Scope : a look inside the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences.

              FALL 2011
Start making sense
NC State bioinformaticist brings numbers to life
IN THIS ISSUE Pirates of the Paleolithic 8 NC State’s Top Rocker 10 NC’s Year of Communicating Science 20
scope A LO O K I N S I D E THE COLLEGE OF PHYSICAL AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
NC STATE UNIVERSITY
PAMS Foundation Board of Directors
PAMS Alumni & Friends Advisory Board
Officers
Benton Satterfield, President
Nancy Ridenhour, Vice President
Larry James, Secretary
Robert Hill, Assistant Secretary
General Members
Stephen Ashley
Damon Butler
Kim Deaner
Todd Fuller
Bob Jackson
Maggie LaPLante
Sherice Nivens
Glenn Osmond
Er Ralston
Jean Richardson
Pam Pittman Robinson
Aimee Tattersall
Joselyn Todd
Mike Trexler
Chip Wentz
scop e
Officers
Cathy Sigal, Chair
Leigh Wilkinson, Vice Chair
Anita Stallings, President
Michelle Duggins, Secretary
Kathy Hart, Treasurer
Charles Leffler, Assistant Treasurer
General Members
Susan Atkinson
Tom Blinten
John Brocklebank
Charles Case
Sheila Chickene
Maureen Droessler
David Duncklee
Jonathan Earnhart
Kathy Harris
Lawrence Ives
Roger Liddle
Rob Lindberg
Roy Martin
Ed Mathers
Alan Menius
Randy Miller
David Montgomery
Connie Moreadith
Michael Peirson
Mitch Perry
Stephen Smeach
Cecil Smith
Phil Summa
Michael Thompson
Bill Trent
Barton White
Ji Zhang
Miriam Zietlow
Emeritus
Richard Cook
Scope is published by the College of
Physical and Mathematical Sciences.
The College is made up of internationally
recognized departments:
Chemistry
Marine, Earth & Atmospheric Sciences
Mathematics
Physics
Statistics
Molecular & Structural Biochemistry
Dean
Daniel Solomon
Managing Editor
Anita Stallings
Editor
Steve Townsend
Contributing Writers
Ernie Hood
Tracey Peake
Star-Lena Quintana
Design
Zubigraphics
On the cover:
Alison Motsinger-Reif with colleagues
Jorge Piedrahita and Matthew Breen
from NC State’s College of Veterinary
Medicine. Photo by Marc Hall.
13,500 copies of this public document
were printed at a cost of $7,200.00
or $.53 per copy.
FALL 2011 in this issue...
4
10
14
18
Dean’s message
2 Milestone provides an opportunity to celebrate
our past, present and future
College news
3 NC State students anxiously await “New Talley”
10 NC State’s top rocker: PAMS student learns to balance
her coursework with her role as general manager of WKNC
16 PAMS welcomes new members to its leadership team
19 Risley named Entrepreneur of the Year
20 North Carolina’s Year of Communicating Science
Research highlights
4 Start making sense: NC State bioinformaticist brings numbers to life
8 Pirates of the Paleolithic: Using geology to dig deeper into the
mysteries of our seafaring ancestors
Honors
9 Department of Mathematics makes history with back-to-back AMS awards
14 Beichner named 2011 recipient of McGraw Prize in Education
14 Kneller earns DOE CAREER Award
15 Notables
Alumni and Development news
18 Risleys establish endowed physics professorship
19 How to make a gift
Just for Fun
12 Meet your PAMS Ambassadors
Happy quasquicentennial, NC State!
It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but
give it some time. The entire university com-munity
will have all of next year to learn
some new Latin as we celebrate the quasqui-centennial––
or 125th anniversary––of NC
State’s founding back in 1887.
Friends and alumni of the College of
Physical and Mathematical Sciences will not
be surprised to know that our fields have
been an integral part of the institution from
the very beginning. In fact, when the uni-versity
opened its doors to its first class of
students two years later in 1889, a full one-third
of the six member faculty represented
academic disciplines that are housed in
PAMS today.
Although the world is a much different place
than it was at the end of the nineteenth century,
NC State’s mission has changed surprisingly lit-tle
over the years. As we were in the beginning,
we continue to be dedicated to excellence in
teaching, research and service “that transforms
lives and provides leadership for social, eco-nomic,
and technological development across
North Carolina and around the world.”
While we initially applied our talents pri-marily
to agricultural and mechanical con-cerns,
today’s NC State researchers are
applying their considerable talents to a
remarkably broad set of societal challenges.
Here in PAMS, we are paying specific atten-tion
to challenges that lie at the intersection
of the mathematical, computational, physi-cal
and life sciences.
You will see a prime example of this type
of work in the cover story of this issue of
Scope, which discusses the pervasive and
powerful bioinformatics research of Alison
Motsinger-Reif (page 4). This issue covers
other great stories from across the college,
from the back-to-back national awards
earned by our Department of Mathematics
(page 9) to the renaissance spirit of chem-istry
major Molly Matty (page 10) to the
ingenuity and generosity of physics profes-sor
John Risley (page 18).
Just as our skills have evolved to meet the
high aims of our mission so, too, has our
understanding of the importance of talking
about our work. As the scientific challenges
we face as a society continue to mount so, too,
does the importance of promoting an under-standing
and appreciation of scientific topics.
Through the use of publications like Scope,
outreach activities like our annual Scope
Academy (page 20) and many other vehicles
and venues, we in PAMS are doing our part to
promote this appreciation and understanding
among scientists and non-scientists alike.
I look forward to celebrating with you
throughout 2012 and beyond NC State’s
legacy of excellence and our scientific
achievements that are yet to come.
Sincerely,
Daniel L. Solomon, Dean
2 ■ FALL 2011 | scope
Milestone provides an opportunity to
celebrate our past, present and future
PHOTO BY BECKY KIRKLAND
While we initially applied our talents primarily
to agricultural and mechanical concerns,
today’s NC State researchers are applying their
considerable talents to a remarkably broad set
of societal challenges.
Dean Dan Solomon addresses PAMS students,
faculty, volunteers and endowment donors
at the college’s 12th annual Realizing
Possibilities celebration.
The existing Talley Student Center was con-structed
in 1972 when the NC State student
population was 14,000. Thirty-nine years later,
NC State boasts 34,000 students, all of whom
require access to tools, technologies and infra-structure
that did not exist four decades ago.
As needs have changed, so must Talley.
Some of the more noteworthy upgrades
include increased and improved space for stu-dent
organizations and facility services; more
meeting, lounging and recreational space;
expanded retail and dining options; an
expanded bookstore; and LEED Silver
Certification.
Some planned features that have students
especially excited include:
n Two coffee shops
n A food court that will feature Mexican,
pizza, diner and deli options
n An upscale, internationally themed restau-rant
that will include Japanese, Korean,
Thai, Mediterranean and Italian options
n A more laid-back restaurant that will fea-ture
live music and entertainment as well
as oven-baked flatbread sandwiches and
pastas
n A large convenience store, more than twice
the size of any other C-store on campus,
with student favorites like “Howling Cow”
ice cream by the scoop, fresh sandwiches,
snacks and beverages
The lead design firm for the project is
Durham-based Duda/Paine Architects, LLP.
Turan Duda, who earned his bachelor of envi-ronmental
design in architecture at NC State,
is the lead design principal for the project.
While the project is ongoing, a temporary
student center and NC State bookstore have
been set up in a building near and dear to
many PAMS students and alumni: Harrelson
Hall. The Division of Student Affairs has
worked hard to create an inviting, functional
space in Harrelson, and it has been well
received by students.
You can keep up to date on the Talley
Student Center addition and renovation on
the project Website: go.ncsu.edu/newtalley.
The site includes artist’s renderings and a
Webcam to follow the progress.
