U.S. professor gives Israeli prize money to Palestinian university

A US professor of Mathematics (and former Field’s Medal winner - David Mumford) has decided to donate his prize money from a prestigious Israeli award to Bir Zeit University in Palestine. I am struck by the depth of Prof. Mumford’s comments regarding his otherwise simple act of philanthropy. It was not about trying to solve a problem, nor even about trying to help build peace in the world - it was about realizing what brought success to him and then using his prize money to make those factors more available to scientists in an otherwise besieged part of the world. Brilliant.

I was just telling a friend this weekend that i want to support world class higher education in the developing parts of the world, and especially in Pakistan and Palestine. I truly believe that higher education, especially in the sciences, can enlighten, emancipate, encourage, and motivate people like no other thing. Education brings confidence and an ability to start rationalizing situations and problems so at least a solution can be imagined, if not immediately implemented. Prof. Mumford is right: Education brings hope. And that part of the world really needs hope.

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U.S. prof. gives Israeli prize money to Palestinian university
By Ofri Ilani
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/986898.html

The American mathematician David Mumford, co-winner of the 2008 Wolf Foundation Prize in Mathematics, announced upon receiving the award yesterday that he will donate the money to Bir Zeit University, near Ramallah, and to Gisha, an Israeli organization that advocates for Palestinian freedom of movement.

“I decided to donate my share of the Wolf Prize to enable the academic community in occupied Palestine to survive and thrive,” Mumford told Haaretz. “I am very grateful for the prize, but I believe that Palestinian students should have an opportunity to go elsewhere to acquire an education. Students in the West Bank and Gaza today do not have an opportunity to do that.”

NY Times: Branded a radical by hate-groups, a Muslim educator loses her school

Apalling…..When something like this happens, we all suffer. Americans, Jews, Muslims, Christians…Everyone.

From The New York Times

April 28, 2008

Battle in Brooklyn | A Principal’s Rise and Fall

Critics Cost Muslim Educator Her Dream School

By ANDREA ELLIOTT

Debbie Almontaser dreamed of starting a public school like no other in New York City. Children of Arab descent would join students of other ethnicities, learning Arabic together. By graduation, they would be fluent in the language and groomed for the country’s elite colleges. They would be ready, in Ms. Almontaser’s words, to become “ambassadors of peace and hope.”

Things have not gone according to plan. Only one-fifth of the 60 students at the Khalil Gibran International Academy are Arab-American. Since the school opened in Brooklyn last fall, children have been suspended for carrying weapons, repeatedly gotten into fights and taunted an Arabic teacher by calling her a “terrorist,” staff members and students said in interviews.

The academy’s troubles reach well beyond its cramped corridors in Boerum Hill. The school’s creation provoked a controversy so incendiary that Ms. Almontaser stepped down as the founding principal just weeks before classes began last September. Ms. Almontaser, a teacher by training and an activist who had carefully built ties with Christians and Jews, said she was forced to resign by the mayor’s office following a campaign that pitted her against a chorus of critics who claimed she had a militant Islamic agenda.

In newspaper articles and Internet postings, on television and talk radio, Ms. Almontaser was branded a “radical,” a “jihadist” and a “9/11 denier.” She stood accused of harboring unpatriotic leanings and of secretly planning to proselytize her students. Despite Ms. Almontaser’s longstanding reputation as a Muslim moderate, her critics quickly succeeded in recasting her image.

The conflict tapped into a well of post-9/11 anxieties. But Ms. Almontaser’s downfall was not merely the result of a spontaneous outcry by concerned parents and neighborhood activists. It was also the work of a growing and organized movement to stop Muslim citizens who are seeking an expanded role in American public life. The fight against the school, participants in the effort say, was only an early skirmish in a broader, national struggle.

MIT’s burgeoning role in the green movement

Under its new President, Susan Hockfield, MIT has taken a leadership role in the discussions regarding science, technology, business, entrepreneurship and policy in energy and the environment. Here is an op-ed from her in today’s Boston Globe. I look forward to attending the MIT Energy Conference this coming weekend. I invite you to visit GEO2’s booth on the friday night’s Energy Showcase.

MIT’s burgeoning role in the green movement

by Susan Hockfield

April 7, 2008

BOSTON MAGAZINE has ranked MIT’s work on energy and the environment as No. 2 on its list of “61 Best New Things About Boston.” It’s unusual praise for MIT; our research is more often noticed in academic journals. But the magazine’s listing says something important: people beyond the university research community and the green movement are eager for answers to our energy and environmental challenges.

