Food Science & Technology Chair Ken Lee is autumn commencement speaker

1,700 to earn degrees in Dec. 7 ceremony

Ken Lee, chair of the Department of Food Science and Technology, will be the featured speaker at autumn quarter's commencement ceremony, which will take place at 9:30 a.m. Dec. 7 in St. John Arena. Approximately 1,700 students will earn degrees this quarter.

Lee said that during his commencement speech, he plans to give the students a chance to reflect on their college careers.

"I would like to talk about what they think they know and what they really have learned at Ohio State," he said.

Ken Lee, chair of the Department of Food Science and Technology, will be the featured speaker at autumn quarter's commencement ceremony.

Lee has been a professor in the Department of Food Science and Technology in Ohio State's College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences since 1990. As chair of the department, which is housed in the new $17 million Parker Food Science and Technology Building, Lee leads the teaching and research efforts of an award-winning faculty.

Lee joined Ohio State's faculty after serving for 10 years in the Department of Food Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he instructed the university's first live cable television course. He earned his B.S. degree in food science from Rutgers University in 1975 and his Ph.D. in food science and nutrition from the University of Massachusetts in 1980.

He is a nationally recognized expert on the nutritional effects of food processing and has written more than 50 articles for scientific journals in his field. His research includes mineral availability from cured meats, analysis of nutrient inhibitors, mineral binding by dietary fiber, oxidized cholesterol compounds in foods, nitrate metabolism and analysis in foods, anti-nutrients in tea and hydrocolloids in dairy foods.

Lee served on the National Academy of Sciences Planning Committee for review of doctoral programs in agriculture and nutrition and on the steering committee for Project Reinvent, a Kellogg Foundation-sponsored initiative to design the land-grant university of 2020.

When Executive Vice President and Provost Edward J. Ray approached him about being the commencement speaker, Lee was excited about the opportunity to give Ohio State's graduates a final farewell worthy of their accomplishments. "I am going to try to live up to that task," he said.

During the graduation ceremony, five individuals will be honored. Three will receive honorary doctorates, and two will receive the University's Distinguished Service Award. Honorees are:

One of the most influential astrophysicists in the world, John Bahcall is the Richard Black Professor of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. He has held a position as visiting lecturer with the rank of professor at Princeton University for 30 years.

Bahcall played a major role in the development and success of the Hubble Space Telescope, receiving the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal in 1992 for his scientific work and leadership. He held several leadership roles with the National Academy of Sciences during the 1990s, serving as chair of its Survey Committee for Astronomy and Astrophysics from 1989 to 1991. During his tenure, the committee successfully set priorities for astrophysical research projects. He also served as president of the American Astronomical Society from 1990 to 1992.

Paul E. Bierley is a historian, musician, scholar, lecturer and, before a major career change, an aeronautical engineer.

A 1953 graduate of Ohio State with a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering, Bierley worked as an engineer for North American Aviation. Following his retirement from the engineering field, he devoted his time to pursuing his love of music, especially the life and works of John Philip Sousa. A lifelong musician, he played the tuba with the Columbus Symphony Orchestra from 1965 to 1980 and with the Detroit Concert Band from 1973 to 1993.

Bierley has written the definitive works on Sousa, considered to be the most important figure in the development of the great band tradition in the United States. Through the publication of three works -- John Philip Sousa, American Phenomenon (1973), John Philip Sousa: A Descriptive Catalog of His Works (1973) and The Works of John Philip Sousa (1984) -- he has provided complete documentation of Sousa's career.

Bierley formed his own publishing house, Integrity Press, in Westerville to make available books about band music and musicians that might not find publishers elsewhere.

Internationally recognized as one of the world's preeminent research chemists, F.A. Cotton is the W.T. Doherty-Welch Foundation Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and director of the Laboratory for Molecular Structure and Bonding at Texas A&M University.

Cotton's research has been in the fields of inorganic chemistry, protein chemistry, structural chemistry and chemical bonding. He is the originator of and leading authority in the field of compounds containing single and multiple bonds between metal atoms. His other principal contributions have dealt with protein structure, spectroscopic studies of metal carbonyls and the dynamic behavior of fluxional organometallic and metal carbonyl compounds.

William E. Arthur is the former chairman of the law firm of Porter, Wright, Morris & Arthur and its business law department. He is now counsel to the firm.

