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Columns::August 18, 2003
Digest
Federal grant launches Uzbekistan Project
The U.S. Department of State has awarded $528,000 to UGA to foster educational exchange with the republic of Uzbekistan. The UGA Uzbekistan Project will be administered by UGA’s Office of International Affairs and the Center for International Trade and Security, a multidisciplinary unit of the School of Public and International Affairs. Project directors Mark Lusk and Gary Bertsch will oversee a three-year collaboration in the areas of international security, central Asian studies, diplomacy and institutional reform.
The project will strengthen the quality of education in Uzbekistan and at UGA by developing curricula and course materials on the basis of faculty exchange and research abroad. UGA will work with the History Institute of the Uzbek Academy of Sciences and the Institute for Strategic and Regional Studies under the president of the republic of Uzbekistan, a federal research organization in Tashkent.
“Central Asia has become an increasingly important strategic region,” says associate provost Mark Lusk. “Because of the area’s oil wealth and its significance to the international efforts to combat terrorism, central Asia will become a much more visible element in the university’s teaching and research.”
“By enhancing mutual understanding of each other’s historic, political and cultural heritage, this project will serve U.S. national interest for regional stability, international security and democratic governance by enriching a new, long-term partnership between Uzbekistan and the United States,” says Gary Bertsch, director of CITS.
Magazine ranks UGA nationally for its number of black doctoral degree recipients
Black Issues in Higher Education recently ranked the University of Georgia 16th in the nation for the number of doctoral degrees conferred upon African Americans. The ranking reflects ongoing initiatives by the Graduate School to increase diversity at UGA through the efforts of the director of recruitment and retention.
Through summer research opportunities, assistantships, visitation days, graduate recruitment fairs, graduate prep workshops and correspondence with prospective students, among other programs, the number of African Americans enrolled in graduate school at UGA increased from 384 in 2001 to 464 in 2002--an increase of more than 20 percent.
“I am excited about all the programs we have developed over the past three years and the opportunities that are being afforded to prospective graduate students from underrepresented populations,” says Curtis D. Byrd, director of recruitment and retention. “With the support of our dean and the Office of Institutional Diversity we can continue to increase diversity initiatives at UGA.”
Ecology professor wins $200,000 grant
UGA scientist Pejman Rohani has received a New Scholar Award in Global Infectious Disease from the Ellison Medical Foundation. Given to only 10 scientists each year, the award includes a four-year, $200,000 grant to support Rohani’s work in human health and population ecology. Rohani is an assistant professor of ecology and a member of UGA’s Biomedical and Health Sciences Institute.
The New Scholar Awards are given to biological and clinical scientists in the first three years of their research careers. Institutions are invited by the Ellison Medical Foundation to nominate candidates for the program and nominees are expected to have great promise as potential leaders of research in parasitology and infectious disease, particularly as applied to global health.
“Dr. Rohani’s work will provide valuable insights into our understanding of outbreaks of serious human diseases and how they might be prevented,” says President Michael F. Adams. “His research is an excellent example of how the Biomedical and Health Sciences Institute is addressing global health issues, and we congratulate him on this prestigious award.”
Rohani’s current research concerns the potential ecological interaction between different human diseases--more specifically, the possibility that there is a population level “interference” between different infections as they compete for susceptible hosts.
“This concept is very much in its infancy,” says Rohani. “After much work, however, it will allow us to better understand disease communities, predict when the epidemics’ different pathogens may interact with each other and how this may be used beneficially when designing vaccination programs.” |
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