OARS Innovation and networking event Thursday

From Heather Johnston, OARS:

Sponsored by Miami University’s Office for the Advancement of Research and Scholarship in collaboration with the Office of the President, this event for the Miami community, area business and industry leaders, and the public will be held on Thursday, January 24. Sessions include the following:

10:00am-11:30am (322 McGuffey Hall) — Plenary Session involving TED Talk-like presentations from innovators representing regional business and industry, local government, business incubators, and Miami University alumni.

11:30am-12:00pm (322 McGuffey Hall) — “Leveraging Academics and Business: A New Approach for Innovation at Miami University,” presented by Jim Oris, Associate Provost for Research.

1:30pm-2:30pm (320 King Library) — Burr Zimmerman of Urban Venture Group will lead a session on forming partnerships and applying for Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grants.

2:30pm-3:00pm (320 King Library) — Xiao-Wen Cheng, of the Microbiology Department, will talk about his experience in the I-Corps@Ohio program.

2:45pm-5:00pm — Burr Zimmerman will be available for individual grant application coaching for Miami faculty in 15-minute sessions.

Coffee and lunch are included. To attend, please register by Wednesday. More information can be found here.

M.I.A.M.I. WOMEN grant due Feb 1

From Heidi Bortel in Women’s Initiatives:

Students, staff and faculty members of any Miami University campus are encouraged to apply for a M.I.A.M.I. WOMEN Giving Circle grant ranging from $2,500 to $20,000.
The deadline to apply is Feb. 1. Applications are available online.

Grant proposals may include programs, research, events, student organization projects and more.

M.I.A.M.I. WOMEN awarded nearly $104,000 in Giving Circle grants to students and faculty during the annual Leadership Symposium on April 12, 2018. Finalists pitched their projects the previous evening at the inaugural Hawk Tank event.

Project recipients from 2017-2018 included Miami Women’s Hockey ($20,000), Girls Who Code ($3,000), Leadership on Campus and Beyond ($9,126 ), Opening Minds through Art (OMA) ($7,500) and more.

All grant applications are reviewed by the M.I.A.M.I. WOMEN grants committee, a selection of individuals including faculty, Giving Circle Members and alumnae.

Grant finalists will present during the Hawk Tank fast-pitch event on April 10, 2019.

Input on Miami’s upcoming strategic plan

From Vaishali, who is a member of the newly-formed university strategic planning committee (thank you!):

President Crawford has formed a steering committee to create a comprehensive, mission-driven, and sustainability-centered strategic plan for the next five years for Miami. The strategic priorities are: academic excellence, excellence in research and scholarship, transformative student experience, diversity and inclusion, financial sustainability, and a national university. See here for more information.
If you have any input about any of these priorities, and specifically about research and scholarship (a subcommittee that I am co-chairing), please let me know.

CIQS female recruiting event

Please see below an event organized by Lynette Hudiburgh, STA/CTE, to recruit female high school students. She would be grateful to have participation from faculty, graduate students, and/or undergraduates in Psychology, in particular:

Please mark your calendars so that you can join us for CIQS (Careers Involving Quantitative Skills) Day 2019, tentatively set for Tuesday, January 8, from 9:00 – 2:00, to recruit talented young high school females to study quantitative and science subjects in college. An alternate date of Thursday, January 10, has been set in case of inclement weather. This will be our Fifth Annual CIQS Day.

The Department of Statistics, in partnership with the College of Education, Health, & Society, and StatHawks sponsors CIQS Day: an annual event exclusively for female high school students. For this event we will invite such students from high schools in Southwestern Ohio (including downtown Cincinnati) to come to campus, participate in activities with faculty and current students, listen to faculty and student presentations, and converse with women who are working in STEM fields and in fields where good quantitative skills are needed. It is our hope that by introducing the students to these fields early, and by exposing them to exciting aspects of our fields of study, they will become intrigued and motivated to study a STEM discipline or to continue to study quantitative methods regardless of future majors.

We would love to have you join us and contribute to the success of this day. Opportunities for faculty to contribute include:

  • Create and facilitate an activity or exploration (30-40 minutes) that would be interesting and accessible to high school students. Presentations from last year included: Teamwork in Engineering; Big Data Analytics and its Applications; and Introduction to Earthquakes, just to name a few.
  • Identify current undergraduate and graduate majors in your department who might be available to participate in this day.

Psychology major’s original music production

Andrew Higgins, a senior Psychology and Music double major, has his senior recital opening this weekend, which contains themes of mental health. From Andrew:

“Hopeless Romantic” serves as my music composition senior recital – a testament of everything I’ve learned as a composer at Miami. The show times are: Thursday, 11/29 @ 6:00pm; Saturday, 12/1 @ 2:00pm and 7:30pm; and Sunday, 12/2 @ 2:00pm. The show encompasses two subjects I’ve fallen in love with through Miami: music and mental health. It is a two-act musical, which will run about 2.5 hours. It will take place in Wilks Theater – in the Armstrong Student Center. Admission is free!

