In the News

Former JSC Director to Guide Space Policy at Rice

George W. S. Abbey, former director of the Johnson Space Center (JSC), has been appointed senior fellow of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice. Abbey will work at the interfaces of space history and policy, guiding the institute’s space policy and coordinating activities of the World Space Congress 2002, which will be held at Rice in October.

The World Space Congress will include a policy summit held in cooperation with the Baker Institute and the Rice Space Institute to encourage the formulation of a common vision and implementation strategy for commercial and civil scientific and technical space-based initiatives.

Abbey is on assignment from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in Washington, D.C., where he is special assistant to NASA’s administrator. He began working at JSC in 1964, and his many posts include director of flight operations for the early space shuttle missions; deputy associate administrator for space flight at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C.; senior director for civil space, National Space Council, Executive Office of the President; director of JSC; and senior assistant for international issues.

“I look forward to capturing the knowledge of the space program and ensuring that it is passed on to future generations,” Abbey says. “Where we go in the future relative to international cooperation in space is important to us and could be a benefit to the country.”

New Director of Nanotech Center Announced

Wade Adams, former chief scientist at the Air Force Research Laboratory, Materials and Manufacturing Directorate at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, has been appointed the new director of Rice’s Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology (CNST). He succeeds Richard Smalley, the Gene and Norman Hackerman Professor of Chemistry and professor of physics, who has served as the center’s director since its inception in 1995. Smalley will continue to teach and conduct research, concentrating on the Carbon Nanotechnology Laboratory that was developed by the CNST under his leadership.

“It is both an honor and a challenge to continue the great initiative that Rick Smalley started,” Adams says. “I am looking forward to working with the top-notch scientists and engineers at Rice to help the CNST stay at the very front edge of the nanoscale revolution. Rice has been one of the leaders in the international technology community, and we intend to continue and extend that leadership to the ultimate benefit of humanity.” Adams, who retired from the Air Force Reserve in the rank of colonel in 1998, is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the Air Force Research Laboratory.

Schnoebelen Named Interim Music Dean

Anne M. Schnoebelen, the Joseph and Ida Kirkland Mullen Professor of Music, has been named interim dean of the Shepherd School of Music. The appointment followed the departure of former dean Michael Hammond to chair the National Endowment for the Arts. (See page 7 for a recognition of the late Hammond’s achievements and his impact on Rice and the Shepherd School.) This is the second tour of duty as interim dean for Schnoebelen, who joined the Shepherd School in 1974 as one of the original faculty members. She also has served as chair of the musicology department and director of graduate studies.

Schnoebelen’s teaching and research interests include Italian Baroque sacred music, Italian secular cantatas, Bolognese music of the 17th and 18th centuries, Monteverdi, Bach, Beethoven, and performance practices. She is general editor of the series 17th- Century Italian Sacred Music, and her articles and reviews have been published in Acta Musicologica, the Musical Quarterly, Music and Letters, the Music Library Association’s Notes, the Journal of Musicological Research, and Early Music. Schnoebelen has received a fellowship from the American Association of University Women, Fulbright full and travel grants, National Endowment for the Humanities summer stipends, American Council of Learned Societies travel grants, and Rice University research and publication grants.

Acclaimed Trumpet Professor Dies

Armando Ghitalla, professor of trumpet at Rice since 1994, died on December 14 after a lengthy battle with heart disease. He was 76. Ghitalla is remembered as a magnificent artist and teacher as well as a gentleman. “He was an elegant, charming, strong man, whose generosity and goodness hearkened back to another generation,” said Larry Rachleff, professor of conducting. “No matter how poor he was feeling and how uncomfortable he was, he always asked me how I was doing. He relished in other people’s work and successes.”

Ghitalla played for the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1951 to 1979, serving as principal trumpet there for 15 years. Before coming to Rice, he taught at the University of Michigan and the Tanglewood Institute among others. Although Ghitalla brought world-class knowledge and experience to his students at Rice, they remember not only his expertise but his humbleness and the way he treated them all as equals.

Martin Elected to AAAS

Randi Martin, the Elma Schneider Professor of Psychology, has been elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest federation of scientists. The honor recognizes individuals for their efforts to advance science or to foster applications that are deemed scientifically or socially distinguished. Martin, who is director of the undergraduate Cognitive Sciences Program and head of the graduate program in cognitive psychology at Rice, was recognized for outstanding contributions to the study of short-term memory and language processing and to the understanding of the brain organization supporting these cognitive functions.

Tapia Receives Top Honor from NACME

Richard Tapia, the Noah Harding Professor of Computational and Applied Mathematics, has received the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering’s (NACME) highest honor—the Reginald H. Jones Distinguished Service Award. NACME presented the award to Tapia for his contributions to engineering and other science-based careers. The prize includes a $10,000 donation in Tapia’s name to a tax-exempt organization of his choice that is committed to increasing the representation of minorities in engineering and technology.

Vardi Takes Center Stage

Broadway stars are accustomed to seeing their names in lights, but Moshe Vardi has discovered that even scientists, engineers, and mathematicians occasionally get top billing. In March, the International Max Planck Research School for Computer Science convened the Symposium on the Effectiveness of Logic in Computer Science in Honour of Moshe Vardi.

Held in Saarbruecken, Germany, the symposium was named after a workshop Vardi organized last year in Arlington, Virginia, where he gave an overview of the surprising effectiveness of logic in computer science and presented some of the areas in which logic played a crucial role. The symposium featured invited talks in the same spirit by some of Vardi’s collaborators and friends in the four main areas of his scientific work: database theory, finite model theory, knowledge representation, and program verification.

In conjunction with the event, the University of the Saarland at Saarbruecken awarded Vardi an honorary doctoral degree for his outstanding contributions to the area of logic in computer science.

Benz Is Right on the Money

Rice has a new director of student financial services. Julia Benz, who has worked in financial aid for 18 years, is pleased to be at Rice, a university committed to making education more affordable for families by meeting all demonstrated financial needs of its students. Her office is charged with awarding aid to graduate and undergraduate students through a combination of institutional, state, and federal resources, and it also offers educational financing in the form of work and a variety of loan programs to graduate students.

Benz admits that she faces challenges in her job, including the increasingly competitive environment in higher education. She emphasizes the importance of offering prospective students an aid package in a timely fashion because the financial awards they receive can be important in choosing which school to attend.

Search Is On for New Director of Alumni Affairs and University Events

Ann Patton Greene ’71, director of alumni affairs and university events for more than five years, will be leaving Rice at the end of May to spend more time with her family and to prepare for her next professional challenge.

In the interim, a search committee has been formed to identify qualified candidates for the director position, which is responsible for creating and implementing programs and activities that effectively develop, promote, and nurture relationships between the university and alumni. In addition, the director coordinates the involvement of the volunteer board of the Association of Rice Alumni with the university. This position requires a demonstrated track record of effective leadership, project management, and strategic thinking.

Qualified candidates may send resumes to Rice University, Director of Alumni Affairs Search Committee–MS 80, P.O. Box 1892, Houston, TX 77251-1892. Questions and resumes also may be e-mailed to rubinsky@rice.edu.