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Faculty Activities M–Q

Cynthia K. Mahmood, associate professor of anthropology and senior fellow, Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, presented “Human Rights in Canada and the World: Daring to Speak Out” at the Parliamentary Dinner, House of Commons, Ottawa, on June 10, 2009, and also lectured at dinners and public gatherings in Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, and Calgary, and was interviewed on Omni TV (Canadian Channel M – Multicultural).

Grant J. Mathews, professor of physics, presented “Frontiers in Stellar Astrophysics,” an astrophysics seminar, for the physics department, Hanoi University of Education, Vietnam, on Jan. 3, 2008; “Big Bang Cosmology7,” a physics department colloquium, Hanoi University of Education, on Jan. 7, 2008; the invited talk “Supernova Explosions and Nucleosynthesis” at the “Workshop on r-Process Nucleosynthesis and Quantum Beams” at Tsukuba University, Japan, on March 13, 2008; the plenary talk “3D Simulations of Stellar Evolution and Supernovae: Current Challenges and Progress” at the “12th Annual Symposium on Computational Science and Engineering (ANSCSE-12)” at Ubon Rajathanee University, Thailand, on March 28, 2008; a contributed talk titled “Effects of a Primordial Magnetic Field on Low and High Multipoles of the CMB” at American Physical Society meeting, St. Louis, on April 13, 2008; a chemistry/physics department colloquium titled “Big Bang Cosmology and the Birth of the Universe” at Kasetsart University, Bangkok, Thailand, on May 22, 2008; an invited talk, “Alternative Unifying Views on Dark Matter and Dark Energy,” at the “Workshop on Big Bang Nucleosynthesis and Particle Physics,” Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, on May 31, 2008; and a contributed poster titled “Big Bang Nucleosynthesis and Key Issues in Big Bang Cosmology” at the ‘Workshop on Nuclei in the Cosmos X," Mackinaw Island, Mich., on July 29, 2008. On Sept. 26, 2008, he presented the invited talk titled “Some Alternative Unifying Views on Dark Matter and Dark Energy” at the “Workshop on Alternative Approaches to Gravity” at the Institute on High Energy Physics, Beijing; on Sept. 27, 2008, the colloquia “Alternative Unifying Views on Dark Matter and Dark Energy” and “Key Questions in Big Bang Cosmology and Primordial Nucleosynthesis” for the Chinese Institute for Atomic Energy, Beijing; and on Sept. 28, 2008, the invited talk titled “High Energy Neutrinos via Heavy-Meson Synchrotron Emission in Strong Magnetic Fields” for the “TeV Particle Astrophysics Workshop,” Beijing.  Presented Jan. 4, 2009, Hanoi University of Education, Hanoi, Vietnam, College of Science Special Colloquium; presented Feb. 13, 2009, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida, Physics Department Colloquium.

Rev. Richard McBrien, professor of theology, presented “Faith and Politics in Our Time,” for the Philosophy and Religion Department of Hotchkiss School and the Church of St. Mary, Lakeville, Conn., on April 11, 2008; “Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church,” on April 27, 2008, and another lecture for the faculty at Sacred Heart Schools titled “On Being a Catholic Educator in an Ecumenical Environment,” on April 28, 2008, both at Sacred Heart Schools, Atherton, Calif.; and “Pope Benedict XVI: After Three Years” as part of the Theology Summer Session Lecture Series, University of Notre Dame, on June 25, 2008. He presented “Religion and Politics: The 2008 Election” in “Topics to Go,” a lecture sponsored by an independent group of Catholics at All Souls Unitarian Church, Kansas City, Mo., Oct. 4, 2008; “The Church and Politics,” sponsored by The Thomas Merton Center at the Mitchell Park Community Hall, Palo Alto, Calif., on Oct. 11, 2008; and “Religion and Politics: Some Theological Reflections,” a series on contemporary American Catholicism celebrating the inauguration of a new president, at Cabrini College, Radnor, Pa., Oct. 30, 2008. McBrien was interviewed for a four-part interview with Tom Fox, editor of the National Catholic Reporter, about the Church and the evolution of Catholicism (a podcast on the National Catholic Reporter’s online edition (Oct. 7, 2008); and gave a live interview on Across the Nation with Bob Dunning on the Catholic Channel on Sirius XM Satellite Radio (Sept. 9, 2008). He presented “The Future of the Church: Challenges in the New Millennium” in the “Bishop John McCarthy Lecture Series” at St. Edward’s University, Austin, Tex., on March 6, 2009.