More information about the musical can be found through a recently-published Miami Student article (here).

Although I am unable to attend due to a performance weekend of my own, I would encourage those interested to attend this free entertainment and am sure Andrew would love to see the support!

Final diversity & inclusion events of the semester

Bowling Shabbat
When: Friday 11/30 @ 5-7pm
Where: Oxford Lanes (4340 Oxford Really Rd)
Description: Hillel is hosting a fun way to celebrate the end of the week by group bowling!

Viet Night
When: Saturday 12/1 @ 5-10pm
Where: Stonebridge Hall Common Room
Description: The Vietnamese Student Association will host its semesterly event to celebrate Vietnamese culture and enjoy unique cuisine.

Latke Passout
When: Tuesday 12/4 @ 11am-2pm
Where: The Seal (501 E High St)
Description: Hillel is starting the celebration of Hannukah by passing out Latkes at the seal.

So Much Funnikkah Hanukkah Party
When: Wednesday 12/5 @ 7:30-10:30pm
Where: Armstrong Student Center Pavilion
Description: Hillel is hosting its 2018 Chanukah Celebration, where attendees can decorate Chanukah sweatshirts, eat latkes and donuts, and play dreidel. Contact Brendan ([email protected]) with any questions.

Mental Health and Stress Shabbat
When: Friday 12/7 @ 6-8pm
Where: Hillel (11 E Walnut St)
Description: Hillel and the Jewish community will host a weekly Shabbat while also learning strategies to control stress before finals. Therapy dogs will be there!

Congrats to our Castellan Prize winner!

I am pleased to share that Mitch Dandignac received the 2018 Castellan Prize for the best student paper at the 48th annual meeting of the Society for Computers in Psychology (SCiP) in New Orleans. His topic was “Writing for Coh-Metrix: A Systematic Approach to Revising Texts to Foster Gist Inferences,” and he is advised by Chris Wolfe. Join me in congratulating Mitch!

All-expenses paid training in computational neuroscience

This would be a great opportunity for graduate students interested in acquiring these techniques. All expenses including airfare and lodging are covered through NIH funding:

We would like to bring to your attention a one-week NIH funded Summer Short Course (14-20 July 2019) titled “Interdisciplinary Training in Computational Neuroscience” for pre- and post docs, medical students, and faculty from Biology, Psychology, Medicine, Engineering, Physics and Math interested in computational neuroscience.

The one-week NIH Summer course is absolutely free to the attendees, with airfare, lodging, meals everything paid by NIH.

We had approximately 70 applicants each year for the 24 positions/year during the past years. They were from multiple disciplines including Biological Sciences, Psychological Sciences, Engineering, Medicine, Physics and Mathematics.

The interdisciplinary computational neuroscience short course includes limited experimental and systems neurophysiology components. The background expected is high school level calculus and programming together with a strong interest in learning about computational/software. One of our goals is to introduce students/ faculty to the process of biologically-based modeling incorporating data related to cellular and synaptic neurophysiology.

The deadline for applications is February 15, 2019. An on-line application form and additional details can be found at the website.

Joanna Jackson Goldman Memorial Prize

From Pam Engel, on behalf of the National Fellowships committee, announcing the current cycle of Miami’s most significant award that would be suitable especially for honors theses:

The Joanna Jackson Goldman Memorial Prize will be awarded to current juniors/rising seniors to carry out a yearlong, independently-designed project in scholarship, journalism, or the arts. Recipients of the prize might use the stipend to compose music, write a work of fiction, conduct scientific or historical research, or gather material for a work on American civilization. The prize will support aspiring poets, writers, musicians, historians, social scientists, scientists, and artists who, as a result of their experience, will contribute more fully and richly to the community of scholarship and creative achievement that they will enter after their graduation from Miami. To be eligible for the award in this year’s competition cycle, you must be on track to graduate by May or August 2020.

The prize (up to $11,000) is awarded to current students of junior status (graduating May 2020) for a senior year project. The intention of the prize is to give students with exceptional promise the rare luxury of independently pursuing ideas and activities that will enrich their later work and careers. Funds can be used for travel, living expenses, supplies – essentially anything required to complete the project.

The Goldman Memorial Prize is open to any student, not just those in the Honors Program. We do ask that you send interested students to Old Manse to pick-up a paper copy application so we are able to monitor the number of students interested.

The application deadline is February 1, 2019.

Please contact Dr. Zeb Baker ([email protected]) or Pam Engel ([email protected]) with any questions.