Along Slant Walk

Above, Burcin Bayram (center), associate professor of physics, shows undergraduate student Briana Vamosi and graduate student Phillip Arndt how molecules react to ultrafast laser beams.

In A Whole New Light

New ultrafast laser technology now at Miami will help researchers and students in biology, medicine, engineering, and quantum physics better understand energy transfer processes in collisions between atoms and molecules.

The three lasers, purchased with the help of a $150,000 National Science Foundation grant, allow researchers to greatly increase the resolution of the interaction time between atoms and molecules and to manipulate how they interact and react with polarized light.

Training with various laser models with different light colors in associate physics professor Burcin Bayram’s lab, the graduate and undergraduate students are learning the techniques of fast and ultrafast time-resolved laser spectroscopy — the study of atoms’ and molecules’ reactions to light.

“We can fine-tune the color of the laser light from purple to red and probe reaction of the molecules because molecules can absorb, emit, and even scatter the light at a particular color,” Bayram explains.

By varying the delay time between two lasers as short as a few picoseconds (a few trillionths of a second), time evolution of the molecular properties can be mapped out, she says, providing an exceptional spectroscopic precision and understanding of the processes.

A High Note

Student devoted to choir for adults with developmental disabilities

At Tanner McClellan’s choir practice, warm-ups start with hugs.

Before the singing starts, there is hugging — lots of it.

That’s always Tanner McClellan’s first order of business when she gets together with the Best Buddies Friends Choir.

McClellan, a member of Miami’s Collegiate Chorale and a cappella group Just Duet, created the choir for adults with developmental disabilities out of a desire to share her passion for music. She looks forward to their Saturday morning rehearsals at Miami Hamilton.

“I get to spend an hour with 15 of my favorite people,” said McClellan of Upper Arlington, Ohio, a junior majoring in kinesiology with a minor in special education. She wants to become an occupational therapist and work with children with special needs.

The choir is affiliated with the Miami chapter of Best Buddies, an international nonprofit that creates opportunities for friendships between college students and people who have intellectual and developmental disabilities.

One recent Saturday morning, she and the choir rehearsed six songs. She selects songs to fit the interests and personalities of the members, who range in age from 21 to 50+.

Before rehearsal was over, she and Tommy Klee, her one-on-one buddy who has Down syndrome, were playing air guitar to Elvis Presley’s “Jailhouse Rock” as the choir sang.

“He doesn’t talk a lot, but he loves music,” she said. “He loves Elvis more than anybody I know.”

“One single act, one single action can cause ripples that are felt on the other side of the world.”

—Forest Whitaker, Oscar-winning actor and keynote speaker at Miami’s 175th spring commencement May 17, 2014, in Yager Stadium

NOTEWORTHY

	Elizabeth Mullenix is the new dean of the College of Creative Arts. She joined Miami in 2006 as chair and professor of theatre and artistic director/producer of Miami University Theatre and became interim dean in 2013. “Together with my colleagues, I would like to explore the idea that the skills and competencies that drive the world are increasingly arts-based: creativity, ingenuity, boldness, design.”
	Nancy Solomon, professor of biology, is one of five new Fellows of the Animal Behavior Society and the first ABS Fellow at Miami. A behavioral ecologist, she researches the ecology, reproduction, and behavior of small mammals. Solomon “continues to be one of the primary investigators integrating genetics, neurobiology, and behavioral ecology to address important evolutionary questions,” stated ABS’s executive committee.
	At the JANUS Forum, Miami’s third such forum, Jonah Goldberg (shaking hands from the right), whose syndicated conservative political commentary appears in newspapers across the U.S., and Eugene Robinson (on the left in photo), Washington Post columnist and liberal political analyst on several TV programs, debated “The Proper Role of Government in a Free Society.” A sold-out crowd filled the Armstrong Student Center’s Wilks Theater for the March 19 event.

RISING RANKS
1st among Ohio public universities for Best Salary potential after graduation (SmartMoney.com survey).		23rd Farmer’s ranking in 2014 Best Undergraduate Business Schools in U.S. (Bloomberg Businessweek).

Stellar Students Prized For Their Curiosity and Creativity

Having worked as a politics reporter for Daily News Egypt in Cairo spring semester of her junior year, Emily Crane ’14 is returning to Cairo to write a book, Voices of the Revolution: The Untold Narratives of Egypt’s Awakening.

“I spent much of my time in Egypt telling stories,” said Crane, who discovered their power to break through “complex politics and deeply rooted preconceptions.”

During her second stay, funded by Miami’s $30,000 Joanna Jackson Goldman Memorial Prize, the anthropology and journalism double major said, she will continue uncovering narratives about the Egyptian Revolution through people whose “stories have been grossly overlooked or oversimplified.”

The Goldman, among the largest undergraduate awards in the U.S., each year provides support to one graduating senior with exceptional promise.

Jon Moller, a senior microbiology and biochemistry double major from Oxford, has received a Goldwater Scholarship, the premier undergraduate award in mathematics, natural science, and engineering. He researches antibiotic-resistant proteins that can destroy penicillin and cephalosporin antibiotics.

Courtney Clark-Hachtel ’12, a doctoral student in biology from Eaton, Ohio, and James Morton ’14 of Oxford have been awarded National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships. Clark-Hachtel is focused on determining the evolutionary origin of the insect wing. Morton, a quadruple major in computer science, electrical engineering, engineering physics, and mathematics/statistics, is researching how bacteria communicate and attack each other and the organisms they infect.

Congratulations, Class of 2014: Miami awarded nearly 3,900 degrees at its spring commencement on a windy but sunny Saturday afternoon, May 17, in Yager Stadium. Oscar-winning actor Forest Whitaker gave the keynote address. Karen Dawisha, Miami’s Walter E. Havighurst Professor of Political Science, received the university’s prestigious Benjamin Harrison Medallion. “To think that in such a place, I led such a life.”

Athletics’ Upgrades

A new indoor sports center is going up on the northeast end of Yager Stadium.

The 91,000-square-foot, $13 million facility, almost fully funded by donors, will feature a full 120-yard football field that will be used for all 19 varsity sports as well as intramural and club sports.

It will have a synthetic “field turf” playing surface similar to Yager’s. Other features will include netting for baseball, softball, and golf, along with sprint lanes and jump pits.

Baseball will benefit by a new facility as well. The 10,194-square-foot Baseball Legacy Project at Hayden Park, just east of Withrow Court, will be located along the left-field line.

Its interior will include new locker room facilities, coaches’ offices, and training and equipment rooms.

Funding for the $3 million project is all private and already has been raised. Construction is expected to be finished during the spring of 2015.

NOMNOM NATION

Miami students hoping to revolutionize the way people donate to food banks have created a new app, NomNom Nation, to fight hunger, giving smart phone users the ability to contribute to local food banks with the click of a button. Brent Bielinski ’13, CEO and co-founder, said they launched the Android version May 1 and hoped to have an iOS (Apple) version ready by June 1. Both would be free to download. NomNom is a playful reference to the sound people make when eating.