Mary Ann McDowell, assistant professor of biological sciences, presented “Sandfly Saliva: Variability and Human Immune Responses” at the “ENTMOL3 Entomology Workshop and Course” in Recife, Brazil, Sept. 1–5; traveled to Lima, Peru for the “Sixth International Symposium of Phlebotomine Sand Flies” held Oct. 24–31, where she presented “Phlebotomus papatasi Salivary Gland Sequence Variability and Impact on Defining Vaccine Candidates”; and presented a poster titled “Pattern Recognition Receptor Engagement is Necessary for Leishmania Inhibition of Macrophage Phagosome Maturation” to the American Association of Immunologists in Seattle, May 6–13.

Ralph McInerny, the Grace Professor of Medieval Studies, presented “Ordinary Knowledge of God” on Sept. 17, 2008, at Mater Ecclesia College, Greenville, R.I.; “Newman and Natural Theology” on Sept. 24, 2008, at Josephinium College, Columbus, Ohio; “Baron Corvo” on Sept. 30, 2008, for the Ethics and Culture Center’s Catholic Literature program at Notre Dame; and “Writing Mysteries” on Oct. 2, 2008, at the Hammes Bookstore, Notre Dame. He was, on Oct. 7, 2008, interviewed by C.C. Campbell for Eternal Word Television Network on literature and philosophy, in Clarendon Hills, Ill. He presented “Implicit Moral Knowledge” at the “Editors Conference” of the ISI Collegiate Network, sponsored by the Center for Higher Education, Charlotte, N.C., on Nov. 6, 2008; and “How Do Ordinary People Know Moral Principles” on Nov. 14, 2008, in Beaufort, S.C., sponsored by the McInerny Center for Thomistic Studies.

Jason McLachlan, assistant professor of biological sciences, presented an invited seminar titled “Avoiding Climate-Driven Extinctions” at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y., Jan. 23–30, 2009.

Dan Meisel, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, presented “Radiation Effects in Heterogeneous Systems and at Interfaces,” written with Jay A. LaVerne, Ian Carmichael, and Daniel M. Chipman, at the Dept. of Energy’s CPIMS meeting in Washington, D.C., Oct. 19–22, 2008.

Anthony N. Michel, the Freimann Professor of Engineering Emeritus and McCloskey Dean of Engineering Emeritus, presented “Stability of Discontinuous Dynamical Systems: Beyond the Classical Lyapunov Stability and Boundedness Results” at the “Fifth World Congress of Nonlinear Analysts” in Orlando, Fla., on July 8, 2008; and the keynote address “On the Status of Stability of Discontinuous Dynamical Systems” at the"IASTED International Conference on Circuits and Systems" in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, on Aug. 18, 2008.

Juan Migliore, professor of mathematics, gave the invited talk “The Weak Lefschetz Property, Almost Complete Intersections and Monomial Ideals” at the conference “Commutative Algebra and Its Interaction with Algebraic Geometry” in Marseille-Luminy, France, Sept. 29 to Oct. 3, 2008; presented the same invited talk in the Special Session on Commutative Algebra and Algebraic Geometry at the annual meeting of the Canadian Mathematical Society in Ottawa, Canada, on Dec. 6, 2008; and presented “Monomial Ideals with Interesting Properties” at the “Special Session on Algebra, Geometry and Combinatorics” at the 1047th meeting of the American Mathematical Society at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign on March 29, 2009.

Marvin J. Miller, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, was the invited speaker at the “Biometals International Meeting,” Santiago, Spain, where he presented the invited talk “Utilization of Microbial Iron Assimilation Processes for New Antibiotics and Design of Anticancer Agents” on July 16, 2008; attended the 236th National American Chemical Society meeting in Philadelphia Aug. 16–22, 2008, where he presented the invited talk “Utilization of Microbial Iron Assemulation Processes for the Development of New Antibiotics”; presented the invited lecture “Nitroso Cycloaddition Chemistry for Novel Evolvable Scaffold Generation” at the Gordon Research Conference on Combinatorial Chemistry in Oxford, England, on Sept. 2, 2008; presented an invited seminar at University of Washington titled “Modular Enhancement of Nature and Diversity using Nitroso Cycloaddition Chemistry” on April 1, 2009; and a seminar titled “Design, Synthesis, and Studies of New Antibiotics and Drug Delivery Agent” at Indiana State University, Terre Haute, on April 14, 2009.

