Predoctoral student wins New England Dental Society award
Elisa Sin DMD 07, a second-year predoctoral research student, won the third prize certificate for the predoctoral category at the New England Dental Society meeting in November.
Sin conducted her research project entitled: “Tissue Factor Expression and Procoagulant Activity in P. Gingivalis-Infected Human Monocytes” at the American Dental Association (ADA) Research and Scientific Institute.
The American Student Dental Association last summer chose Sin to be a national leader and serve as an extern at the ADA headquarters in Chicago.
Sin says she based her study on research she began during her first year Applied Professional Experience (APEX) rotation where she lived in Chicago and worked for the ADA Research and Scientific Affairs Division.
"It was there I was able to work researching a revitalized hot topic of periodontal disease and its' link to cardiovascular disease," she says. "The study was a first in in-vitro testing of the mechanisms of how periodontal bacteria like P. gingivalis may cause coagulation disorders, which leads to cardiovascular disease. The study found strong evidence that human monocytes infected with P. gingivalis activated Tissue Factor expression and procoagulant activity, the major mechanism of coagulation. This indicates that oral microbes may play an important role in the development of cardiovascular disease by way of coagulation disorders.
BU CenSSIS student wins Best Student Paper competition at the 2004 meeting of the Acoustical Society of America
BU CenSSIS student, Paolo Zanetti, who recently received his MS degree, won first prize in the best student paper competition (Biomedical Ultrasound section) at the 75th Anniversary Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, held recently in New York City. The presentation entitled, "Signal-to-noise ratio and attenuation of Optison® microbubbles in blood as a function of imaging frequency," was co-authored by Constantin Coussios and Ronald A. Roy, professor of aeronautical and mechanical engineering
BU students make special delivery of science to public schools
 One minute you're a graduate student, working on a master's degree in biology. Then, in some sort of weird time warp, you're in a high school classroom with a bunch of teenagers.
It sounds like a dream, but that ringing isn't an alarm clock waking you out of slumber. It's a school bell, and it's time to teach.
Michael Cermak (CAS'04, GRS'06), a fellow in BU's Project STAMP — Science, Technology, and Mathematics Partnerships — is assigned to a 10th-grade biology class at Jeremiah Burke High School in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood. He is one of nine BU graduate students and four undergraduates who are paired with teachers in public school systems in Boston, Chelsea, Quincy, and Newton. Read the full story
Photo: At the regional GK-12 meeting's poster session on January 23 (from left): meeting organizer Bennett Goldberg, a CAS physics professor, Kelly Denney (CAS'04), a GK-12 fellow at Boston Latin School, Andrew Walsh (GRS'05), a GK-12 fellow at East Boston High School, and Malik Latif, a physics teacher at East Boston High School. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky
 Last spring Matt Heverly waved farewell to identical robotic arms he helped design for Spirit and Opportunity, two exploration rovers that NASA was sending to Mars. Then he prayed that they would make it to the red planet without being damaged.
Read the full story
Photo caption: The robotic arm on both the Spirit and Opportunity Mars exploration rovers has instruments that can grind away rock layers, take microscopic images, and analyze the elemental composition of rock and soil. Illustration courtesy of NASA
Richard Malins, a senior majoring in chemistry and neuroscience will begin studies and research at Oxford University in Great Britain next year as a Rhodes Scholar. Malins plans to study Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, and other degenerative brain disorders.
Malins is currently studying specific genes involved in placque development in the  brains of people with Alzheimer's. This research, conducted under the direction of Chris Li, an associate professor of biology, is funded by the Beckman Scholars Program (2002-04) through the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). Malins presented his research this past summer at the Beckman Scholars Annual Research Symposium.
In addition to science, Malins plays viola in the BU orchestra, tutors disadvantaged children, and has directed, designed, managed, or acted in 25 theatrical productions, and served as president for the BU Stage Troupe.
Read the BU press release
Read the Rhodes Scholarship Trust press release
ECE Seniors First in AAAS/NSF Visualization Contest
 A team of ECE seniors won first place in the illustration category in the inaugural Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge for their "Innolab 3D File Manager". The winning entries are featured in the September 12 issue of the journal, Science and in the journal's electronic edition, Science Online.
The team, including Adam Miezianko, Kristopher Rambish, Karen Fung, and Zavnura Pinglan, was among 297 entries. A panel of distinguished science communicators judged the entries on technical accuracy, creativity, innovation, and communication impact. The team also received the College of Engineering's 2003 PT Hsu Award. The team worked with ECE faculty members Michael Ruane, Maja Bystrom, and Ronald Knepper.
The winning entry, a Ferris wheel-like arrangement, may be the next elegant solution for managing unwieldy amounts of information. The 3D interface organizes computer contents by their relationships rather than their physical position on a hard drive. The system was built with OpenGL on a Linux platform and could be applied to a variety of hierarchical databases, from corporate organizational charts to ecosystem data.
Undergraduate Bat Researcher wins Lubee Award
 Diane Hirsh, a senior in the Department of Computer Science was recently awarded the Lubee Award at the 33rd Annual North American symposium on Bat Research for an outstanding oral presentation by a student. Her talk, "Censusing Brazilian Free-tailed Bats using Infrared Thermal Imaging and Computer vision Methods," was the result of research she conducted with Margrit Betke (assistant professor, computer science) and Tom Kunz (professor, biology). Hirsh's award was especially notable as she was the only undergraduate student in the competition, and it was her first conference talk.
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