Harvard University professor Michael Herzfeld will deliver the 12th Journal of Anthropological Research Distinguished Lecture Thursday at 7:30 p.m. in the Anthropology Building, room 163. He will deliver a lecture titled “Performing Comparisons: Ethnology, Globetrotting and the Spaces of Social Knowledge.”
Herzfeld will also present a seminar titled “The Body Impolitic: Mischievous Manners and Constructive Boredom Among Greek Artisans” at noon Friday in the Anthropology Building, room 178.
Herzfeld holders a doctorate in anthropology from Oxford University and is a specialist in Greek ethnology, folklore, poetics, language and bureaucracy. He has published eight books, one of which won the prestigious J.I. Stale Prize from the School of American Research in Santa Fe.
UNM School of Engineering professors David A. Bader and Hy D. Tran recently received National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Awards.
The program is a National Science Foundation activity that supports junior faculty within the context of their overall career development. It combines the support of research and education of the highest quality. The program emphasizes the importance that the foundation places on the early development of academic careers dedicated to the marriage of strong research and teaching.
Bader, an assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering, has been awarded a grant to study of high-performance algorithms for scientific applications. His research plan is to develop algorithms for high-performance computers that have multiple processors, advanced memory subsystems and state-of-the-art communication networks. He harnesses all of these resources concurrently to solve computational science applications. Science-driven problems in genomics, bioinformatics and computational ecology will be the focus of this research.
“Many scientific applications require the solution to computationally hard problems,” Bader said in a press release. “For instance, a simulation model may require datasets in the order of terabytes that overwhelm the capacity of storage on personal computers and workstations. Other problems are difficult in that they require time-consuming operations whereby a PC may take months, years or even centuries, to solve a problem whereas the solution must be obtained in a reasonable amount of time for it to be useful.”
He said a personal computer typically contains a single processor and applications written for this machine in general give the processor a single stream of instructions to execute one-by-one.
“Imagine now using hundreds, or thousands, of processors together to solve a computational problem,” Bader said. “We still must give each processor a stream of instructions, but now, we must find clever ways to partition the work among a number of processors.”
Tran, assistant professor in mechanical engineering, received his grant to study micro-electro-mechanical systems and to investigate alternative means for providing power to microsensors and other microsystems.
“I am especially interested in scavenging energy from the environment to power microsystems,” Tran said in a press release. “If you look at the environment, ambient light can provide energy, as can ambient vibrations and acoustic sound. I will be investigating the use of ambient temperature fluctuations to generate power for microsystems.”
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
His research has environmental benefits, including reduced use of batteries with possibly hazardous materials such as Nickel/Cadmium.
Tran said the grant will also support integration of research into education and educational outreach to K-12 students. The educational benefits should include greater awareness of engineering and technology in public schools, and eventually, more students choosing science or engineering majors.
