Congratulations to…

Tom Algeo received a grant from the University Research Council during spring competition. Out of 54 proposals submitted university-wide, his was one of 19 funded. Algeo's main area of research entails study of the stratigraphy and geochemistry of mainly Paleozoic marine strata with an emphasis on analysis of global systems and events.

John Bickle, Jack Davis, Brian Halsall, and Carl Seliskar have been distinguished by being elected Graduate Fellows. This is an exceptional achievement for McMicken College since they were four of only six UC faculty members to receive the distinction.

John Bickle (philosophy) works in philosophy of neuroscience, philosophy of science, and cellular mechanisms of cognition and consciousness. He is noted for his "new wave reductionism" presented in his 1998 MIT Press book, Psychoneural Reduction: The New Wave. His most recent book, Philosophy and Neuroscience: A Ruthlessly Reductive Account, published in June 2003 by Kluwer Academic Publishers, brings recent research from "molecular and cellular cognition" to the attention of cognitive scientists and philosophers of mind and science. He is co-author of the 5th edition of Understanding Scientific Reasoning (with Ronald N. Giere and Robert Maudlin), under contract and scheduled to appear in winter of 2005 from Thomson Publishing. Bickle is Professor and Head of the Department of Philosophy and Professor in the Neuroscience Graduate Program. He is the founding editor of Brain and Mind: A Transciplinary Journal of Neuroscience and Neurophilosophy and founding editor of the Studies in Brain and Mind Book Series, both from Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Jack Davis (classics) is Carl W. Blegen Professor of Greek Archaeology. In Greece Professor Davis has directed archaeological regional studies projects on the island of Keos, in the Nemea Valley, and in the area of the Palace of Nestor in Messenia. He participated in the publication of excavations on Keos and on Melos and, as an authority in the archaeology of the Aegean islands, is author of "Review of Aegean Prehistory: The Islands of the Aegean," in T. Cullen (ed.), Aegean Prehistory: A Review (Boston: Archaeological Institute of America) 19-94 and to the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to the Aegean Bronze Age. Other research interests include the history and archaeology of Ottoman and early modern Greece, and the history of Classical archaeology, in particular its relationship to nationalist movements in the Balkans. Currently Davis is directing regional studies and excavations in Albania, in the hinterlands of the ancient Greek colonies of Durrachium/Epidamnos and Apollonia, and is also engaged in a project to publish unpublished finds from Blegen's excavations at the Palace of Nestor. He has published five books with one forthcoming next year.

Brian Halsall (chemistry) is Chairman of the Biochemistry Division. A biochemist, he has had broad research interests in analytical and physical biochemistry since his PhD work with Peter Spragg on analytical ultracentrifugation and its application to studying glycoprotein aggregation. His postdoctoral studies with Verne Schumaker at UCLA explored the analytical aspects of the zonal ultracentrifuge, and these he continued while on the staff of the MAN program, directed by Norman Anderson, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He joined the Chemistry Department of the University of Cincinnati in 1974 where he has revisited glycoprotein biochemistry and moved into high sensitivity sensors.

Carl Seliskar (chemistry) Chair of the Chemical Sensors Group at the University of Cincinnati. He is a physical chemist with research interests in molecular spectroscopy, applied optical spectroscopy and optical chemical sensors. His PhD work with Professor Ludwig Brand concentrated on making and evaluating the spectroscopic properties of fluorescent molecular probes for biomolecules. As a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow he continued his studies at Louisiana State University (with Sean P. McGlynn) and at University of Western Ontario (with John C. D. Brand) working on the molecular orbital calculations of spectroscopic properties of small organic molecules and the high resolution spectra of small molecules.