Twitter (@ncsu_talley) and Facebook
(search “TalleyStudentCenter”) also offer quick
and easy ways to stay current on traffic and
construction impacts. For more information,
please contact NC State University Campus
Enterprises at 919-513-2524 or campusenter-prises@
ncsu.edu.
scope | FALL 2011 ■ 3
NC State students anxiously
await “New Talley”
COURTESY OF NC STATE CAMPUS ENTERPRISES
Artist’s rendering of the new
Talley Student Center from the vicinity
of the Free Expression Tunnel
The university broke ground
last summer on a project that
will provide significant
additional and upgraded
space to the Talley Student
Center.
4 ■ FALL 2011 | scope
t’s no coincidence that Motsinger-Reif is
among the most highly cited authors on
the NC State faculty. Even though she
received her Ph.D. less than five years ago,
she has already made major contributions
through several collaborations in a variety of
scientific arenas. When a researcher needs sta-tistical
help, from study design to data analy-sis
and interpretation, Motsinger-Reif has
shown that she has the tools and breadth of
knowledge to help ensure that a given project
will produce results that are robust, repro-ducible,
and rich in information. With nearly
80 peer-reviewed publications to her credit
already in her young career, it’s clear that she
is highly productive and in great demand.
An assistant professor in the Department of
Statistics and an associate faculty member in
the Department of Genetics, she works at the
Bioinformatics Research Center in Ricks Hall,
where world-class innovations in bioinfor-matics
are happening up and down the third-floor
hall. She is also an adjunct assistant
professor in the Institute for Pharmacoge -
nomics and Individualized Therapy at UNC-Chapel
Hill, and has worked closely on several
projects with its director, Dr. Howard McLeod.
These days, when it comes to the amount of raw data being generated in biomedical research,
you commonly hear words like “tidal wave” and “avalanche” being used to describe the
unimaginably huge data sets emerging from experiments being run on highly automated, high-throughput
technological platforms. To separate the wheat from the chaff, to pinpoint the needle
in the haystack, to filter the barely detectable signal from the overwhelming noise –– you need
state-of-the-art bioinformatics, the field of science in which statistics, biology, computer science,
and information technology merge to form a single discipline. You need Alison Motsinger-Reif.
START MAKING SENSE:
NC State bioinformaticist
brings numbers to life
I
She specializes in bioinformatics that links
genotype (the internally coded genetic “blue-prints”
of all living organisms) and phenotype
(the observable structure, function or behav-ior
that results from those blueprints). This
includes important work in areas related to
human health, such as disease outcomes and
individual responses to drugs. She both brings
her bioinformatics toolkit to bear on specific
applied projects and develops new statistical
methods as gaps in knowledge emerge. To
thrive in both worlds requires a unique com-bination
of skills, interests, and intellect––a
perfect storm of qualifications and background
to face the tidal wave.
Born and raised in Winston-Salem, North
Carolina, by “wonderfully supportive parents,”
a schoolteacher mother and business owner
father, Motsinger-Reif knew early in her life
that science was her calling. “I never had much
delusion that I was going to do anything else,”
she said. “I started working as a high school
student at Wake Forest University in a research
lab. I answered a classified ad for somebody to
wash glassware in a lab, and I just really wanted
to be in that environment. The person I
worked with was amazingly supportive, and
by the end of high school I was running my
own experiments.”
After high school, she spent the next seven
years at Vanderbilt University, earning a B.S.
in biology, an M.S. in statistics, and ultimately
her Ph.D. in human genetics in 2007. She had
originally intended to pursue a research career
in immunology, but as is so often the case,
exposure to a new area caused her to change
direction early in graduate school. “I’d always
loved statistics, but didn’t really know how sta-tistics
and computer science intersected with
biology. I learned about bioinformatics that
first year of grad school, and just got really
excited,” said Motsinger-Reif. “Our program
had lab rotations that you did in that first year,
so I did a couple of rotations in bioinformat-ics,
and just loved it. I found out that what I
really enjoyed was making sense of the data.”
Bioinformatics to the Rescue
Making sense of the data: It sounds simple
enough, but in reality, the rapid and acceler-ating
growth in genomic sciences since the
completion of the human genome sequence
in 2003 has brought about a virtual arms race
between the increasingly complex and volu-minous
data sets being generated (not to men-tion
the emergence of new sciences in the
-omics arena such as proteomics, meta -
bolomics, transcriptomics, etc.) and bioinfor-maticists’
ability to answer the profoundly
important questions being posed. Just in the
past few years, the gap between the two has
been narrowing as young investigators like
Motsinger-Reif come into their own and
advance the field. And researchers have begun
to factor in the need for a strong bioinfor-matics
component in their studies, bringing
in the statistics expertise early in the process.
“I think what has changed is that people
have appreciated that it’s going to have to be
part of their projects, are no longer ignoring
that it’s a huge component, and are reaching
out to bring bioinformaticists on board from
the beginning of their project, instead of at the
end as an afterthought,” Motsinger-Reif
observed. She values that change, and the feel-scope
| FALL 2011 ■ 5
PHOTO BY MARC HALL
6 ■ FALL 2011 | scope
ing of true collaboration that comes with it. “If
I can get involved at the beginning of the study,
and actually influence the study design, we can
make sure that it reflects the questions that
they’re asking and that we do the power cal-culations
to make sure it’s going to be powered
to answer those questions.” In essence, you can
see Dr. Goodstats now, or you can see her later:
“Coming in at the beginning keeps you from
having to do the autopsy on the statistics, where
you can’t save the study any more, and you can
only tell them that the study is dead, and what
it died of.”
Motsinger-Reif conducts her own research
in developing new bioinformatics methods, but
stresses that those endeavors are inevitably fed
by the issues that arise in her applied, collabo-rative
work. “I see them as completely tied
together,” she said. “What I think is interesting
is answering those biological questions in the
applied work, and you quickly see that there
aren’t the statistical methods to answer the ques-tions
you want to ask, so you need to build some.
And then you can ask those new questions.”
Much of her applied work is in the phar-macogenomics
field, where instead of map-ping
the gene for a particular disease,
researchers map genetic variants (known as
single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs)
that predict individual response to drugs or
toxicities, which may manifest as variations
in efficacy or as adverse reactions. Under -
standing those variations and harnessing their
predictive power are the vital elements in the
potential clinical value of pharmacogenomics,
which is one of the cornerstones of personal-ized
medicine—knowing precisely the right
dose of the right drug for the right condition
in the right person at the right time. And if
those variables aren’t enough, mix in gene-gene
and gene-environment interactions that
affect response and you can end up with lit-erally
millions of variants that may or may
not be involved. This all also ties in with
changing theoretical and technological
approaches as the genomics field transitions
from genome-wide association studies that
seek common variants to explain common
diseases to so-called “next-generation”
sequencing, which posits that common dis-eases
more often result from combinations of
rare variants of high penetrance (the propor-tion
of individuals with a disease-associated
mutation expressed as clinical symptoms).
That type of modeling, in both disease out-comes
research and pharmacogenomic stud-ies,
ups the bioinformatic ante considerably
and calls for new approaches and new meth-ods
from the statisticians.
Survival of the Fittest Algorithms
Motsinger-Reif develops complex models
to predict such complex outcomes. In simple
terms, she combines the principle of evolution
from the field of biology with the principle of
neural networking from the field of informa-tion
theory to spawn the modeling approach
she has pioneered known as grammatical evo-lution
neural networks. It uses evolutionary
computing algorithms, a set of machine learn-ing
tools inspired by evolution and survival of
the fittest, with mutation and selection mech-anisms
built in. “They’re algorithms that are
designed to evolve the best solutions possible
for a given problem,” she explained. “I use
them to build classifiers, originally neural net-works.
They start with just random models. If
I’m having grammatical evolution build a neu-ral
network, I’ll start off generating thousands
of neural networks that all have random input
variables––we’ll have picked different SNPs to
put in that classifier, different architectures of
how the neural net itself is set up, and most of
them will be terrible classifiers.”
