september| 2013
FACULTY newsletter
CPMS Physical and Mathematical Sciences
Annual University Conference Awards
A Pattern of Excellence
Dr. John Lamb has been on the cutting edge of teaching ever since he got
his start as a chemistry professor. He
was one of the earliest implementers of
technology in the classroom and developed ChemTutor, a multimedia tutorial
for pre-lecture instruction with beginning chemistry classes.
For accomplishments like these,
along with a full career of research and
service to the university, Dr. Lamb has
received this year’s Karl G. Maeser
Distinguished Faculty Lecturer Award.
This award is BYU’s most prestigious
faculty award. The requirements include a minimum of five years at BYU
and a demonstration of clear superiority in research and creative work,
teaching, and university citizenship.
With all these qualities, Dr. Lamb was
an exceptional candidate.
Dr. Lamb has been at BYU since
1977, after getting both his bachelor’s
degree and PhD from BYU in chemistry. He has published 172 papers in
peer-reviewed journals and was the
editor-in-chief of the Journal of Inclusion Phenomena and Macrocyclic
Chemistry for 20 years. He has been
a visiting lecturer at universities in both
Italy and China. Dr. Lamb has received
many other awards throughout his career, including the 2012 International
Ion Chromatography Award in Berlin,
Germany, the BYU Karl G. Maeser
Excellence in Research and Creative
Arts Award in 1996, and the BYU Outstanding Achievement in Sponsored
Research Award in 1993.
“I’m thrilled and honored to be chosen, and I recognize that there are
many other faculty members here who
merit this honor at least as much as I,”
said Dr. Lamb.
Dr. Lamb plans to continue in his pat-
tern of excellence by finishing up several research papers and teaching a
new batch of Chem 105 students this
fall.
“I’m approaching retirement now after 36 years at BYU, but hope to continue activity in chemistry teaching into
the future in a variety of ways. I love
learning about the natural world and
sharing what I have learned with others,” said Dr. Lamb.
by Caroline Smith
1
Deadlines
There are several deadlines coming up
this month to be aware of.
CHIRP proposals are due to
department chairs and Tom Sederberg
by Wednesday, September 30
HITS proposals are due to department
chairs by Wednesday, Septmeber 30
One Professor, Three Inventions
Many teachers invent new methods to
reach out to their students. Dr. Charles
Knutson of the Computer Science Department has helped his students invent
new things to reach out to the public.
Three technical innovations, involving hundreds of students mentored by
Dr. Knutson were licensed through the
BYU Technology Transfer Office this
past year.
Because of this, Dr. Knutson received
the annual university Technology Transfer Award, which recognizes faculty
who have made significant research
contributions that have led to the development of useful commercial products.
“When you try to do research that
can be commercialized, the question is
whether it can be applied elsewhere,”
said Dr. Knutson. “Are there customers
who are going to benefit from this?”
The Poket Doctor project originated
from Dr. Knutson’s work as Director of
the Mobile Computing Laboratory in
close collaboration with two graduate
students, David Vawdrey and Eric Hall.
Their work led to a patent for a technology that dramatically extended battery life in a Bluetooth-enabled smartcard via the use of passive RFID tags.
Their patent was licensed this past year
to a UK company called TomTom International.
The 20-Minute Genealogist project
originated in Dr. Knutson’s CS 428
Software Engineering course in Fall
2007 as a class project to create software that would enable an individual
to make progress in their own family
history work in as little as 20 minutes
a week.
With the support of Dr. Daniel Zappala of the Computer Science Department and the involvement of several
hundred students over the next five
years, the 20-Minute Genealogist was
released as a beta product in April
2012.
During the past year, the technologies (including one patent issued and
two additional patents pending) were
licensed to Kinpoint, Inc., a Utah
County startup company now in its first
round of funding.
The Internet Safety Project began as
a podcast produced by students in Dr.
