Alumni Gazette
In the News
“Better to have honest simplicity than false innovation.”
—Composer Emma Lou Diemer ’60E (PhD),
in the San Francisco Chronicle, talking about some of her recent work.
Her choral composition Songs for the Earth was given its world premiere
by the San Francisco Choral Society last August.
Risk Expert Named to EPA Post
One of the nation’s leading experts on risk assessment has been nominated
to serve as a top administrator in the Environmental Protection Agency. Toxicologist
George Gray ’90M (PhD), the executive director
of the Center for Risk Analysis and a faculty member at the Harvard University
School of Public Health, was named to head the Environmental Protection Agency’s
Office of Research and Development, a position that oversees the agency’s
research labs and serves as the agency’s chief science advisor.
Down Beat Up on Schneider
Composer Maria Schneider ’85E (MM) received
accolades from the critics at a top jazz magazine last summer. Down Beat
named her the Composer and Arranger of the Year and cited her 2004 album,
Concert in the Garden, as the Jazz Album of the Year.
Groat Directs Texas Policy Center
Charles (Chip) Groat ’62, the director
of the United States Geological Survey for the past seven years, has taken a
new post at the University of Texas at Austin. Groat became the founding director
of the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy at Texas last
June after stepping down from the geological survey he had led since 1998. The
new center supports research for governments and corporations on policies focusing
on energy and the environment.
‘Edison of Medicine’ Clark ’44M (PhD) Dies
Leland C. Clark Jr. ’44M (PhD), one of
the nation’s most highly regarded inventors, died September 25. He was
86. Best known as the inventor of the first devices to rapidly measure glucose,
lactates, oxygen, and other components in blood, Clark also invented the first
heart-lung machine. During the course of a 60-year academic career at institutions
such as Antioch College and the University of Cincinnati, he is credited with
about 80 inventions and as the holder of about 25 patents. His prolific and
influential output earned him such nicknames as the “Father of Biosensors”
and the “Edison of Medicine.” Just months before he died, he was
awarded the 2005 Fritz J. and Dolores H. Russ Prize from the National Academy
of Engineering, an honor that’s presented every two years.
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