Science and Technology

When Buffalo Sabres center Tim Connolly took the ice for the start of the NHL playoffs after being sidelined for 11 months with post-concussion syndrome, his return in large part was due to a new treatment program developed by University at Buffalo researchers.

Contrary to the unhappy experience of the first little pig, straw bale is a strong, cost-effective, exceptionally insulating, fire-resistant, sustainable, natural building system. University at Buffalo architecture students and community members -- cold, covered in mud and stuck with hay -- recently raised 130 50-pound "two-string" straw bales that will constitute the load-bearing walls of a community greenhouse on Buffalo's West Side.

Novel, self-assembly techniques for fabricating inorganic nanomaterials that could pave the way for more efficient and powerful solar cells, chemical sensors and detectors currently are being developed by a University at Buffalo chemist.

Brothers Vinod K. Rustgi, M.D., and Anil K. Rustgi, M.D., along with their mother, Kamla Rustgi, are honoring their father's memory by endowing the Moti Lal Rustgi Professorship in the Department of Physics in the University at Buffalo's College of Arts and Sciences.

Douglas H. Clements, a University at Buffalo professor who has spent his career ensuring that underrepresented children's potential to learn math does not go unrealized, has been named a member of the President's National Mathematics Advisory Panel.

Samina Raja, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning in the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning, has been awarded a $105,000 contract from the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus to study physical activity levels among the 6,000 employees on the medical campus in relation to improvements made to its infrastructure and streetscape.

Stuart Parkin, an experimental physicist with the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif., will speak on "The Spin on Electronics" at the 13th annual Moti Lal Rustgi Memorial Lecture at 4 p.m. April 6 in 225 Natural Sciences Complex, North Campus.

"Brilliant, incisive and unafraid" is how noted architect and urban designer Marilyn Jordan Taylor describes Joan Ockman, the 2007 Will and Nan Clarkson Chair in Architecture at the University at Buffalo.

New and exciting ideas about our built surroundings will be on exhibition this week when the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning presents its annual Atelier, an extensive exhibition of work produced during year by the undergraduate and graduate students in architecture and planning studios.

The 2007 lecture series sponsored by the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning continues in April with one of the world's most important scholars in the field of architectural education, Joan Ockman, participating as the school's 2007 Will and Nan Clarkson Architecture Chair.