F.Y.I.

Projects by five students, all seniors, have earned them Barth-Crapsey Undergraduate Research Awards: Joel Helfrich, history major, chivalry and the Boy Scouts; Rachel Rains, history and political science major, 1930s political film in the United States; Tracie Rubeck, biology and history major, gender relations in the films of Preston Sturges; Lien Tran, economics/health and society major, international comparison of health care policy for Asian ethnic minority; and Clinton Young, history and Spanish major, musical politics of the Third Reich and Stalinist Russia.

Ambati

Jayakrishna Ambati, chief resident in the Department of Ophthalmology, has won the top prize at the annual Residents and Fellows Research Forum of the Association of University Professors in Ophthalmology. He was invited to present research that provides the first evidence of "excitotoxicity," a type of retinal cell death. He also has been awarded the Heed Ophthalmic Foundation Fellowship, a $15,000 award that he will use to pursue new research in the drug treatment of age-related macular degeneration.

UR Messenger, the undergraduate student magazine covering racial and cultural issues, has received the 1997 Best Campus Alternative Publication of the Year Award in its first year of publication. The award, given by the Center for Campus Organizing in Cambridge, Mass., is in the "B" category for magazines with a budget of less than $10,000. The magazine also garnered first place for anti-racist reporting and honorable mention for opinion writing and design.

The University chapter of Golden Key National Honor Society inducted 158 students this year.Scholarships were given to two outstanding initiates: junior Sean Emmet Molyneaux and senior Penelope Susan Miller. Four individuals were selected for honorary membership: William Green, dean of the College and professor of religion; Mary Beth Cooper, senior associate dean of students; Gladys Pedroza-Burgos, counselor for minority student affairs; and David Walsh, associate professor of art history.

Rosemary Feal, professor of Spanish, has been appointed to the Modern Language Association's Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession. She will serve for a three-year term.

Fauchet

Philippe Fauchet, professor and chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering, has been named a fellow of the Optical Society of America.

Wendy Steesy has been named president of the Rochester chapter of the American Institute of Architects. She is a facilities planner with Planning & Project Management.

The Rochester Eye and Human Parts Bank has awarded two grants to the ocular pathology research group of Gail Seigel, neurobiology/anatomy, and Jayakrishna Ambati and Shobha Boghani, ophthalmology. Their projects will investigate the role of programmed cell death in degenerative diseases of the retina and cornea.

Emory Cowen, professor of psychology and psychiatry in the Department of Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology, has received the John Romano Award from the Mental Health Association of Rochester/Monroe County for his contributions to individuals with mental illness.

The Smoking Research Program in the Department of Community and Preventive Medicine and the Cancer Center has named Christopher Utman a postdoctoral fellow, funded by the National Cancer Institute. Christina Pero has received an undergraduate stipend from the Office of the Dean of Graduate Studies for an advanced summer research internship in the program.