As the process literally evolves, the neural
nets that are better at predicting the disease
outcome or toxicity outcome of interest sur-vive
and advance. “Most of them will do really
badly, but each one of the random neural nets
will be assigned a fitness that’s proportionate
to how good they are at classifying your dis-ease
status,” she said. “The most fit neural net-works
get selected to pass their genetic material,
which in this case is the structure of the neu-ral
network, on to the next generation, and
diversity is introduced as models undergo
mutation and cross-over.” The process runs for
thousands of computer generations, and ulti-mately
reaches a plateau where fitness does not
improve. The method is not perfect, Motsinger-
Reif noted, but it’s one way to glean useful
knowledge from data sets that would take life-times
to process using traditional combinato-rial
approaches. The next step is to see how the
model does in the biological real world. “When
I get that model back, now I’ve got a small set
of genetic variants that predict the outcome,”
she said. “Then we go back to the biologist and
Researchers in NC State’s College of
Veterinary Medicine help translate Alison
Motsinger-Reif’s work from the computational
to the biological. PHOTO BY MARC HALL
scope | FALL 2011 ■ 7
say, ‘What does this mean to you? Does this
prediction mean something for function?’”
Depending on the specifics of the project,
follow-up at that point occurs in a few differ-ent
ways. For example, one of Motsinger-Reif’s
ongoing collaborative projects with UNC
involves gene mapping for genes that predict
individual responses to chemotherapy drugs.
In that instance, initial screening is performed
from human blood cells, statistical associa-tions
are derived, and then functional valida-tion
is conducted, often using existing clinical
trial data to show that the predicted outcomes
stand up. Simply proving that respone to indi-vidual
chemotherapy drugs is heritable is half
the battle in that study, which is known as the
CEPH-DA Project. Thus far the group has seen
heritabilities of between 10 percent and 65 per-cent
in the first 50 drugs they’ve looked at.
Such information will eventually help to usher
in personalized chemotherapy, which should
be safer and more effective by targeting ther-apeutic
regimens more precisely to the indi-vidual
patient’s genotype.
Found in Translation
Another major project in which Motsinger-
Reif participated has gone beyond theory and
potential, and is now saving lives in the clin-ical
setting. She was a member of the statis-tical
analysis team for the International
Warfarin Pharmacogenetics Consortium, a
global collaboration that built a reliably pre-dictive
pharmacogenetic algorithm for dosage
of the blood thinner warfarin, which has a
notoriously narrow safe dosage window that
varies considerably from person to person.
“Because it’s also rat poison, you dip below
[the correct dose] and there’s no efficacy. Dip
above, and you bleed out. Up to now it’s been
a very crude trial-and-error dosing process
to get a patient to a safe and effective dose,”
she explained. “There were genes that people
knew predicted this, so this consortium was
formed to close the gap between knowing the
associated genes and building a predictive
model to put into the clinic.” The algorithm
developed by the group is now in widespread
clinical use.
Motsinger-Reif finds this aspect of her work
particularly rewarding. “There was a clinical
trial launched to test the predictive algorithm,
and it is on the drug label now––the FDA has
approved it,” she said. “It’s really exciting that
the genetic knowledge of that drug had matured
enough that it was ready for translation, and it
has been. Seeing more of those types of trans-lation
steps is what I hope for.” She’s aware that
she plays an essential role in the bioinformatic
scheme of things, and for her, the translational
potential is motivating. “That’s what gets me
out of bed: hoping to make some contribution
to human health at the end of the day. Statistics
and bioinformatics are what I’m using to try to
do that, but that’s the exciting part––hoping
somebody’s life is a little bit better because I
spend all my time coding!”
She is also stimulated by the sheer variety
of scientific challenges she faces, including her
collaborations with researchers at NC State’s
College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM). She
works with Dr. Matthew Breen on canine can-cers,
using some of the same pharmacoge-nomic
techniques employed in the human
chemotherapy research.
“The dogs are a fascinating potential model
organism,” she said. “They aren’t in a lab.
They’re just dogs that come into the clinic. So
they’re exposed to the same things humans
are. They’re living in people’s homes and eat-ing
the same food (even if people think they’re
not). They get the same drugs that people get,
they get the same cancers, which look a whole
lot like human cancers, but there are so many
more questions we can ask with the dogs,
things we can investigate, data types you just
can’t get in humans. There have been some
very obvious connections.” She has also col-laborated
with Dr. Jorge Piedrahita from CVM
in his work in pigs as a model organism. “We
did mapping in pigs and then took those genes
into human populations to say, ‘You’re seeing
this in your pigs; do the same genes predict
that outcome in humans?’” she explained.
“That’s a really powerful way to identify genes,
and go back and forth.”
No End in Sight
Motsinger-Reif looks forward to making
more contributions in the future to improve
human health. “It’s been exciting to do the gene
mapping, and I’m hoping to carry through on
projects that are started, to be able to walk
these models into practice and see them get
translated and expanded,” she said. “The field
of pharmacogenomics has had a few really
good successes, and watching them build on
each other and expand to other drugs and
other predictors is very exciting. So I don’t
anticipate a dramatic shift, but would like to
keep doing more of the same and be able to
better develop how we properly translate this
—how we take it to the clinic.”
“That’s what gets me out of
bed: hoping to make some
contribution to human
health at the end of the day.
Statistics and bioinfor -
matics are what I’m using
to try to do that, but that’s
the exciting part—hoping
somebody’s life is a little
bit better because I spend
all my time coding!”
—Alison Motsinger-Reif
Avast, ye scurvy Homo erectus!
Recent archaeological finds from Crete
show that the first seafaring humans set sail
for parts unknown––or maybe parts barely
visible to the naked eye––more than 10 times
earlier than previously thought. So instead of
man settling the Greek island around 10,000
years ago, we now have evidence of human
activity there from at least 125,000 years ago,
and that’s the low end of the estimate.
How do we know? Because Crete, unlike
other islands in the Aegean, has been rising from
the sea at a rate of about one millimeter per
year. As Crete rose, and global sea levels fluctu-ated
due to growth and melting of continental
ice sheets, a series of marine terraces, or beaches,
formed on the island. Crete’s continual vertical
movement guaranteed that the beaches––and
the items left on them by early settlers––were
preserved. So when archaeologists from Greece
and the United States found stone tools of the
sort routinely used by Homo erectus on one of
those beaches, they determined how long ago
these tools were left behind by matching the
series of beaches to known sea levels, and then
extrapolating the age.
NC State’s Karl Wegmann, an assistant pro-fessor
in the Department of Marine, Earth and
Atmospheric Sciences, was asked to put the
tools in just this geological context.
“We started with the baseline radiocarbon
dating, using spiny oyster shells, which con-firmed
that the lowest of these beach terraces
was at least 45,000 to 50,000 years old,” Weg -
mann says. “That’s the upper limit from the
radiocarbon. From there, we knew that the age
of the beaches increased with time. Basically,
the formula is elevation divided by time.”
Now the scientists had proof that people
were on Crete much earlier than they thought.
But how did they get there? There wasn’t a land
route available at the time, and the shortest dis-tance
over water was about 10 kilometers or
around six miles––probably a bit too far to
swim. “They had to have used some sort of
boat,” says Wegmann, “although we will prob-ably
never find preserved evidence of one.”
For Wegmann, the implications go beyond
just dating the geology surrounding the civi-lization.
“We all have this idea that early man
wasn’t terribly smart,” he says. “This finding
shows otherwise––that our ancestors were
smart enough to build boats, and adventur-ous
enough to want to use them.”
Wegmann and his colleagues published
their findings in the July 2011 issue of the
Journal of Quaternary Science.
A version of this article originally appeared in
“The Abstract,” the official research blog of NC
State University News Services: web.ncsu.edu/
abstract.
8 ■ FALL 2011 | scope
PIRATES OF THE PALEOLITHIC:
Using geology to dig deeper into the
mysteries of our seafaring ancestors
COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS
In April, the American Mathematical Society
(AMS) named the NC State University Depart -
ment of Mathematics one of two winners of its
2011 “Mathematics Programs that Make a
Difference” award. The award recognizes NC
State’s “extraordinary record in serving students
who have traditionally been underrepresented
in mathematics, especially African Americans.”
