Science and Technology

Middle East oil may have center stage right now, but because many scientists and policymakers fear that water will be at the center of future regional disputes, a University at Buffalo professor is studying the environmental impact of the region's hydrology resources and projects.

HPCwire, the top Web publication dedicated to news in high-performance computing, has named Russ Miller, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University at Buffalo, as one of its 2003 "top people to watch" in the field.

Alan D. Hutson, associate professor and chief of the Division of Biostatistics in the School of Public Health and Health Professions at the University at Buffalo, has been awarded a Faculty Development grant from the New York State Office of Science, Technology and Academic Research (NYSTAR) in recognition of academic excellence in the field of bioinformatics.

Joseph A. Gardella, Ph.D., professor of chemistry and associate dean for external affairs in the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences, this week will receive a national award recognizing his efforts working with communities affected by environmental hazards and using them as a backdrop against which he teaches undergraduate students about politics, society and analytical chemistry.

A robust, new geographic information systems (GIS) software tool developed by a University at Buffalo geographer is helping the U.S. Forest Service to more quickly and accurately assess and contain the devastation wrought by forest fires.

The adhesive-bonding method used to secure heat-resistant ceramic tiles to the body of the Space Shuttle Columbia is known for its inability to withstand high temperatures, and should not be used exclusively in the construction of new space shuttles, according to a materials engineer at the University at Buffalo.

Funded by the National Science Foundation, University at Buffalo researchers are taking a major step toward boosting online access to documents written in ancient Sanskrit, modern Hindi and dozens of Indian and South Asian languages that are based on the beautiful, intricate symbols of the Devanagari script.

When engineers conduct research on groundwater, the water that flows beneath Earth's surface, they usually think of "large-scale" as one watershed -- an area of land where all of the water on it or under it drains into the same place, such as a lake and its tributaries. Using a 300-node Dell high-performance computing cluster (HPCC) in the Center for Computational Research (CCR) at the University at Buffalo, researcjers are working to turn that definition on its head.

Today's most exciting science is being done at the interfaces of established disciplines, but sometimes the difficulties of communicating across those disciplines thwarts the collaborations that are so crucial to success in these new fields. The publication of "Introduction to Biophotonics" by Paras Prasad, Ph.D., provides researchers from a broad range of backgrounds with one, user-friendly foundation for advancing the science of biophotonics.

News of Saturday's space shuttle tragedy was especially upsetting to students who belong to the University at Buffalo's chapter of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, a nationwide association of students and professionals with career interests in space flight and exploration.