon Professor of Judaic Studies and the Humanities. During Reed’s spring break Wasserstrom will serve as the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Distinguished Visiting Professor of Judaic Studies at the College of William and Mary.

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