Just last year, the department won the soci-ety’s
other departmental award, the AMS Award
for an Exemplary Program or Achievement in a
Mathematics Department. Nearly 1,400 math-ematics
departments are eligible for these two
awards. NC State is the first ever to win them in
back-to-back years. The text below is from the
award announcement on the AMS Website:
www.ams.org.
he recipient of last year’s AMS
Award for an Exemplary Program
or Achievement in a Mathematics
Department, the Department of
Mathematics at North Carolina
State University, has excelled in just about
everything mathematics departments do. This
time, the department was chosen for the
“Programs that Make a Difference” distinc-tion
for one particular achievement: its
extraordinary record in serving students who
have traditionally been underrepresented in
mathematics, especially African Americans.
According to the annual survey of mathe-matics
departments that the AMS and collab-orating
organizations prepare each year, the
nation’s main Ph.D.-producing mathematics
departments awarded doctorates to 73 African
Americans during the academic years 1999–
2000 to 2008–2009 (this counts U.S. citizens
only). Nine of these 73, or 12.3 percent, grad-uated
from NC State. And the university is not
an enormous producer of mathematics Ph.D.s
overall; in that same time period and within
that same group of mathematics departments,
NC State accounted for just 2 percent of the
total number of Ph.D.s produced. The depart-ment’s
impressive record has continued, with
a total of four additional African Americ ans
receiving their Ph.D.s in the 2009–2010 and
2010–2011 academic years.
What accounts for this achievement? One
factor is the department’s commitment, start-ing
more than a decade ago, to recruiting
domestic students into its graduate program.
Another factor is the substantial support the
department offers to students. An S-STEM
(Scholarships in Science, Technology, En -
gineering and Mathematics) grant from the
National Science Foundation provides finan-cial
support for all of the department’s African
American students during the first two years
in graduate school. A third factor in the depart-ment’s
success lies in the broad and flexible
nature of its graduate program. Students have
a wide variety of research areas to choose from,
and many opportunities are available to work
on interdisciplinary problems with researchers
in other university departments, in industry,
and in government laboratories.
The final, and perhaps most important, fac-tor
is the faculty’s commitment to students.
The department’s success with students from
underrepresented groups is not due to out-sized
efforts by a small number of faculty
members. Indeed, the 13 African Americans
who received their Ph.D.s in the department
during the academic years 1999–2000 to
2010–2011 were spread among 12 different
advisors.
scope | FALL 2011 ■ 9
Department of Mathematics makes history
with back-to-back AMS awards
T
COURTESY OF DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS
ovalent bonds: Stronger than
hydrogen and many ionic bonds,
covalent bonds are superior when
it comes to keeping atoms to gether.
However, even covalent bonds
seem weak when compared to the bond
between Molly Matty and her love for WKNC-FM.
Matty, a senior chemistry major from Port
St. Joe, Florida, was introduced to WKNC, NC
State’s student-run, alternative programming
radio station, through friends and the Double
Barrel Benefit, a two-day concert that serves as
the radio station’s largest fundraiser of the year.
Matty, who is also minoring in genetics,
began her time at the radio station as a disc
jockey––an interesting decision, considering
her immense dislike for the sound of her
recorded voice. Eventually, new relationships
won out over self-consciousness. “I never
wanted to be on the radio,” Matty recalls, “but
I ended up making so many friends, I stuck
with it.”
After working as a DJ, Matty took a posi-tion
as the station’s assistant promotions direc-tor
and began working with NC State’s Union
Activities Board and other campus organiza-tions
to promote events. While in the promo-tional
role, Matty was encouraged by a
colleague to apply for the general manager
position. She was elected unanimously to the
position by the Student Media Board at their
March 2011 meeting.
Stepping Outside Her Comfort
Zone…Again
Like anyone taking on a new challenge,
Matty had some reservations about becoming
WKNC’s general manager. She put a lot of
pressure on herself to live up to the station’s
45-year legacy, its 120 current staff members
and relatively large and diverse fan base. There
was also the matter of the time commitment.
Her new role added 20 hours a week at the sta-tion
to a 21-credit-hour course load. (It is
worth noting that she still managed to pull off
a 4.0 GPA last spring.)
Matty was also concerned that, as an out-of-
state student with no ties to North Carolina,
she would never know enough people in the
NC STATE’S
TOP
ROCKER:
PAMS
student
learns to
balance her
coursework
with her
role as GM
of WKNC
10 ■ FALL 2011 | scope
C
area to be successful building the relationships
she would need. As usual, she carefully assessed
the situation and confronted the challenge
head on. She spent her entire summer away
from her hometown to immerse herself in her
new North Carolina home. It seems now as
though she has met everyone in Raleigh–– or
at least everyone in the Raleigh music scene.
While the time commitments may be even
greater as she starts another academic year at
the helm, it seems as if nothing can dampen
her enthusiasm for the job. “At work, it’s all
fun,” she says. “I get to interview bands and go
to concerts. I get to help plan events that peo-ple
from across the Triangle can enjoy.”
The Long Road to Raleigh
Her success is likely due, at least in part, to
past experiences stepping outside her comfort
zone. Growing up as a self-described “quirky
girl” in a small town wasn’t always easy, so
Matty got involved in many activities and
organizations to expand her horizons and her
social circle. She also began taking online and
community college courses to give herself an
edge on the city kids she would be competing
against when applying to colleges.
Deciding on a college took some time for
Matty, who started her search in her home
state of Florida, but none of the options
impressed her. “They all seemed to overdo the
tropical flavor,” she recalls with a smile. “There
were too many palm trees and coconuts.”
She began to expand her search and settled
on the state of North Carolina as a top choice.
“Where could I be hot in the summer, but cold
in the winter; drive to the beach, but also see
colorful leaves and the mountains? Easy: North
Carolina.”
North Carolina seemed too far away at first,
but a visit from a representative of NC State’s
College of Physical and Mathe matical Sciences
on a student recruiting trip changed all that.
It was shortly thereafter that Matty learned
she was eligible for the Jacob & Betty Belin
Scholarship.
A native of Port St. Joe, Jacob Belin left
Florida for Raleigh in the late 1960s to major
in applied mathematics. Belin was so positively
influenced by his NC State experience that he
and his wife established a full-ride scholarship
to recruit worthy students from his hometown
and surrounding areas to campus.
While the Belin Scholarship made the deci-sion
to attend NC State a pretty easy one,
Matty still had a few second thoughts early on.
“I felt really tiny when I came to Raleigh,” she
recalls.
She made sure to stay on top of her aca-demics
while she adapted to the other aspects
of college life. She spent hours studying and
made sure to meet with all of her profes-sors––
which she has continued to do through-out
her NC State career. “I like to make sure my
professors know who I am,” she says. “I enjoy
getting to know them and it makes me more
comfortable asking them for help if I need it.”
In addition to a rigorous course load and
WKNC, Matty is a member of the University
Honors Program and has held various lead-ership
and service roles with Alternative Spring
Break, Habitat for Humanity and the NC State
Undergraduate Tutorial Center. She has also
conducted undergraduate research in the
departments of Chemistry, Genetics, and
Molecular and Structural Biochemistry.
As for the future, Matty plans to go on to
graduate school. Duke University and the
University of California, San Francisco are cur-rently
at the top of her list. She is considering
applying to a post-baccalaureate research pro-gram
at a National Institutes of Health facil-ity
in Research Triangle Park before heading
off to graduate school. “I feel like I just got con-nected
with Raleigh,” she says. “I’m not quite
ready to leave.”
Whenever she is ready to leave, her next stop
better be ready for her.
scope | FALL 2011 ■ 11
Molly Matty is equally at home in the CD stacks at WKNC-FM (left) and in the advanced synthetics
chemisty lab in Dabney Hall (above).