Knutson’s CS 404 Ethics and Computers in Society course in Fall 2007. The
following year a wiki was added to the
podcast, and in October 2010 the site
was expanded and rebranded as the
Internet Safety Project. Its fundamental
goal is to help educate parents, teachers, and teens about the benefits and
risks of technology.
While incubating at BYU over five
years, the Internet Safety Project grew
to include the world’s most popular
podcast on Internet Safety and the
world’s largest wiki on Internet Safety.
The Internet Safety Project became
an off-campus corporation this last
year, acquiring the rights to the intellectual property created as a BYU project. In August 2013, Internet Safety
Project, Inc. received 501(c)3 non-profit recognition from the United States
government.
“You don’t set out to license three
technologies in the same year, but
things just seemed to come together,”
remarked Dr. Knutson. “It’s satisfying
to see the success of these projects, especially given the tremendous student
involvement while they incubated at
BYU.”
All research can be valuable. With
Dr. Knutson’s inventions, we can see
just how useful research can be.
by Curtis Penfold
Rank
Advancements
We apologize for inadvertenly missing
these individuals in August’s
newsletter. We would like to extent
congratulations to these individuals as
well for their advancement in rank.
Mathematics
Todd Fisher, Associate Professor
Jessica Purcell, Associate Professor
Research
Development
Successful “Speed Networking”
Event
We held a “Speed Networking Event”
on August 26 with over sixty faculty
from CPMS and CE&T attending.
Thirty-four of those faculty gave three
minute presentations on their research
interests. From those presentations,
most participants identified potential
research collaborators. The
overwhelming consensus of the
participants was that the event was
very successful and should be done
again in the future. Participants also
identified other colleges with which
they would like to “speed network.”
We will be working with those other
colleges to do an event with them. The
program, participants, and
presentations are posted on the
Research Development Website
http://researchdevelopment.byu.
edu/resources/faculty-research
Seeing the Lights Go On
David Dearden’s love for chemistry
started small, beginning with a summer
program for high school students at the
University of Utah, where Dearden had
the opportunity to be mentored by famous chemist Henry Eyring.
“I didn’t know at all who he was,”
Dearden said. “He gave a lecture to
the class and I started asking questions. He spent a good half hour talking to me, a lowly high school student,
after the class.”
Stemming from that experience,
Dearden has made mentoring undergraduate students a large part of his
career. For this focus, he was honored
with an Alcuin Fellowship in General
Education at the BYU Annual University
Conference in August.
Dearden’s love for chemistry continued to grow as he became a freshman
chemistry major at BYU, and his experience as a missionary further helped
him narrow down his career choice.
“I went on my mission and discovered I loved teaching; I loved seeing
the lights go on. That’s where the idea
of being a chemistry professor was
born,” he said.
Dearden earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from BYU in 1983
and his PhD from the California Institute of Technology in 1989. After entering the world of academia and realizing he could now pursue research
interests that were entirely his own, his
passion for research and for teaching
others how to do research grew even
more.
“There is a big need right now for
the general public to understand the
importance of basic research. . . . You
don’t get applications unless you do
basic science, so I feel a real obligation to explain the importance of basic
science to people,” he said.
As he strove to become a better
teacher, Dearden said he was diligent
about updating his teaching materials,
trying new technology, and, more particularly, observing other teachers.
“What has taught me more about
teaching than anything I’ve ever done
is watching people do it who are good
at it,” he said. “Every time I get a
new course . . . that someone else has
taught, I try to go sit in on it and watch
them teach it first.”
Dearden has been an Alcuin Fellow
previously, between 2002 and 2005,
during which he spent a great deal of
time teaching undergraduate courses
and co-authoring the textbook for the
physical science 100 course, Physical
Science Foundations.
This time around, Dearden plans to
continue his research and undergraduate mentoring, as well as gain insights
and share research with others by traveling to Australia to attend research
conferences.