Born and raised in Columbus, Arthur earned a B.S. in business administration in 1950 and a J.D. in 1953 from Ohio State. Immediately after law school, he served with the U.S. Air Force in the Judge Advocate General's office. Upon returning to Columbus, he joined the Ohio State College of Law faculty for one year. He joined Porter, Stanley, Treffinger & Platt (now Porter, Wright, Morris & Arthur) in December 1955 and has been active as a business lawyer since that time. He acts as general counsel, officer and director of a number of local corporations.

Arthur has remained a close friend to his alma mater since his student days. He served on the Alumni Association's Board of Directors, and played a leading role in the financial planning for the Longaberger Alumni House.

A longtime member of the Fisher College of Business Dean's Advisory Council, Arthur was instrumental in establishing a College of Business Alumni Society. In 1995, he and his wife Mary Ann established an endowment fund to benefit the Fisher College, enabling several faculty members to pursue research interests regarding the service sector of the economy.

Floradelle Pfahl has long been an enthusiastic supporter of Ohio State and of the civic, cultural and community life of Columbus.

A graduate of the University of Akron with a B.S. in education, Pfahl worked briefly at Ohio State after graduating from college, first as assistant to the state home demonstration leader and later as assistant to the dean of women. Since then, her service to Ohio State has been unstinting.

As co-chair of the Fisher College of Business Campaign Committee, she played a leading role in raising $95.2 million in support of management education. The result of the committee's efforts and her commitment is the new Fisher College complex that includes John K. Pfahl Hall, the executive education center named for her late husband, a Columbus business consultant and Ohio State professor of business, who earned his MBA and Ph.D. degrees from the University.

New curriculum combines medical, business training

Beginning next year, medical students at the Ohio State College of Medicine and Public Health will have the opportunity to learn as much about balance sheets and business plans as they do the treatment for broken bones and the flu.

The College of Medicine and the Fisher College of Business have established a new MD/MBA curriculum that combines medical training with instruction in business principles.

Fred Sanfilippo, senior vice president for health sciences and dean of the College of Medicine and Public Health, said practicing medicine today requires more knowledge about business than it did several years ago.

"To practice medicine successfully, medical students will need to understand the economics of the health care system and be able to integrate good management skills into their practices," Sanfilippo said. "Managed care and ongoing changes in billing and reimbursement practices make a business background all the more valuable, whether physicians are managing their own practice or working in a group practice.

"In particular, for some of our medical students, the business training will prepare them for careers in administrative positions."

In addition to the MD/MBA program, the College of Medicine and Public Health also offers an MD/Ph.D. degree program and other dual degree programs combining the medical degree with a master's degree in public health or master's degree in health administration.

Joseph A. Alutto, dean of the Fisher College of Business, said the partnership with the medical school offers a tremendous opportunity for students.

"The MD/MBA option will give medical students the business expertise they will need as they launch their professional careers in a very challenging health care environment," Alutto said. "Whether the new physicians delegate administrative duties or handle them directly, understanding the functional business operations is a valuable complement to their medical expertise as they work to build and strengthen their practices."

Initially, four to five medical students will be accepted into the Ohio State MD/MBA program annually. The five-year program -- one more year than the traditional medical training but one less than if the two degree programs were pursued separately -- combines comprehensive training in both fields. The first two years of training are spent in medical school and the third taking MBA courses. The fourth year entails additional medical training, and the fifth year is a combination of the two programs.

Jim Hamilton, a second-year medical student from Dayton, has promoted the establishment of the MD/MBA program at Ohio State and is among the program's initial group of students, to begin study in the fall of 2002.

"I'm looking for more involvement in the medical technology field after I graduate," said Hamilton, who works in a biomedical lab on campus and sees the growing entrepreneurial practice of selling or licensing rights to new discoveries and ideas to companies. "I want to have a role in the actual research, but once the idea leaves the lab bench, that's where I see my MBA kicking in."

Of universities offering MD/MBA degrees, Ohio State is one of only five in the country that have a medical school ranked in the top 50 for research and primary care and a business school ranked in the top 25, according to U.S. News & World Report magazine's ranking of colleges.

See related memo on part-time MBA program

Physics boasts Bose-Einstein condensation experts

By Kevin Fitzsimons Pioneering researcher Jason Ho says the emerging field promises to continue to offer new findings and areas of study.