Shahriar Mobashery, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, presented the invited talk titled “Resistance to ß-Lactam Antibiotics in Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA” at the University of Rosario, Rosario, Argentina, in November 2008; the invited talk “Rose of the Active Site Zinc Ion of matrix Metalloproteinases in Enzyme Activation and Its Subversion in the Process of Selective Inhibition” at the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Medicine, Columbia, in December 2008; and the invited talk “Bacterial Cell Wall” at the Indiana University School of Medicine-Northwest in December 2008.

Kathie E. Newman, professor of physics, presented a colloquium titled “Lessons on Climate and Curriculum for Physics” for the Department of Physics, University of Nebraska, on Feb. 21, 2008; a poster titled “The Notre Dame Summer Qualifier Preparation Course” at the Graduate Education Conference, American Center for Physics, Jan. 31–Feb. 2, 2008; and a talk titled “Non-Adiabatic Transition Path Sampling: Application to a Model Proton-Transfer Reaction” at the meeting of the American Physical Society, New Orleans, March 13, 2008 (coauthors L.J. Kinnaman and S.A. Corcelli).

John P. O’Callaghan, associate professor of philosophy and director of the Maritain Center, presented “Creation, Evolution, and the Human Soul” at a colloquium on “Philosophy and Human Origins” at the University of Chicago’s Quadrangle Club on Feb. 20, 2009; “Paragon of Animals: Concept of Imago Dei in Augustine and Aquinas” at the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome, on Feb. 23, 2009; “We Have Been Friends Together” at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford on March 13, 2009; and “Culture of Life and the Catholic University” for the Orestes Brownson Society at the University of Notre Dame, on April 15, 2009.

Paulinus Odozor, C.S.Sp., associate professor of theology, presented “Truly Africa and Wealthy! What Africa can Learn from Catholic Social Teaching About Sustainable Economic Prosperity” at the conference on “The true Wealth of Nations: Developing an Architecture for Analysis,” organized by the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at the University of Southern California, June 18–22, 2008; “God, Nigeria, and the Church: A Theological Essay on the Church and Politics in Nigeria” as part of the celebrations to mark the 25th anniversary of the Episcopal ordination of His Excellency, Most Reverend John O. Onaiyekan, Metropolitan Archbishop of Abuja, Nigeria, on Jan. 29, 2008; “Paths of Peace: Islam, Christianity, and African Traditional Religions in Dialogue” at the conference on “Dialogue of Cultures” organized by the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, Nov. 29–Dec. 1, 2007. He participated the BBC 4 (live) ethics program Moral Maze on June 25, 2008;and presided at the 2008 convocation (commencement) of the Spiritan International School of Theology, as president of the governing council of the institution, May 17–18, 2008.

María Rosa Olivera-Williams, associate professor and Fellow of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies and Kellogg Institute for International Studies, delivered the paper “Fantasmas, residuos y ruinas de la revolución en Jamás el fuego nunca de Diamela Eltit” at the “XXXVII Congreso Internacional del Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana;” Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Puebla, Mexico, June 24–28, 2008.

Joseph O’Tousa, professor of biological sciences, presented the poster “Serine-361 is the Phosphorylation Site in Drosophila Arrestin-1” (written with A. Kiselev) and the poster “Retinophilin has a ninaC-Dependent role in Phototransduction” (written with K.L. Mecklenburg, N. Takemori, H. Matsumoto, and R.C. Hardi) at the 50th Annual Drosophila Research Conference in Chicago, March 6–8, 2009.

Jeffrey Peng, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry, was an invited speaker at the “International Conference on Magnetic Resonance in Biological Systems” in San Diego, Aug. 24–29, 2008 where he presented “Ligand Dynamics During Protein Docking via 13C Relaxation at Natural Abundance.”

Catherine Perry, associate professor and Fellow of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies and Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, organized and chaired the session “L’Islam dans la littérature francophone annuelle” at the annual convention of the Conseil International d’Études Francophones in Limoges, France, in July 2008, where she also co-organized and moderated a plenary round table showcasing six Francophone writers on the topic “Pourquoi écrire”; and presented “Objects of Violence: Muslim Women in Three Contemporary Francophone Novels” at the Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, April 16–18, 2009, where she organized and chaired the panel “Islam in Contemporary Francophone Literature and Film.”

Morris Pollard, professor emeritus of biological sciences, presented “Prevention of Experimental Hereditary Prostate Cancer in Hybrid Rats” at the Translational Conference sponsored by the American Association for Cancer Research, held Nov. 1–9, in Jerusalem.