“I think it is important . . . to really
deeply care about the students. . . . If
that’s what’s motivating you, it gets
you to work harder and make things
clearer,” he said. “The way I see it, the
research we do and the teaching we
do really all fits together.”
by Meg Monk
Upcoming Event
Women’s Career Conversations
Wednesday, 9/25, 12pm, HC Assembly Hall
STEM Preview
Wednesday, 9/25, 4pm, 1170 TMCB
STEM Fair:
Thursday, 9/26, 9am - 3pm, WSC
Ballroom
We would appreciate any help you
could give to get the students aware
and excited about STEM Fair. It will be
a great opportunity for them. Please
show the attached flyer in your classes,
and show this video:
http://goo.gl/1rL2Qu
Lighting the Fire of Enthusiasm
for Learning
Mathematics professor Michael
Dorff has made helping students succeed the focus of his career. Founder
and director of the Center for Undergraduate Research in Mathematics and
the “Careers in Math” speaker series,
Dorff was honored for his focus on student mentoring at the BYU Annual University Conference in August, where
he received a University Teaching and
Learning Fellowship.
“Teaching is great because you get
to help mold people,” Dorff said, “as a
teacher, you help light the fire of enthusiasm for your subject . . . but you also
get to have a big influence in making
your students into better people.”
During his undergraduate years as
a math education major at BYU, Dorff
wasn’t very excited about mathematics. He was good at math and liked the
idea of being a teacher, but it wasn’t
until he spent a few years teaching
math at a high school that his passion
for mathematics, and especially for
teaching, was born.
“Having enthusiasm for what you’re
teaching is one thing that helps make
me a better teacher,” he said. “Even
though I teach large calculus classes
with about 250 students, I love to interact with the students to get them thinking.”
The Center for Undergraduate Research in Mathematics (CURM), which
Dorff founded in 2007, is just one way
Dorff is helping his students succeed.
Based on BYU’s model of paying undergraduates to do research, CURM
has grown into a $2.6 million National
Science Foundation (NSF)-sponsored
program. So far, Dorff and his team
of co-directors have aided professors
from 71 different universities to offer
paid research opportunities to 226
undergraduate students, 203 of which
have written joint research papers.
CURM students travel to BYU the
same weekend as the Student Research
Conference in March to present their
findings. Of the undergraduate students that participate in the program,
about 63 percent go on to graduate
school as opposed to only about 18
percent of the non-CURM students at
the same universities and colleges.
Dorff also began the “Careers in
Math” speaker series that allows math-
ematics students to hear from workplace professionals, showing them the
multitude of career options available to
them.
Now in its sixth year, the series hosts
about eight speakers each semester,
including guests from Goldman Sachs,
Raytheon, Google, and the Department of Homeland Security. Last year,
the NSF expressed interest in funding a
program to help prepare more STEM
students for careers in industry, business, and government.
“We wrote a 2 million dollar grant
proposal, and now it looks like they’re
going to fund us. It will be like the
CURM program, but it will be more related to non-academic research problems and careers,” he said. “It says
a lot about the reputation we have at
BYU.”
As a part of his fellowship, Dorff
will receive a stipend to fund research,
which he plans to use to support students in undergraduate research.
“For me, it’s all about students,” he
said, “I want to use [the award] to help
students.”
by Meg Monk
4
Upcoming Event
Teaching is an Art
Teaching Real Intelligence
about Artificial Intelligence
Honored Alumni Lecture
Dr. Philip Low of Purdue University
will be speaking at this year’s Honored Alumni Lecture. Low will speak
on “Novel Targeted Therapeutic and
Imaging Agents for Cancer and Inflammatory Diseases”
When: Thursday, October 10
11:00 a. m.
Where: 1170 Talmage Building
Can you teach a computer how to
judge art?
Dr. Dan Ventura from the Department of Computer Science, who received a Maeser Excellence in Teaching Award in August at the Annual
University Conference, has done just
that with his research team.
They created a computer program
named DARCI that has the ability to
appreciate some very basic, low-level
aspects of visual art and may be able
to create meaningful art in the future.