PHOTOS BY ALEX SANCHEZ
12 ■ FALL 2011 | scope
PHOTOS BY MELVIN MOORE AND STEVE TOWNSEND
MEET YOUR PAMS
The Advancement Office and the Office of Academic Affairs partnered this summer and fall to establish the PAMS Student Ambassador Program.
PAMS Ambassadors will participate in a variety of activities throughout the academic year. Their primary function is to serve as liaisons between
the college and the community and to help bridge the gap between past, present and future students.
PAMS Ambassadors are selected from faculty and staff nominations of students of high academic standing and outgoing and friendly demeanor.
Read on to learn more about our inaugural group.
NAME: Oindree Banerjee
MAJOR: Physics, Chemistry
GRADUATION YEAR: 2013
HOMETOWN: Kolkata, India
FAVORITE PAMS PROFESSOR:
Dr. Dean Lee, Dr. Stephen
Reynolds, Ms. Catherine Buell
OTHER ACTIVITIES: Tutor for
Student Support Services, Under -
graduate Research in Chemistry
NAME: Mary Burkey
MAJOR: Physics, Chemistry,
Applied Mathematics
GRADUATION YEAR: 2013
HOMETOWN: Garner, NC
FAVORITE PAMS CLASS:
Quantum Mechanics
OTHER ACTIVITIES: Dancing with
Wolves, PAMS Council, Society of
Physics Students, Honors Program
NAME: Logan Dawson
MAJOR: Meteorology, Marine
Science
GRADUATION YEAR: 2012
HOMETOWN: Birmingham, AL
FAVORITE PAMS CLASS:
Synoptic Weather Analysis
and Forecasting
FAVORITE PAMS PROFESSOR:
Dr. Gary Lackmann
NAME: Patrick Devore
MAJOR: Meteorology
GRADUATION YEAR: 2012
HOMETOWN: Raleigh, NC
FAVORITE PAMS PROFESSOR:
Dr. Gary Lackmann,
Dr. Jeremy Feducia
OTHER ACTIVITIES: Student
Government, Head of NCSU
Weather
NAME: Matthew Draelos
MAJOR: Chemistry/Biochemistry
GRADUATION YEAR: 2013
HOMETOWN: High Point, NC
PLANS AFTER GRADUATION:
Graduate School for Chemistry
OTHER ACTIVITIES: PAMS Council,
American Chemical Society,
Service Raleigh
NAME: Christian Hart
MAJOR: Chemistry
GRADUATION YEAR: 2014
HOMETOWN: Charlotte, NC
FAVORITE PAMS CLASS:
Organic Chemistry
PLANS AFTER GRADUATION:
Dental School
NAME: Ismail Kassim
MAJOR: Chemistry
GRADUATION YEAR: 2014
HOMETOWN: High Point, NC
PLANS AFTER GRADUATION:
Medical School
OTHER ACTIVITIES: Society of
African American Phys. & Math.
Scientists, Univer sity Honors
Program, Krispy Kreme Challenge
NAME: Adam Keith
MAJOR: Physics, Applied
Mathematics
GRADUATION YEAR: 2012
HOMETOWN: Raleigh, NC
FAVORITE PAMS CLASS:
Computational Physics
FAVORITE PAMS PROFESSOR:
Dr. Stephen Reynolds
AMBASSADORS
scope | FALL 2011 ■ 13
NAME: Elizabeth Kripner
MAJOR: Marine Science
GRADUATION YEAR: 2014
HOMETOWN: Lenoir, NC
FAVORITE PAMS PROFESSOR:
Dr. Kay Sandberg
OTHER ACTIVITIES: Mentor for
Women in Science and Engineering
(WISE)
NAME: Valeria Lozano
MAJOR: Statistics
GRADUATION YEAR: 2014
HOMETOWN: Prospect Hill, NC
FAVORITE PAMS PROFESSOR:
Dr. Jamila Simpson
OTHER ACTIVITIES: PAMS Council,
Mi Familia
NAME: Aaron Marcus
MAJOR: Applied Mathematics, Physics
GRADUATION YEAR: 2012
HOMETOWN: Cary, NC
FAVORITE PAMS CLASS: Differential
Equations 1 and 2
OTHER ACTIVITIES: PAMS Council
Treasurer, Math Honors Program,
University Scholars Program,
Undergraduate Research
NAME: Hadeer Metwally
MAJOR: Chemistry, Biochemistry
GRADUATION YEAR: 2013
HOMETOWN: Albemarle, NC
PLANS AFTER GRADUATION:
Medical School
OTHER ACTIVITIES: Research in
Neurochemistry, Teacher’s
Assistant for Organic
Chemistry Lab
NAME: Garrett E. Pangle
MAJOR: Physics
GRADUATION YEAR: 2012
HOMETOWN: Morgan City, LA
FAVORITE PAMS PROFESSOR:
Dr. Russell Philbrick
OTHER ACTIVITIES: Society of
Physics Students, Undergraduate
Research
NAME: Star-Lena J. Quintana
MAJOR: Mathematics
GRADUATION YEAR: 2013
HOMETOWN: Hagerstown, MD
FAVORITE PAMS CLASS: Calculus 3,
Differential Equations 1
OTHER ACTIVITIES: PAMS Council
President, Engineering Career
Fair Coordinator, University
Scholars Program
NAME: Mark Schillaci
MAJOR: Physics, Applied
Mathematics
GRADUATION YEAR: 2013
HOMETOWN: Wilmington, NC
PLANS AFTER GRADUATION:
Graduate School in Physics
OTHER ACTIVITIES: Society of
Physics Students, Society for
Undergraduate Mathematics
NAME: Meera Venkataraman
MAJOR: Statistics, Economics
GRADUATION YEAR: 2014
HOMETOWN: Portsmouth, VA
FAVORITE PAMS CLASS:
Introduction to Probability
OTHER ACTIVITIES: Raleigh Civic
Symphony Orchestra, CSLEPS
Leadership in Action Program
NAME: Bethany Vohlers
MAJOR: Statistics, Computer
Science
GRADUATION YEAR: 2014
HOMETOWN: Cary, NC
FAVORITE PAMS PROFESSOR:
Dr. Bill Swallow
PLANS AFTER GRADUATION:
Graduate School in Statistics
WHAT’S NEW WITH YOU?
Alumni and friends of the College of Physical and
Mathematical Sciences are encouraged to share your
latest success stories, update your contact information,
or submit any questions or comments to
pams_info@ncsu.edu.
obert J. Beichner, Alumni Dis tin -
guished Undergraduate Pro fessor
of Physics at NC State and a leader
in the research and development
of new technologies in STEM (sci-ence,
technology, engineering and mathemat-ics)
classrooms, has received the McGraw Prize
in Education. The other 2011 recipients are
Mitchel Resnick, professor of learning research,
MIT Media Lab; and Julie Young, president and
CEO, Florida Virtual School.
The McGraw Prize “recognizes outstanding
individuals who have dedicated themselves to
education innovation.” Honorees are chosen by
a panel of leading figures in the education com-munity
and receive a gift of $50,000.
In announcing his selection as a 2011 recip-ient,
the McGraw Foundation had the fol-lowing
to say about Beichner: “Robert
Beichner is an award-winning professor of
physics at North Carolina State University and
is receiving the prize for his work at the post-secondary
level. He has changed how students
learn in the science classroom not only on his
home campus, but at the more than 100 insti-tutions
of higher education that have adopted
SCALE-UP, an approach that uses digital tech-nology
combined with innovative teaching
approaches centered on hands-on activities
and roundtable discussions. He was named
an American Council on Education Fellow
for the 2010-2011 academic year and co-authored
the most widely used college physics
textbook in the country. Since 2007, he has
been the director of NC State’s STEM
Education Initiative, with a mission to study
and improve STEM education in North
Carolina and around the world.”
Past recipients of the McGraw Prize in
Education include former North Carolina
Governor Jim Hunt and first lady Barbara
Bush as well as current and former U.S. edu-cation
secretaries and senators. Please visit
www.mcgraw prize ined.com for more infor-mation.