The challenges are many. How do we meet the aspirations of people around the world for a healthy, comfortable, productive life, without irreparably damaging the planet? How will we in the developed world preserve our quality of life, while shifting to renewable technologies? At the same time, how do we enable the developing world to reach a standard of living that grants access to modern comforts? How, for example, will we get electricity to the 1 billion people who don’t yet have it?

At MIT we are inventing real energy and climate solutions - from large-scale technologies that capture carbon emissions and dramatic new ways to tap deep geothermal energy, to smaller-scale ideas such as lithium-ion batteries to revolutionize the electric car and new materials that could make solar energy as cheap and dependable as coal.

KAUST in Saudi Arabia announces its Global Research Partnership Investigators

Oil prices are at a record high, Middle East economies are flush with cash, but something is different! The new generation of Arab leaders have realized that (a) petro-dollars may not be there forever, (b) they cannot allow the ‘Dutch Disease’ to cripple their long-term growth, (c) their population is growing faster than their oil revenues , (d) they cannot continue to spend as a socialist welfare state, and (e) they need to link their economies to the value-add of energy inputs and not to the oil and gas prices in international markets.

Hence, you see a fast growth of economic zones and theme-cities, which in reality are just a creative way to create from scratch eco-systems that can cultivate, grow and sustain the technological and business innovations for the future. One important part of this city-creation is the renewed focus on education and research. As would be expected, these rich countries are reaching out to the very best of the best and luring their talents with money to help build local research institutions. This is happening Middle East wide, and I will hopefully find time to write a bit more on it later….but for now, I wanted to share the news from Green Car Congress that KAUST in Saudi Arabia has just announced its list of inaugural Global Research Partnership Investigators. A majority of research themes are clearly clean-tech oriented, and I am enthused by it. I have high hopes.

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology Announces Inaugural Global Research Partnership Investigator Winners
from Green Car Congress by Mike Millikin

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia has named the winners of its Global Research Partnership (GRP) Investigator competition. Twelve international scientists—among them Dr. Yi Cui at Stanford (silicon nanowires for li-ion batteries) and Dr. Bruce Logan at Penn State (microbial fuel cells)—were selected as KAUST GRP investigators for the 2007 round of nominations, which featured more than 60 submissions from 38 of the world’s leading research universities.

GRP investigators receive five-year individual grants to investigate a wide range of research topics. As an example, Dr. Logan’s grant is for $10 million.

Each KAUST Investigator is expected to spend between three weeks and three months per year on the KAUST campus in Saudi Arabia participating in the research and academic life of the institution. Additional personnel exchanges including the Investigators or their research personnel will be arranged according to the needs of the collaborative work established with KAUST’s faculty.

Research topics include water desalination, renewable and sustainable next-generation energy sources, genomics of salt-tolerant plants, durable and environmentally friendly construction materials, hydrocarbon utility, low-cost solar cell efficiency, and disease immunization.

Press Clipping(s): Innovation and the University-Industry Interface

A very interesting discussion on University and Industry collaboration on Innovation was initiated by Kenan Sahin, the president and CEO of TIAX (former A.D. Little Consulting’s technology practice). Check it out on Xconomy.com.

Innovation and the University-Industry Interface

from Xconomy by Kenan Sahin

Universities, Business, innovation

Kenan Sahin wrote:

Editor’s note: This article was published last July 2, during our first week in existence. Given the attention to last week’s post by Chris Gabrieli questioning Harvard’s legacy of tech transfer, we wanted to share Sahin’s thoughtful observations with a wider audience.

The buzzword of the 1980s and ’90s was “entrepreneurship.” This decade, the obsession is with “innovation” as the presumed path to riches for people and nations. Since the key generators of innovation are research universities and the key implementers of innovation are companies, there is an ever-increasing focus on making the university and industry interface more effective. But will the twain meet? It could be very difficult.

The question is critical, and there is no better place to ask than here in Kendall Square, at the confluence of great universities, multinational companies in both the life sciences and information technology, and scores of start-ups.

Though hugely complementary, academic and industrial entities hold different values and are motivated by different incentives. One key to surmounting the many obstacles to successful collaboration is to better understand the two worlds, identifying those differences that are truly reconcilable, temporarily reconcilable, and totally irreconcilable. There’s no point in dealing with irreconcilable areas.

Toscanini’s: In trouble for tax non-payment….help ‘em out

Toscanini’s is a landmark at Cambridge, and while the current generation of MIT students will not remember, they had a branch smack in the center of campus, in the student center, while I was a student there. So Toscanini’s ice-cream and coffee practically runs in my blood. I have met there, dated there, discussed problem sets, cursed professors, discussed politics, planned campus activities, and bitched about the tough life a Ph.D. student. Remember “IHTFP”?