Besides working with many grad
students, Dr. Ventura teaches Introduction to Computational Theory to undergraduates, who find him to be a very
helpful professor despite the difficult
coursework.
With so many other great teachers in
this university, Dr. Ventura says he’s actually a little surprised that he, with all
the other great professors here, won
this award provided by the generosity
of the Karl G. Maeser Scholarship Society.
Dr. Ventura expressed admiration
for the professors he works with, saying any of them could have won this
award.
“I’d love to sit in the classrooms of
some of the other great professors in
my department and learn from the way
that they teach their classes,” Ventura
said.
Ventura says that the students in his
department make teaching easy, and
he likes trying new things with them—
like making a computer that can judge
art.
by Curtis Penfold
Can a robot have the same type of
intelligence as a human?
This is a question Dr. Tony Martinez
has thought a lot about as he directs
the neural network and machine-learning laboratory in the BYU PhD/MS
program for the computer science department. Martinez was awarded the
Alumni Professorship Award at the Annual University Conference in August.
The Alumni Professorship Award
honors a faculty member for excellence in scholarship and teaching. The
award comes with a three-year stipend
made possible by the generosity of the
BYU Alumni Association.
Martinez says that he believes there
are many other candidates equally deserving of this award. Receiving it himself is inspiring for him.
“It is a real honor and makes me
want to work even harder to be a benefit to BYU and our students,” Martinez
said.
He has been published over 150
journal and conference papers on artificial intelligence and other machine
learning and was department chair for
the Department of Computer Science
for 9 years.
Besides teaching a variety of computer classes for graduate and undergraduate students, he has also taught
Book of Mormon and Doctrine and
Covenants classes at BYU.
Whether robots will ever have souls
or not may be debatable, but Dr. Martinez is definitely a man who is willing
to put his heart and soul into his work
in the computer science department.
by Curtis Penfold
College
Grants
Chemistry & Biochemistry
Jaron Hansen & Randy Shirts
Sponsor: NSF
Title: The Role of Radical Water
Complexes in the Atmosphere
Computer Science
Jay McCarthy
Sponsor: NSF
Title: EAGER: A Measure Theory
Semantics of Probablilty Theory
Physics & Astronomy
Kent Gee & Tracianne Neilsen
Sponsor: BRR&C (Air Force)
Title: Acoustic Field and Source
Measurement Support for the
Joint Strike Fighter Program
Eric Hirschmann & David Neilsen
Sponsor: NSF
Title: Collaborative Research: Loud,
Bright, and Hot Binary Mergers
Retirees
Wayne D. Peterson,
Physics
Classroom Demonstration
Specialist
and Physics Demonstration Area Supervisor, has retired.
Wayne has enjoyed
giving physics demonstrations to many
groups over the
years. Additionally,
he developed a tagging and assignment system for distributing classroom
physics equipment across campus.
Wayne has been actively involved in
the American Association of Physics
Teachers for many years, from which
he has received several awards for developing new classroom physics demonstrations. In 2007, President Cecil
O. Samuelson honored Wayne with
the President’s Appreciation Award at
the President’s Award Banquet. In support of the Acoustics Research Group,
he helped publish an article, “Song of
the Singing Rod” in the Journal of the
Acoustical Society of America. After
retirement, Wayne looks forward to
having more free time and pursuing his
hobbies.
Julie Boerio-Goates,
professor
in the Department
of Chemistry and
Biochemistry,
has
retired. Julie was the
first woman tenured
in the College of
Mathematical and
Physical
Sciences
and the first woman
to be promoted to
full professor in any
of the three science colleges. “It was an
honor to be part of a department that
had a venerable tradition of balancing
teaching, citizenship, and scholarship,”
she said. Married to her colleague
in the same department, Dr. Steven
R. Goates, Julie said that the most important thing for women to be able to
succeed in science is picking the right
husband. “That’s essential,” she said.
Following her retirement, she will stay
busy with work for her Catholic parish
as Pastoral Coordinator and may pursue an advanced degree in theology
or pastoral ministry from Notre Dame.
Harold Stokes, professor and for-
mer associate chair
of the Department
of Physics and Astronomy, has retired. During his 32
years at BYU, Harold taught a variety
of courses, including many introductory physics courses. As a member of the Condensed
Matter Group, he has done research
that is primarily focused on computational applications of group theory to
structural phase transitions in solid materials. Harold, in conjunction with Dr.
Dorian M. Hatch, published a major
reference work, Isotropy Subgroups
of the 230 Crystallographic Space
Groups, and aided in the 1993 English
edition of the Russian reference book,
Representations of the Crystallographic Space Groups, by O. V. Kovalev.
Since 2006, he has been continuing
research with Dr. Branton J. Campbell.
After retirement, Harold plans to travel
and serve a mission with his wife, exercise more, and spend time with his
grandchildren.
David Embley,
professor in the
Department
of
Computer Science,
has retired. David
has been teaching
at BYU since 1982,
and has especially
enjoyed the flexibility he had to make
a difference in various ways. David
said one of his favorite things was “seeing students ‘get
it’,” and hearing that what he taught
made a difference for students. He has
been the department graduate and
undergraduate coordinator for many
years, served on the University Faculty Advisory Council for three years,
and was a part of the College Rank
and Status Advancement Committee.
He has five patents and copyrights
and has been honored with numerous awards, including the CPMS Distinguished Citizenship Award in 2012.
After retirement, David will leave on a
service mission where he will work with
the Engineering Research Team in the
Church’s Family History Department.
6
College Publications
Chemistry & Biochemistry
U. Hintermair, S.W. Sheehan, A.R. Parent,
D.H. Ess, D.T. Richens, P.H. Vaccaro, G.W.
Brudvig, R.H. Crabtree, “Precursor Transformation during Molecular Oxidation
Catalysis with Organometallic Iridium Complexes”, Journal of the American Chemical
Society, 2013, volume 135/issue 29, pp.
10837-10851.
K.D. Reichl, D.H. Ess, A.T. Radosevich,
“Catalyzing Pyramidal Inversion: Configurational Lability of P-Stereogenic Phosphines
via Single Electron Oxidation”, Journal of
the American Chemical Society, 2013, volume 135/issue 25, pp. 9354-9357.
D.B. Pardue, S.J. Gustafson, R.A. Periana,
D.H. Ess, T.R. Cundari, “Computational
study of carbon-hydrogen bond deprotonation by alkali metal superbases”, Computational and Theoretical Chemistry, 2013,
volume 1019, pp. 85-93.
J.A. Contreras, A. Wang, A.L. Rockwood,
H.D. Tolley, M.L. Lee, “Dynamic thermal
gradient gas chromatography”, Journal of
Chromatography A, 2013, volume 1302,
pp. 143-151.
with Ruby”, Journal of Cheminformatics,
2013, volume 5/issue 35.
R. Smith, D. Ventura, J.T. Prince, “Novel
algorithms and the benefits of comparative
validation”, Bioinformatics, 2013, volume
29/issue 12, pp.1583-1585.
R. Smith, T.S. Anthonymuthu, D. Ventura,
J.T. Prince, “Statistical agglomeration:
peak summarization for direct infusion lipidomics”, Bioinformatics, 2013, pp. 1-7.
R. Smith, D. Ventura, J.T. Prince, “Controlling for confounding variables in MS-omics
protocol: why modularity matters”, Briefings in Bioinformatics, 2013, pp. 1-3.
D. Boda, D. Henderson, D. Gillespie, “The
role of solvation in the binding selectivity of
the L-type calcium channel”, The Journal of
Chemical Physics, 2013, volume 139/issue
5, pp. 055103(1-10).
S. Lamperski, M. Kaja, L.B. Bhuiyan, J. Wu,
D. Henderson, “Influence of anisotropic ion
shape on structure and capacitance of an
electric double layer: A Monte Carlo and
density functional study”, The Journal of
Chemical Physics, 2013, volume 139/issue
5, pp. 054703(1-7).