New field is gaining worldwide attention

Einstein predicted it more than 70 years ago, but physics experimentalists couldn't produce it until 1995. Tin-Lun (Jason) Ho, professor of physics at Ohio State, is among the pioneers furthering the research on this particular behavior of atoms: Bose-Einstein condensation.

"My family still doesn't understand what I'm working on," he said, smiling.

The Ohio State Department of Physics boasts two outstanding researchers in the field that was the specialty of the scientists who won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics.

At OSU, in addition to Ho, Professor Eric Braaten also works in this area. "We have good representation in this field," Ho said.

Ho was recently invited to bring his crystal ball to a panel discussion and workshop organized by Harvard and MIT. Although not typically a fortune-teller, the professor was happy to offer his view of where the field is headed, concluding: "We haven't seen anything yet!"

"Of course," he added, "that was my prediction three years ago at another international conference. Many new developments did occur over the past three years. And if the recent history is any predictor, we shall see many more new things in the next decade."

The research at Ohio State is responsible for a number of theoretical developments in the field. Ho, a condensed matter physicist who will be appointed Distinguished Professor of Mathematical and Physical Sciences in January 2002, is a pioneer in two major areas of study in the field: two-component Bose gas and Spinor Bose condensates. Braaten, a high energy physicist, is a world expert in field theoretic approaches to Bose-Einstein condensation.

"This field is highly interdisciplinary, pulling together researchers from at least five different areas of research: atomic and molecular, condensed matter, high energy, nuclear and quantum computations," Ho explained. "As is often the case in science, progress made in one area often benefits another."

The theory of Bose-Einstein condensation came shortly after Einstein's theory of relativity. The story goes that he received a letter from Bose, from India, who proposed to consider a system of particles that behave identically. Einstein then pointed out that such a system could condense at sufficiently low temperatures in the absence of interaction. This is surprising because typical condensation in substances such as water requires interactions between the atoms. Bose was awarded a Nobel Prize some years later and his system of indistinguishable particles is known as "Bose gas."

To visualize how these systems of particles might behave, imagine Ohio Stadium on a football Saturday -- only each fan is actually an atom in a Bose gas. On a hot day, every fan behaves differently. But as the temperature drops below the effective level, everyone would behave identically -- if one person raises an arm, everyone would raise an arm. One person's actions are now tremendously amplified. "This is very much how atoms in a Bose gas behave."

There are many reasons for the explosion of research activities in Bose-Einstein condensation: the rapid advance in experimental methods, a great diversity of Bose gases in nature and the promise of technological application.

"There have been many major advances every year since the discovery in 1995," Ho said. "This year is particularly exceptional. One example is the recent report by a German group citing the production of condensed Bose gas on a chip. This immediately opens a brand new area of research.

"I have never seen any field like this," Ho continued. "This is year six after the original discovery and the field is more exciting than day one. I have to conclude, we haven't seen anything yet!"

OSU's Cancer Center is a 'hero of hope'

The American Cancer Society (ACS) has bestowed its first 2001 Heroes of Hope Award to 10 scientists at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center (OSUCCC) for their work in advancing cancer research in the state of Ohio.

The ACS has awarded over $2.2 million to 10 grantees at Ohio State, funding investigators in the early stages of their careers, when grant money is often scarce. The grantees at the OSUCCC include: Michael A. Caligiuri, Robert J. Lee, Louis M. Mansky, Mark R. Parthun, Cynthia D. Timmers, Harald Vaessin, Sharla M. Wells, Sung O. Yoon, Michael B. Weinsten and K. Mark Anderson.

Clara Bloomfield, director of the OSUCCC, in accepting the award on behalf of the grantees, said the money is being well spent. "Our investigators are pursuing novel and productive areas of research," she said. "They are looking into such things as intra-cell communication and how that affects the process of cell death, as well as broad, sociological questions, like how partners of patients with recurrent breast cancer affect their health and well-being."

"Researchers like these are heroes of hope to 58,000 Ohioans who will be diagnosed with cancer this year and to so many others," said Don McClure, CEO of the society's Ohio Division.

The American Cancer Society is the largest private, nonprofit source of funding for scientists studying cancer in the United States. Thirty-two former society grantees have gone on to win the Nobel Prize.

The OSUCCC is a research consortium of more than 200 investigators in 12 colleges across the Ohio State campus dedicated to the prevention, detection, diagnosis and treatment of cancer. It generates nearly $60 million annually in external funding.

next page...