Beichner named 2011 recipient of
McGraw Prize in Education
PHOTO BY MARC HALL
14 ■ FALL 2011 | scope
R Robert Beichner in action in one of NC State’s
SCALE-UP classrooms
n NC State astrophysicist hopes to
gain better understanding of one of
nature’s most elusive parti-cles––
neutrinos –– as well as the
supernovae that spawn them.
James Kneller, an assistant professor in the
Department of Physics, has received a five-year,
$750,000 Early Career Research Program
grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to
study how neutrinos interact with one another
in extremely hot and dense environments, such
as those found in galactic supernovae.
Neutrinos come in one of three types
which scientists refer to as “flavors.” Over the
past decade, physicists have found that a neu-trino’s
flavor is not fixed at the moment it is
created; rather neutrinos can change from one
flavor to another as they move along. By deter-mining
how and why this flavor mixing
occurs, scientists will be able to gain a better
understanding of the forces at work inside
galactic supernovae, and will also be able to
fill in some of the blanks concerning the prop-erties
of neutrinos.
Kneller’s project involves improving the way
scientists detect neutrino signals. This could
help researchers analyze the particles more accu-rately
and gain critical insight into both the par-ticles
themselves and what happens in the core
of a star during a supernova explosion.
Kneller earns DOE CAREER Award
APHOTO BY STEVE TOWNSEND
James Kneller
Tom Banks (Mathematics) and Robert
Beichner (Physics) were elected as Fellows
of the American Association for the Advanc -
ement of Science (AAAS). Each year, the AAAS
Council, the policymaking body of the society,
elects members whose “efforts on behalf of
the advancement of science or its applications
are scientifically or socially distinguished.”
Fellows are nominated by their peers and
undergo an extensive review process.
Zachary Clawson (B.S. ‘11 Applied Math e -
matics) has received a prestigious Na tion al
Science Foun dation Graduate Research
Fellowship. Clawson, a Caldwell Fellow who
conducted undergraduate research with Dr.
Robert Martin, is using his fellowship to pur-sue
graduate studies in applied mathematics
at Cornell University.
Daniel Comins (Chemistry) has been
awarded his 40th United States patent. Comins
and his former Ph.D. student, Emilie Smith,
were awarded U.S. patent number 7,888,512,
titled “Synthesis of Nicotine Derivatives from
Nicotine.” This patent came out of work in
Comins’ lab designed to synthesize nicotine
derivatives as potential pharmaceuticals that
may be useful in the treatment of multiple
human disorders, including Alzheimer’s dis-ease,
Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, mi -
graines, depression, pain and others.
Karen Daniels (Physics) has received a fel-lowship
from the Alexander von Humboldt
Foundation. Daniels is spending the 2011–2012
academic year at the Max Planck Institute for
Dynamics and Self-Organization in Gottingen,
Germany.
Marie Davidian (Statistics) received the 2011
Florence Nightingale David Award, which is
presented biennially by the Committee of
Presidents of Statistical Societies and the
Caucus for Women in Statistics. The award
recognizes a female statistician who exem-plifies
the contributions of Florence Nightin -
gale David, an accomplished statistician in
combinatorial probability theory.
Ilse Ipsen (Mathematics) was named a
Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied
Mathematics for her “contributions to numer-ical
linear algebra, perturbation theory, and
applications.” Ipsen is the fifth member of the
NC State Department of Mathematics to
achieve this distinction.
Maria Hernandez (B.S. ’82 Mathematics)
was inducted into the YWCA of the Triangle’s
Academy of Women. Hernandez, a teacher of
mathematics at the NC School of Science and
Mathematics, was honored in the “Science
and Technology” category.
Kay Sandberg (Chemistry) was named one
of the nation’s top 10 “Tough Love” professors
by MyEdu, a Website that compiled data from
800,000 student ratings at the nation’s 777
largest colleges and universities. To make the
list, a professor had to be well-regarded by
students, but the average class grade could
not be above a C.
John Thomas (Physics) has won the Jesse
W. Beams Award, given by the Southeastern
Section of the American Physical Society for
significant and meritorious research. Thomas,
Fritz London Professor Emeritus at Duke
University, recently moved his research pro-gram
to NC State’s Department of Physics.
Thomas is internationally known for his work
in atomic physics, most recently in the study
of atomic Fermi gasses.
Notables
PHOTO BY STEVE TOWNSEND
scope | FALL 2011 ■ 15
Kay Sandberg
Karen Daniels
PHOTO BY ROGER WINSTEAD
Chemistry:
Chris Gorman
Dr. Christopher Gor man
was se lected to s erve as chair of
the Depar tment of Chemistry,
effect ive July 1, 2011. Gorman
succeeded Morteza Khaledi,
who retur ned to the chemistry
faculty after ser ving two full
terms as chairman.
Gorman attended Drew University in
Madison, New Jersey, where he graduated
summa cum laude in 1987 w ith a B.A. in com-puter
science and chemistry, with specialized
honors in chemistry. He went on to earn a
Ph.D. from the California Institute of Tech -
nology in 1991. He wrote his thesis, titled
“Highly Conjugated Substituted Polyacetylenes
via the Ring-Opening Metathesis Polymeriza -
tion of Mono substituted Cycloocta te traenes,”
under the direction of Robert H. Grubbs, the
2005 recipient of the Nobel Prize in chemistry.
He went on to serve in postdoctoral research
positions at the NASA Jet Propulsion Labor -
atory and Harvard University before joining
the NC State faculty in 1994 as an assistant
professor. In 1999, he was promoted to asso-ciate
professor with tenure and, in 2003, he
achieved the rank of full professor.
Gorman’s research focuses on physical
organic, inorganic, organometallic, materials
and polymer chemistry. He has particular
interest in the design and synthesis of new
materials with interesting and useful optical
and elect ronic properties, particularly at
nanometer length scales. This work has led to
more than 70 scientific publications, more
than $10 million in research grants and six
patents.
Gorman has been recognized throughout
his career for his commitment to excellence in
research and teaching. Some of his awards
include the Unilever Award for Outstanding
Graduate Research in Polymer Chemistry;
California Institute of Technology Herbert
Newby McCoy Award for Outstanding
Research in Chemistry ; Young Investigator
awards from the Army Research Office and the
Office of Naval Research; and a National
Science Foundation Early Career Development
Award.
NC State’s histor y in the field of chemistry
dates back to the very beginning of the uni-versity.
William Alphonso Withers, a profes-sor
of chemistry, was one of the universit y’s
founding six faculty back in 1889. While we
have taught chemistry to our students ever
since, NC State’s research enterprise in chem-istry
has grown dramatically in the last two
decades. The department now conducts more
than $5 million annually in research and rou-tinely
leads the university –– by a wide mar-gin
–– in patent applications and issuances.
Marine,
Earth and
Atmospheric
Sciences:
Walt Robinson
Dr. Walter Robinson was
chos en to serve as head of the
Depar tment of Marine, Ear th
and At mospheric Sciences,
effect ive August 16, 2011.
Robinson succeeded John
Fountain, w ho re turned to the
faculty after nearly a decade of
service as department head.
Robinson received his B.S. and M.S. in
physics from the Universit y of Pennsylvania.
Follow ing a year measuring cosmic radiation
at McMurdo Station in Antarctica, he resumed
his studies and was awarded a Ph.D. in geo-logical
sciences from Columbia University in
1985. He then spent three years as a postdoc-toral
researcher at the University of
Washington before joining the faculty of the
Department of Atmos pher ic Sciences at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaig n,
where he remained until 2006, ultimately
achieving the rank of full professor.
Robinson then served for three years at the
National Science Foundation's Climate and
Large-Scale Dynamics Program, first as asso-ciate
director and then as director, before com-ing
to NC State in 2009 as a full professor.
