Page One
• Princeton selected as home for NSF center on sensor technology
• Communiversity 2006
Inside
• Four honored for their work mentoring graduate students
• Diversity rises in Graduate School applications
• Albright, Breyer share experiences
• Q&A with Robert Wuthnow
People
• Through images and words, Dale winner will explore Old West
• Sophomores win Dale Summer Awards
• Spotlight, briefs
Almanac
• Nassau notes
• Calendar of events
• By the numbers
People
Christine Kitto (photo by John Jameson)
Spotlight
Name: Christine Kitto.
Position: Special collections assistant, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library. Managing publications that come to the library for the University Archives and public policy collections, ranging from senior theses and doctoral dissertations to Daily Princetonians and policy books. Coordinating access and reproduction of visual materials such as historical photographs, political cartoons and architectural drawings. Helping to curate exhibitions, including the current display of Reunions wear, “Going Back in Orange and Black.”
Quote: “We cast a wide net here at Mudd, working with students, staff and faculty from the University community and with researchers from all over the world, which makes for an interesting job that it is always very different and very engaging. I have a background in art history, so I particularly enjoy helping patrons with our visual materials.”
Other interests: Reading. Listening to all kinds of music. Gardening. Traveling.
Briefs
Two members of the Princeton faculty were elected to the Nation- al Academy of Sciences during the academy’s annual meeting April 25 in Washington, D.C. The scholars were among 72 elected in recognition of their outstanding achievements in research.
Bonnie Bassler, professor of molecular biology, researches a phenomenon called “quorum sensing,” a method that bacteria use for sensing how many other bacteria are in their vicinity. A better understanding of quorum sensing could help with the fight against diseases such as cholera, whose bacteria often grow virulent only when they have established a significant presence in their host. Bassler was awarded a 2002 MacArthur Fellowship and last year was chosen to be a young investigator by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Lyman Page Jr., the Henry DeWolf Smyth Professor of Physics, measures variations in the cosmic microwave background — the thermal afterglow of the big bang — in order to understand how the universe evolved. Page is one of the original co-investigators of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite, a spacecraft that recently provided evidence for what happened in the universe’s first trillionth of a second.
Staff retirements
Effective April 1: in housing, office support staff member Bonnie Brown, after 11 years; in chemistry, purchasing agent Janet Chrisman, after 24 years.