  |
 |
||
 |
|||
President's Message
“Cutting Edge.” There is hardly a university brochure or strategic plan written without using this phrase, usually more than once. What exactly does it mean? It captures the notion of activity at the border of knowledge, at the interface between what is known and unknown. It can be applied to almost every endeavor at a university and is sometimes used with an abandon that suggests a kind of promiscuous hype. Cutting-edge research is research that incorporates new techniques or uses known techniques to advance the frontier of knowledge. But we can also speak of cutting-edge (or more often, avant-garde) art or music. So at the risk of simply being one more university president touting the cutting edge nature of the activity on campus, let me highlight just a few things in this issue of Sallyport that I think truly merit that designation. Professor Michael Deem’s research and modeling of the immune system’s response to multiple versions of the dengue virus certainly push the envelope of understanding how the body responds to such threats. More important, it helped Michael formulate a strategy to overcome the body’s response (“polytopic vaccination”), which could lead to the first effective vaccinations against multiple forms of the virus. Even more encouraging, Michael’s research, conducted with one of his graduate students, Hao Zhou, provides a new understanding and a new strategy that could be effective against other deadly viruses as well. Similarly, Professor Denise Chen’s work, co-authored by two undergraduate students, has probed a little understood area, namely the human response to olfactory stimuli. Her work suggests that the smell of fear-induced sweat induces change in behavior, including greater accuracy in certain decisions and at the same time a hesitancy to respond to uncertain situations. A very different example of cutting-edge work is the development of the Connexions project under the leadership of Professor Richard Baraniuk. This project, which is aimed at developing and providing the technology for shared instructional materials, is truly changing the notion of how information for pedagogic purposes is stored, shared, and distributed. The result will be radically less expensive materials, and therefore the opportunity to completely change, for example, the degree to which developing countries can participate in providing and using such materials. Using some of the technology developed by Connexions, Rice is seeking to resurrect the Rice University Press as a digital venture, a move that has sparked discussion across the nation. (Richard attracted even more attention recently through his work on the “single pixel” camera, a potentially extraordinary breakthrough that is, of course, “cutting edge.”) The final example of such pathbreaking work comes from outside science and technology, demonstrating that the label cutting edge can apply to nearly any area of the university’s endeavors. The article on Syzygy portrays the program Professor Art Gottschalk has built to bring the performance of new music to Rice. As he says, “New music is the hardest to play because no one is really familiar with it, so the concert is a great learning experience for our students.” Art’s comment goes to the heart of the matter—whether in science, engineering, the social sciences, humanities, architecture, or music. The exploration of new things or the discovery of new knowledge or new art creates a learning experience that cannot be replicated in any other way. That is the unique strength of education in a research university. It has the capacity to produce graduates who will spend their careers at the cutting edge, advancing knowledge and creativity for the benefit and enjoyment of us all. Or, as we like to say Rice, there shall be “no upper limit” to the work we do here.
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |