Letter from the Dean

It is a bittersweet time in the College. In a few short days, final exams will begin, and we will witness yet another semester and academic year draw to a close. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your tireless work to help the College realize its mission: to provide an atmosphere of responsible learning to a varied group of students called to intellectual, moral, and professional leadership.

Also, I'd like to thank our graduating seniors who are leaving us after four wonderful years now fully prepared to contribute to the betterment of our world as true leaders. We hope that they have learned as much from us as we have learned from them. Although their energy and spirit will be missed, their many valuable contributions create a legacy that will forever remain a part of College life.

In this issue of the College's e-newsletter, you'll read about the partnership between the College and The Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia to present the exhibition, “Gregor Mendel: Planting the Seeds of Genetics,” in 2008. You'll also learn about Augustine and Culture: The Villanova Seminar , the new name of the Core Humanities Seminar. See how the new title more accurately reflects the purpose of the seminar and its relation to the mission of the College.

On to some business matters ... You kindly are asked to visit http://vuws.villanova.edu/bio/edit and complete the online form so that your updated and correct bio may appear on your department's Web site.

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In College News …

Mendel Exhibit Coming to The Academy of Natural Sciences

Villanova University and The Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia proudly announce their partnership to present the traveling exhibition, “Gregor Mendel: Planting the Seeds of Genetics,” which will visit the Academy at 1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway from May 28 to September 28, 2008. The exhibition will be available to only five tour venues in the United States through 2008: Philadelphia (Villanova and the Academy of Natural Sciences), Chicago, Washington, D.C., Columbus, Ohio, and Memphis, Tennessee.

The exhibit is being developed by the Field Museum in Chicago in partnership with The Vereinigung zur Forderung der Genomforschung, Vienna, Austria, and The Mendel Museum, Brno, Czech Republic. It will make its North American debut at The Field Museum in Chicago, in September 2006.

This exciting exhibition presents an extraordinary collection of Mendel's notes and correspondence, scientific instruments, botanical specimens, seminal texts annotated in Mendel's own hand, photographs and an oil painting of Mendel, and related objects from Mendel's home and laboratory, the Augustinian Abbey of St. Thomas in Brno, Czech Republic. It also features rare artifacts and interactive technology to tell the story of Gregor Mendel’s life and research in the mid-1800s, including details of his personal life as an Augustinian religious, his rigorous scientific methods, and the famous pea experiments that led him to formulate his laws of heredity. In addition, the exhibition traces the development of genetics as a science, including the rediscovery of Mendel’s research, the naming of the gene, T.H. Morgan’s experiments with fly mutations at Columbia University, and Watson and Crick’s discovery of the double helix. Lastly, it presents "Profiles of 'Modern Mendels,'” present-day scientists who apply Mendel’s theories to fields such as conservation, biological anthropology, and evolution.

During the exhibition’s Philadelphia tour, all Villanova students, staff, and faculty who present valid identification will receive free general admission to the Academy of Natural Sciences. It is our hope that you will find this special exhibition informative and enjoyable.

Faculty in the News

• Joseph Thompson, Ph.D., professor of political science, spent two weeks overseas in March. During the spring break he could be found in The Queen's University of Belfast Library and the Linen Hall Library finishing the research for his latest paper on Northern Ireland. The following week (March 12-17) he was a participant in England's Oxford University Round Table conference on Diversity. Dr. Thompson's paper, "Building Peace One Student At A Time: Northern Ireland's Integrated Education," was well received by the 20 special invited policy specialists.
   
• Thomas Way, Ph.D., professor of computing science, together with one of his graduate students, Richard Kheir, had a paper accepted to the Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America (RESNA 2006) conference. Entitled "Improving Speech Recognition to Assist Real-time Classroom Note Taking," the paper will be presented at the annual conference in Atlanta, Georgia, in June 2006. The paper describes the development of a software tool and a variety of techniques for improving the capabilities of off-the-shelf speech recognition software for use by deaf and hard-of-hearing students to assist with capturing their professor’s lecture as a text file in real-time, and represents the ongoing research of Dr. Way’s Applied Computing Technology Laboratory (ACT Lab), which encourages undergraduate research and faculty-student collaboration.

Students in the News

Byran Wagner co-authored a paper entitled "MolML: An Abstract Scripting Language for Assembly of Mechanical Nanocomputer Architectures" with Dr. Thomas Way (Computing Sciences) that was accepted to the 2006 International Conference on Computing in Nanotechnology, a sub-conferences of the 2006 World Congress in Computer Science, Computer Engineering and Applied Computing (WORLDCOMP’06) for presentation in June 2006 in Las Vegas.

Colloquia Series Features Industry and Academic Leaders

The Department of Computing Sciences’s colloquia series invites guest speakers from academia and industry to present their work on campus. The general public is welcome to attend. Refreshments and informal discussion with the speaker follow the presentation.

IT Corner