But anyways…Given that I have still not moved from Boston/Cambridge, I visit Tosci’s often enough and continue to love its ice-cream. But today I heard on TV that Tosci’s was shut down just a few days ago and may have disappeared forever for non-payment of taxes exceeding $167,000…. if not for its faithful fans who created a Save Tosci’s website and donated over $31,000 to bring Tosci’s back online, and for bailing Gus, its owner, out. Tosci’s is open again, they are still accepting donations, and they want us to go back and buy lots more ice-cream. Lets go!

Here’s some more info on it. (Source)

Cambridge - One of the most popular ice cream haunts in Cambridge is now the property of the state.Toscanini’s Ice Cream, a mainstay for cool treats in Central Square since 1981, may not ever open again, and its owner, Gus Rancatore, owes the state’s Department of Revenue more than $167,000 in back taxes.

Clean-tech sector: A quick review of 2007 and 2008

2007 was undoubtedly the year of clean-tech. The debate around global warming frequented the front pages of major newspapers, and reached our homes and dining tables. There were too many exciting clean-tech related news to recount, and there were a few disappointments as well. I have been asked several times if there is anything ’substantial’ to be expected out of this clean-tech boom, or are these just science fair type curiosity projects, but on a larger scale and consuming tons of public sector funding? While many clean-tech blogs are highlighting technologies to look out for in 2008, ‘Automotive News’ recently published a tongue-in-cheek list of 10 potential alternative fuels that included chicken droppings and cheese.

I remain optimistic that what we are witnessing is not just a shift in our understanding of the need for cleaner energy sources, but also a unique coming together of science, engineering, health, business, investor and public policy stakeholders that ultimately need to work closely together to find winning solutions. This is no science fair - this is evolution in action. An evolution of technologies and policies, and of our abilities to incorporate better ones into our lives.

Here are some thoughts that stuck with me through 2007, and what I am expecting in 2008. Would love to hear what you think about these.

2007

1. Ethanol bubble bursts - A few failed IPOs, the spectacle of rising food prices around the world, esp Mexico, and a realization that ethanol actually gives lower fuel economy provided enough material to disillusion even some of corn-ethanols strongest supporters. On the issue of technology trajectory for ethanol, it seems cellulosic ethanol has not yet moved fast enough to be commercially viable in the short term.
   
2. Clean coal continued to garner attention, esp as gasification projects got major funding for building demonstration projects. But I am still looking for serious and convincing plays in this sector. There is much potential here but people seem scared of venturing too far into the dirty coal business.

E-Ink digital books - soon in color!

I have known of E-Ink (the company) and its technology since it sinception at MIT. That is one of the benefits of being close to a school where labs are spinning out innovations in quick succession (and taking a course with E-Ink’s founder, Prof. Joe Jacobsen).

E-Ink has had a taken a long path to commercialization even though in late 90’s some believed paper books were a thing of the past. Even some people I knew jumped into the e-books phenomenon in the dot-boom phase.

E-Ink came up with a revolutionary technology that made it possible to use (a) very little energy and (b) the screen could be made very visible even in sunlight. They started their journey by trying to make billboards that were ‘alive’, but that didn’t really go too far. Then in addition to other display products, they started down the path of making better screen for digital book readers, and recently made big splashes when Sony (Reader) and Amazon (Kindle) announced their own versions of the e-readers that both used E-Ink technology. I won’t do justice to the technology but the basic idea is to have colored balls (microcapsules) as pixels that would expose their ‘bright’ or ‘dark’ sides when a voltage was applied to them. I am still a bit fazed by the price or I would have got one myself. Why would I ever want to carry 2-3 books with me on long trips abroad. I could just download a dozen onto my e-reader.
(click on image above to enlarge)

But anyways - now they have come up with an even cooler technology. It is E-Ink, in color! And not only that, they also have developed technologies for flexible displays….The technology is not yet fully commercial and may be a few years away from a product you and I can afford, but I look forward to the day… this could be a game-changer. Imagine all the magazines we collect during the month becoming available for download in full color! Hey, I don’t know about you but I am sick of throwing away/recycling piles of ‘Technology Review‘, ‘Chemical & Engineering News‘, ‘Wired‘, ‘Fast Company‘, ‘Business Week‘, ‘The Economist‘, ‘Foreign Affairs’ and ‘American Scientist’ each month. And the stack doesn’t look attractive after a while and I have to keep putting ‘Town and Country‘ magazine on top to hide my geekiness from being on public display.

