Newsroom Stories

The following are among the new faculty members at the University. Others will be introduced periodically in this space. Werner Ploberger, Ph.D., joins the department of economics in Arts & Sciences as professor. He earned a doctorate in applied mathematics at Vienna University of Technology (Austria) in 1981 and a Habilitation in Econometrics there in 1993. He has been affiliated with Vienna University of Technology, the University of St. Andrews (Scotland) and the University of Rochester. He was tenured in 1993 (Vienna) and promoted to full professor in 1995 (University of St. Andrews). He has been at the University of Rochester since 1997. His research focus is in the areas of statistics, econometric methodology and time-series econometrics. Stephen Williamson, Ph.D., joins the department of economics in Arts & Sciences as professor. He earned a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin in 1984 and has since been affiliated with Queen’s, Western Ontario, the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and the University of Iowa. He was tenured in 1989 (Western Ontario) and promoted to full professor in 1992 (Iowa). He served as department chair at Iowa (2000-03). He is co-editor for Economic Theory and associate editor for Journal of Monetary Economics and Review of Economic Dynamics. His research is mainly on macroeconomics, monetary economics and financial economics. Jimin Ding, Ph.D., joins the department of mathematics in Arts & Sciences as assistant professor. Ding earned a doctorate in statistics from the University of California, Davis, under the guidance of Jane-Ling Wang. She works in a modern form of survival analysis using techniques that will be applicable to many other areas of statistics. Xiang Tang, Ph.D., joins the department of mathematics in Arts & Sciences as assistant professor. He was previously a visiting research professor at the University of California, Davis. He earned a doctorate in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked under Alan Weinstein. His areas of expertise are noncommutative geometry, symplectic geometry and quantization. He worked on mathematical problems in statistical thermodynamics while still an undergraduate at Peking University.

Evan D. Kharasch, M.D., Ph.D., has been named the Russell D. and Mary B. Shelden Professor of Anesthesiology.

The NAE is a private, independent, nonprofit institution that has approximately 2,000 peer-elected members who are among the world’s most accomplished engineers.

Feb. 13 3:22 p.m. — A person reported unknown person(s) used her debit card online to make a purchase. The fraudulent purchase occurred Jan. 30. The victim had possession of her debit card when the fraudulent activity took place. Feb. 14 12:03 a.m. — The complainant reported that suspect(s) unknown entered their unsecured dorm rooms in Myers Residence Hall and took two cameras and an iPod. They believe that the incident occurred between Feb. 11 in the evening and today.

Terrell CreativeTo commemorate the 150th anniversary of the infamous Supreme Court decision, Washington University will host a national symposium on “The Dred Scott Case and its Legacy: Race, Law, and the Struggle for Equality,” on March 1-3. The symposium, which is free and open to the public, will begin with a keynote address by the Honorable Michael A. Wolff, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Missouri, at 4 p.m. on March 1 in Graham Chapel. Wolff will discuss “Race, Law, and the Struggle for Equality: Missouri Law, Politics, and the Dred Scott Case.” Panel discussions on Friday and Saturday in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom of Anheuser-Busch Hall will examine the case and its legacy, from the Civil War to the present.

Listed below are this month’s featured news stories. • Blocking nerves to stop diabetes (week of Feb. 7) • Intelligence gene (week of Feb. 14) • Diet supplements and eye disease (week of Feb. 21) • Testosterone replacement therapy (week of Feb. 28)

Courtesy photoJo LabanyiJo Labanyi, professor of Spanish and Portuguese at New York University, will speak on “Facts and Fictions: Knowledge, Delinquency and Madness in Late 19-Century Spain” Feb. 27 as part of the Center for the Humanities’s 2007 Faculty Fellows’ Lecture and Workshop Series. The following day Labanyi will lead a workshop on the rigid ordering of gender in 19th-century Spain.

University Police offer an update on recent assault on the South 40.

An unknown poem by famed playwright Tennessee Williams was a fortuitous find for Henry I. Schvey, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences.

A University plant evolutionary biologist has received a two-year, $1.12 million grant from the National Science Foundation to perform genetic studies on red rice.