Robinson’s research uses theory, compu-tational
models, and data analysis to under-stand
the dynamics of Earth’s atmosphere as
it relates to climate variability and climate
16 ■ FALL 2011 | scope
Three of the five academic departments in the
College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences
have experienced transitions in their leadership
during the last calendar year. While their names
and faces are likely familiar to many of you, here
is a brief introduction to the college’s new depart -
mental leaders.
Chris Gorman
PHOTO BY MARC HALL
PAMS WELCOMES NEW MEMBERS TO
change. He is best known for work on the
interactions between atmospheric eddies
(high- and low-pressure systems) and the
global-scale circulation of the atmosphere.
His current projects include studies of the
North Atlantic storm track and its responses
to climate change, analyses of observed and
modeled surface temperatures over the
United States, and the processes that cause
the atmospheric circulation over the Arctic
to change abruptly in the spring.
Robinson served for seven years as an edi-tor
of the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences,
and he is currently a member of the Advisory
Committee for Geosciences at the National
Science Foundation.
NC State’s Department of Marine, Earth
and Atmospheric Sciences is one of the
largest interdisciplinary earth systems depart-ments
in the nation. The department offers
graduate and undergraduate degrees in
atmospheric science/meteorology, geology
and marine science. The department’s multi-disciplinary
nature lends itself to the study
of such challenging problems as severe
weather forecasting, coastal erosion, surface
and ground water pollution and global cli-mate
change.
Statistics:
Montse Fuentes
Dr. Montserrat “Montse”
Fuentes was named head of the
Department of Statistics, effec-tive
July 1, 2011. She succeeded
Sastry Pantula, who vacated the
headship to serve as director of
the National Science Founda -
tion’s Division of Mathematical
Sciences in the Mathematical
and Physical Sciences
Directorate. Peter Bloomfield
served as interim head during
the transition.
Fuentes received her B.S. in mathematics
and music from the University of Valladolid
in Spain, and her Ph.D. in statistics from the
University of Chicago. She spent six months
as a postdoctoral researcher in the National
Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
before joining NC State in 1999 as an assistant
professor. In 2003, she was appointed to asso-ciate
professor with tenure and, in 2008, she
achieved the rank of full professor.
Fuentes’ work has led to the development
of new statistical methods that she applies to
air pollution, weather prediction, hurricane
forecasting and environmental health risk
assessment problems. This work has led to
more than 60 scientific publications and more
than 20 research grants, with total funding of
more than $10 million.
Widely considered and utilized as an advi-sor
and expert in her field, Fuentes currently
serves on the Institute of Mathematical Statistics
Council; as a scientific advisor to the Environ -
mental Protection Agency’s Integrated Human
Exposure Committee; and as the U.S. represen -
tative on the Board of Directors of the Intern -
ational Environmetrics Society. She also served
as a member of the Biostatistical Methods and
Research Design study section of the National
Institutes of Health and a member of a com-mittee
of the National Research Council of the
National Academies working on the impact of
ozone on human mortality.
Fuentes was elected as a fellow of the Amer -
ican Statistical Association in 2008 for out-standing
contributions to research in spatial
statistics, for excellence in the development and
application of statistical methodology in atmos-pheric
sciences, air pollution and ocean ography;
and for service to the profession. She is the edi-tor
of the Journal of Agricultural, Biological, and
Environmental Statistics (JABES), a joint pub-lication
of the American Statistical Association
and the International Biometric Society.
NC State has a long tradition of excellence in
statistics, beginning with the founding of the
Department of Experimental Statistics by
Gertrude Cox in 1941. Faculty and students in
the department have made countless contribu-tions
to the discipline and profession of statistics
in the decades since. Notably, the depart ment
was the birthplace of SAS, which is today the
largest privately owned software company in the
world. NC State now ranks among the top four
programs in the nation in competitive research
and development funding in the mathematical
and statistical sciences.
scope | FALL 2011 ■ 17
PHOTO BY STEVE TOWNSEND
PHOTO BY MARC HALL
Walt Robinson Montse Fuentes
ITS LEADERSHIP TEAM
The College of Physical and Mathe matical
Sciences has announced the establishment of
the John S. Risley Distinguished Professor ship
in the Department of Physics. The professor-ship
was made possible by a gift from John and
Dellaine Risley that, with matching funds, will
provide a $1 million endowment to provide
salary and other support in perpetuity for a
senior faculty member.
John Risley is a longtime NC State faculty
member and the founder and CEO of Raleigh-based
Advanced Instructional Systems. He
joined the Department of Physics in 1976 after
earning his Ph.D. at the University of Washing -
ton. Trained as an atomic physicist, he became
interested in the application of computer tech-nology
to teach physics in the early 1980s.
In 1997, Aaron Titus, a graduate student,
and Larry Martin, a visiting professor from
North Park University in Chicago working in
Risley’s lab, created the first version of Web
Assign, a unique online service that enabled
students to complete their homework and have
it automatically graded online (see more on
WebAssign on the following page).
The Risley Professorship will be the first
named professorship awarded in the history
of the NC State Department of Physics. It is
the second professorship established in the
department, overall, joining an endowment
made possible by a 2008 planned gift from
Risley’s colleague, Brand Fortner.
“I think it says a lot that now a second fac-ulty
member, who has such intimate knowl-edge
of the department––and his spouse, who
probably knows more about it than she’d care
to admit––have such confidence in the path
of the department and such a strong com-mitment
to its continued success,” said PAMS
Dean Dan Solomon.
Two gifts are better than one
The establishment of an endowed profes-sorship
wasn’t the only way John and Dellaine
Risley showed their confidence in the future of
the Department of Physics. The Risleys have
also committed a substantial planned gift––a
will bequest of 10 percent of their estate––to
the department.
Such gifts are extremely important in pro-viding
departmental and college leadership
with the flexibility to respond to unforeseen
challenges or opportunities. These funds have
been used in the past for such purposes as
supplementing faculty start-up packages or
scholarship or stipend funding for top under -
graduate and graduate students.
Planned, or deferred, gifts can often be
financially beneficial to the donor and recip-ient.
According to Anita Stallings, PAMS asso-ciate
dean for advancement, donors are
increasingly looking to include such giving in
their financial, retirement and estate plans.
“Planned gifts come in many sizes and vari-eties,”
Stallings says. “Most people are familiar
with the traditional will bequest, but there are
all sorts of ways to plan deferred gifts of real
property, IRAs, life insurance or other assets
that can actually increase the donor’s income
or reduce their tax burden in the near term.”
To support the Risley Professorship or for
more information on establishing your own
endowment or planned gift in PAMS, please
contact the Office of College Advancement at
pams_dev@ncsu.edu or 919-515-3462.
PHOTO BY BRAND FORTNER
John and Dellaine Risley with
Physics Department Head Michael Paesler
and Dean Dan Solomon
Risleys establish endowed physics professorship
18 ■ FALL 2011 | scope
scope | FALL 2011 ■ 19
ll good professors hope to make an
impact on the students they teach.
Very few can say they’ve had the
impact John Risley has had on
the learning experience of mil-lions
of students at high schools, colleges and
universities around the world through his work
developing WebAssign.
WebAssign was spun off from the Depart -
ment of Physics as part of Advanced Instruc -
tional Systems, Inc., in 2003. Under Risley’s
guidance, the software and the company––
which is headquartered on NC State’s Centen -
nial Campus––have experienced continued
growth and success.
The company currently boasts more
than 140 employees. To date, more than
five million students have used WebAssign
to submit over a billion answers to home-work
assignments, tests and practice prob-lems.
During any one academic term, more
than 500,000 students are using WebAssign
at over 1,500 educational institutions
world wide.
In November, the NC State University
Office of Technology Transfer recognized
Risley for his continued work to grow and
develop WebAssign and Advanced Instruc -
tional Sys tems. Risley was one of four hon-orees
at the university’s 22nd annual
Cele bration of Innovation and Entrepre -
neurship, where he was named an Entre -
preneur of the Year.
Risley named Entrepreneur of the Year
PHOTO BY DAO NGUYEN
John Risley
A
How to
make a gift
You may remember how difficult it was to
manage the expense of higher education. You
may want to help today’s students achieve
their dreams.
