Science and Technology

The National Science Foundation has awarded $2.7 million to the University at Buffalo to establish the nation's first comprehensive, multidisciplinary training program for biophotonics scientists. The result will be a new breed of 21st-century scientist, one who is well-versed in and able to conduct research in biological, photonic and electronic systems.

University at Buffalo librarians are offering real-time, online reference assistance to students, some as far away as China, using AOL Instant Messenger software (AIM) in the popular chat room format.

A paper by two University at Buffalo professors proposing a new approach to community revitalization has received the 2001 award for Best Action Research Paper on Housing and Community Development from the Fannie Mae Foundation and Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP).

In recognition of its strengths in bioinformatics and related areas, the University at Buffalo has been awarded a major grant to develop professional master's degrees in disciplines closely related to bioinformatics by the prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

The science of efficiently organizing and interpreting massive amounts of information -- a relatively new field called information fusion that originated from military applications -- is for the first time being applied to manmade and natural disasters by researchers at the University at Buffalo.

Researchers at the University at Buffalo and Ohio University are using the Internet to collect data from thousands of women from around the world about their experience of pain during labor in order to understand how best to ease the pain of childbirth. This is one of the first large-scale, Internet-based survey research studies to be undertaken and is expected to yield a large foundational population sample for the study of labor pain.

When UB hosts "Digital Frontiers: The Buffalo Summit 2001," on Nov. 2 and 3, one of the projects to be exhibited in connection with the event is a little honey called "EVL: Alive on the Grid" -- a peculiar virtual experience involving avatars, simultaneous occupation of virtual space, lots of music and dancing "ghosts."

A "universal bathroom" developed by an architectural team from the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning has won the Bronze Award in the 2001 American Society on Aging (ASA) competition for new products for mature markets.

Could structures be built with shock-absorption systems so powerful that jet planes would literally bounce off them? A system modeled in a paper authored by theoretical physicists at the University at Buffalo and published in the current issue of Physica A demonstrates that it may one day be possible to protect bridges, ships, skyscrapers, highway structures and even automobile bumpers from extremely powerful impacts.

The School of Social Work at the University at Buffalo has developed a Web site that offers online information and resources for those who are having personal difficulty coping with the Sept. 11 terrorist attack and its aftermath.