Computer Science
R. Smith, D. Ventura, J.T. Prince, “Controlling for confounding variables in MS-omics
protocol: why modularity matters”, Briefings in Bioinformatics, 2013, pp. 1-3.
R. Smith, R. Williamson, D. Ventura, J.T.
Prince, “Rubabel: wrapping open Babel
with Ruby”, Journal of Cheminformatics,
2013, volume 5/issue 35.
R. Smith, D. Ventura, J.T. Prince, “Novel
algorithms and the benefits of comparative
validation”, Bioinformatics, 2013, volume
29/issue 12, pp.1583-1585.
R. Smith, T.S. Anthonymuthu, D. Ventura,
J.T. Prince, “Statistical agglomeration:
peak summarization for direct infusion lipidomics”, Bioinformatics, 2013, pp. 1-7.
Physics & Astronomy
C. Palenzuela, L. Lehner, S. L. Liebling,
M. Ponce, M. Anderson, D. Neilsen, and
P. Motl, “Linking electromagnetic and
gravitational radiation in coalescing binary
nueutron stars”, American Physical Society,
2013, volume 88/issue 4, pp.
D. Devarajan, C.E. Doubleday, D.H. Ess,
S. Lamperski, M. Waśko, D. Henderson,
“Theory of Divalent Main Group H2 Activa“Solidification of the charged hard-sphere
tion: Electronics and Quasiclassical Trajecfluid”, Molecular Simulation, 2013, volume
tories”, Inorganic Chemistry, 2013, volume
39/issue 10, pp. 837-841.
S. L. Nissen, R. W. Harris, R. W. Channell,
52/issue 15, pp. 8820-8833.
A.A. Chagovetz, C. Quinn, N. Damarse, N. Richardson, J. Garlick, D. L. Eggett,
T. Ghebreghiorgis, B.H. Kirk, A. Aponick,
L.D. Hansen, A.M. Chagovetz, R.L. Jen- “The Effect of Dialect on Speech AudiomD.H. Ess, “Multiple Mechanisms in Pd(II)sen, “Differential Scanning Calorimetry of etry Testing”, American Journal of AudiolCatalyzed SN2´ Reactions of Allylic AlcoGliomas: A New Tool in Brain Cancer Diag- ogy, 2013
hols”, The Journal of Organic Chemistry,
nostics?”, Neurosurgery, 2013, volume 73/
W. Kleiber, S. R. Sain, M. J. Heaton, M.
2013, volume 78/issue 15, pp. 7664-7673.
issue 2, pp. 289-295.
Wiltberger, C. S. Reese, D. Bingham, “PaN. Ogawa, R.M. Taylor, D.J. Woodbury,
E.S. Johnson, K.R. Lindblom, A. Robeson, rameter Tuning for a Multi-Fidelity DynamiJ.T. Prince, “Resolving double disulfide
R.D. Stevens, O.R. Ilkayeva, C.B. Newgard, cal Model of the Magnetosphere”, The
bond patterns in SNAP25B using liquid
S. Kornbluth, J.L. Andersen, “Metabolomic Annals of Applied Statistics, 2013, 0(00),
chromatography-ion trap mass spectromProfiling Reveals a Role for Caspase-2 in 1-25.
etry”, Journal of Mass Spectrometry, 2013,
Lipoapoptosis”, The Journal of Biological
J.A. Contreras, A. Wang, A.L. Rockwood,
volume 48/issue 6, pp. 660-668.
Chemistry, 2013, volume 288/issue 20, pp.
H.D. Tolley, M.L. Lee, “Dynamic thermal
R. Smith, R. Williamson, D. Ventura, J.T. 14463-14475.
gradient gas chromatography”, Journal of
Prince, “Rubabel: wrapping open Babel
Chromatography A, 2013, volume 1302,
pp. 143-151.
Statistics
7