The PAMS Foundation provides many ways
to support students, faculty and programs of
the college. Whether you want to contribute to
an existing scholarship, support a departmental
enhancement fund, make a memorial gift or
consider support in other areas, our staff is
available to help you explore the options.
To support existing funds
To contribute to a scholarship, fellow ship
or other fund, fill out our secure, online gift
form at www.pams.ncsu.edu/give or mail a
check to the PAMS Foundation, Campus Box
8201, Raleigh, NC, 27695. Make checks
payable to PAMS Foundation and write the
name of the fund on the “notes” or “for” line.
If your employer provides matches for char-itable
donations, please send a completed
matching gift form with your contribution.
There are many funds not mentioned in this
issue of Scope. For a full list of funds, visit
www.pams.ncsu.edu/development/funds.php
or contact our office.
To explore other options
If you have questions about gift planning,
we can help you identify tax benefits, choose
between permanent endowment versus one-time
support, and explore estate planning or
life-income options.
There are many ways to match your inter-ests
with specific college needs, and several
possibilities for making your vision a reality.
Whether using cash, appreciated stock, real
estate or a bequest, we can help you find the
best way to make the most of your gift.
Contact us at 919-515-3462 or by e-mail at
pams_dev@ncsu.edu.
20 ■ FALL 2010 | scope
Sharing the excitement of scientific discov-ery
with a broad audience is a vital part of the
mission of the College of Physical and Mathe -
matical Sciences. We will have some wonderful
opportunities to do so in the coming months
as the entire state of North Carolina–– and the
Research Triangle, in particular–– becomes cen-ter
stage for science throughout 2012.
Science Online
January 19–21––McKimmon Center,
NC State University
http://scienceonline2012.com/
ScienceOnline is a gathering of researchers,
bloggers, reporters, authors and students who
are passionate about science. And they’re not
just passionate about science research, but
about communicating to the world about sci-ence.
Frankly, we need more of that. Research
shows that only 28 percent of adults in the U.S.
are scientifically literate enough to understand
the Tuesday Science section of the New York
Times. Scientific advances are becoming
increasingly complex, and those advances pres-ent
opportunities and risks that we––as a soci-ety––
will have to deal with.
NC Science Festival
April 13–29––Statewide
www.ncsciencefestival.org
The NC Science Festival is a multi-day cele-bration
showcasing science and technology.
The festival highlights the educational, cul-tural
and financial impact of science in our
state. Through hands-on activities, science
talks, lab tours, nature experiences, exhibits
and performances, the festival engages a wide
range of public audiences while inspiring
future generations. The NC Science Festival
and others like it offer an opportunity to cel-ebrate
science in fun and welcoming settings.
This festival provides the opportunity to cul-tivate
a positive environment that encourages
children to pursue science-related careers and
encourages businesses to invest in North
Carolina. Most importantly, scientists want
everyone to know what they know––that sci-ence
is fun!
PAMS Scope Academy
April 14––NC State University College of
Physical and Mathematical Sciences
www.pams.ncsu.edu/weekend
PAMS invites you to “Join Us in Discovery”
and explore today’s exciting frontiers in chem-istry;
mathematics; physics; statistics; marine,
earth and atmospheric sciences; and more.
Sponsored by the NC State University Physical
and Mathematical Sciences Foundation, Scope
Academy has quickly grown into
the university’s premier scientific
education outreach program. The
2012 edition features student poster
presentations and classroom sessions, led by
PAMS faculty, on some of today’s most
thought-provoking topics. The highlight of
the event is a keynote address on “Communi -
cating Science” by Margaret D. Lowman (a.k.a.
“Canopy Meg”), the director of the new Nature
Research Center at the NC Museum of Natural
Sciences and a research professor of natural
sciences in PAMS.
Nature Research Center
Grand Opening
April 20–21––NC Museum of Natural Sciences
http://naturesearch.org
The Nature Research Center (NRC) is a new
80,000-square-foot wing of the North Carolina
Museum of Natural Sciences in downtown
Raleigh. The NRC will bring research scien-tists
and their work into the public eye, help
demystify what can be an intimidating field of
study, better prepare science educators and
students, and inspire a new generation of
young scientists. The centerpiece of the NRC
will be the SECU Daily Planet, an immersive,
three-story multi-media space that will link
virtual to real nature and be the site of live pro-gramming
on breaking science news.
ScienceWriters 2012
October 26–30––Research Triangle, NC
www.sciencewriters2012.org
ScienceWriters is the joint annual meeting of
the two largest and most influential profes-sional
organizations for science journalists: the
Council for the Advancement of Science
Writing (CASW) and the
National Association of Science
Writers (NASW). ScienceWriters is
held in a different city each year and
typically attracts 350 international partici-pants
over a three-day span, with added days
before and after for intensive tours of local sci-ence-
oriented venues. Hosting this meeting
is an opportunity to showcase a region’s best
science, its most impressive venues, and its
most appealing researchers in a way that will
make these journalists and authors take note
and want to explore further. Planning for this
event is being spearheaded by science and
research communications leaders from Duke,
NC State, and the UNC campuses in Chapel
Hill and Charlotte, with an ever-growing list
of educational and corporate partners.
COURTESY OF NC MUSEUM OF NATURAL SCIENCES PHHOTO BY MARC HALL
SAVE
THE DATE
April 14, 2012
scope
academy
North Carolina’s Year of Communicating Science
Nature Research Center
NCSU Physical and Mathematical
Sciences Foundation
Campus Box 8201
110 Cox Hall
Raleigh, North Carolina 27695-8201
pams_dev@ncsu.edu
919-515-3462
Through careful coordination with your financial planner and the PAMS Foundation,
it is possible for you to increase income or reduce taxes––including income, capital
gains, gift, and estate taxes––while making a greater investment in the future of PAMS
than you ever thought possible.
Deferred, or planned, gifts come in many shapes and sizes. Contact us today for more
information on achieving financial security for you and PAMS through:
n beneficiary designations for wills, trusts and retirement plans
n charitable gift annuities
n charitable remainder trusts
n charitable lead trusts
n remainder interest in a residence or farm
n life insurance
How can you secure a legacy for
yourself and the College of Physical and
Mathematical Sciences all at the same
time? By ensuring that your financial,
retirement and estate plans are in
order, and considering a deferred gift
to the PAMS Foundation in the process.
NC STATE UNIVERSITY
E n s u r e t w o L E G A C I E S
College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences
North Carolina State University
Campus Box 8201
Raleigh, North Carolina 27695–8201
NC STATE UNIVERSITY Nonprofit Org
US Postage
PAID
Raleigh, NC
Permit #2353
Sponsored by the NC State University Physical & Mathematical Sciences Foundation
“Join Us in Discovery” and explore today’s exciting frontiers in chemistry;
mathematics; physics; statistics; marine, earth and atmospheric sciences;
and more.
SATURDAY, APRIL 14
9:00 a.m. — Registration and Poster Session
Chat with PAMS students and faculty as you browse posters highlighting
some of their exciting current research projects.
10:00 a.m. — Scope Seminars
Engage your brain in intriguing discussions on today’s most thought-provoking
scientific topics, led by our outstanding faculty.
11:00 a.m. — Scope Lecture
Presented by Margaret D. Lowman (a.k.a. “Canopy Meg”). Lowman is the director
of the new Nature Research Center at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences and a
research professor of natural sciences in PAMS, where she focuses on initiatives
involving science communication to the public.
12:30 p.m. — BBQ Lunch
Provided by Backyard Bistro
Cost for the lunch is $10; pre-registration will be required.
REGISTRATION INFORMATION
Online registration for Scope Academy will be available at
www.pams.ncsu.edu/weekend beginning in January. For information
in the meantime, please contact the PAMS Office of College Advancement
at pams_dev@ncsu.edu or 919-515-3462.
SAVE
the
DATE
scope
academy
2012