But this won’t be the only use. Imagine quick deployment of text books in developing countries, newspaper access, consider the trees saved from being turned into paper. Would libraries turn into plug and retrieve data centers? One can just imagine the utilities. Read on…

Science and the Islamic world—The quest for rapprochement

My dear friend, and a mentor, Pervez Hoodbhoy just guided me to an article he has written that got published in Physics Today. Readers here won’t be surprised that I want to share it with them. We must all read this carefully and try to understand for ourselves what has gone wrong with the Islamic civilization of today that has so shunned academic, artistic, and creative knowledge. Why do we not seek truths about the nature of this world, just as our religion teaches us to seek truth in matters of God and religion? Everyone else has moved on. Why haven’t we?

Science and the Islamic world—The quest for rapprochement

Internal causes led to the decline of Islam’s scientific greatness long before the era of mercantile imperialism. To contribute once again, Muslims must be introspective and ask what went wrong.

Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy

August 2007, page 49

This article grew out of the Max von Laue Lecture that I delivered earlier this year to celebrate that eminent physicist and man of strong social conscience. When Adolf Hitler was on the ascendancy, Laue was one of the very few German physicists of stature who dared to defend Albert Einstein and the theory of relativity. It therefore seems appropriate that a matter concerning science and civilization should be my concern here.

The question I want to pose—perhaps as much to myself as to anyone else—is this: With well over a billion Muslims and extensive material resources, why is the Islamic world disengaged from science and the process of creating new knowledge? To be definite, I am here using the 57 countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) as a proxy for the Islamic world.

It was not always this way. Islam’s magnificent Golden Age in the 9th–13th centuries brought about major advances in mathematics, science, and medicine. The Arabic language held sway in an age that created algebra, elucidated principles of optics, established the body’s circulation of blood, named stars, and created universities. But with the end of that period, science in the Islamic world essentially collapsed. No major invention or discovery has emerged from the Muslim world for well over seven centuries now. That arrested scientific development is one important element—although by no means the only one—that contributes to the present marginalization of Muslims and a growing sense of injustice and victimhood.

Such negative feelings must be checked before the gulf widens further. A bloody clash of civilizations, should it actually transpire, will surely rank along with the two other most dangerous challenges to life on our planet—climate change and nuclear proliferation.

First encounters

Islam’s encounter with science has had happy and unhappy periods. There was no science in Arab culture in the initial period of Islam, around 610 AD. But as Islam established itself politically and militarily, its territory expanded. In the mid-eighth century, Muslim conquerors came upon the ancient treasures of Greek learning. Translations from Greek into Arabic were ordered by liberal and enlightened caliphs, who filled their courts in Baghdad with visiting scholars from near and far. Politics was dominated by the rationalist Mutazilites, who sought to combine faith and reason in opposition to their rivals, the dogmatic Asharites. A generally tolerant and pluralistic Islamic culture allowed Muslims, Christians, and Jews to create new works of art and science together. But over time, the theological tensions between liberal and fundamentalist interpretations of Islam—such as on the issue of free will versus predestination—became intense and turned bloody. A resurgent religious orthodoxy eventually inflicted a crushing defeat on the Mutazilites. Thereafter, the open-minded pursuits of philosophy, mathematics, and science were increasingly relegated to the margins of Islam.¹

What are World Class Universities?

Some months back I posted a note on the University rankings in the US. That has so far been the most visited page on this blog. Clearly, and not surprisingly, people are very interested in knowing what are some of the top universities in the US and in the world, and what makes them so. Students want to know where they might want to go for their studies and research, professors want to know how they compare to their peers, and administrators/policy makers want to know how to set metrics for university evaluation so the standards can be improved.

Every time a magazine or an organization publishes a new ranking of universities, the same familiar question is asked: What metrics were used to rank the universities, do those metrics really matter, and were those metrics weighed in favor of a preferred philosophy of education. It is not surprising then to see some ranking put US universities on top, while others try to push the European universities. Some others tends to make news because a whole set of universities from China and India occasionally make it to the top 10 lists.

Anyhow - so is there really a metric by which universities can be classified as world-class or not? Is there such a thing as an ideal university? Should there be and should all other universities try to emulate themselves in its mold as much as they could?

A simple answer (of mine) is No. I don’t believe there is a unique mold that works across the globe -neither for education, nor for research, and not for social service either. But there certainly are some attributes that are highly desirable in universities that aim to truly be considered world-class. To me, the real test of a world class university is when its academic faculty, researchers, students and alumni are able to compete internationally and succeed. When they are able to solve complex problems, when they are able to solve both real and abstract problems, and when they are able to advance the sum-total of human knowledge in a defined, measurable, and reproducible manner.

I am compiling below only some attributes that I would want in a world-class university. The list is by no means exhaustive, but I hope the comments will add to it. I am afraid the list will still show my own bias based on being trained in physical sciences at an engineering school in the USA, but I hope it will at least act as a starting point for your own thoughts, based on where you studied, performed research, taught, or want to….