Faculty Notes, Sept. 27, 2011

David Burns, adjunct faculty, Department of Art, Wilkinson College, will have his work included in “Living as Form,” a large-scale exhibit created by the artist collective Fallen Fruit. “Living as Form” will be exhibited in the historic Essex Street Market building and will culminated with a book, co-published by Creative Time Books and MIT Press.

The exhibit provides a broad look at a vast array of socially engaged practices that appear with increasing regularity in fields ranging from theater to activism, and urban planning to visual art. The project brings together twenty-five curators, documents over 100 artists’ projects in a large-scale survey exhibition inside the historic Essex Street Market building, features nine new commissions in the surrounding neighborhood, and provides a dynamic online archive of over 350 socially engaged projects.

Burns has also been invited to participate in “PULSE: Los Angeles” as a panelist on Social Practice.  In addition, he is opening a curated exhibition at UC Irvine called “Sight of Place: Landscape in Experimental Film and Video from 1961 to 2011” which runs Oct. 5 to Dec. 7. Also in October Burns will be a panelist on a panel titled “Does It Have To Be Good For You? Art And Social-Practice” at MOCA and will be a guest Visiting Artists of the Portland State University in Oregon.

Hesham El-Askary, Ph.D., associate professor, Earth System Science and Remote Sensing and Director Hazards, Schmid College of Science and Technology, recently returned from a trip to Greece and Egypt. In Greece Dr. El-Askary attended the Sixth International Workshop on Sandstorms and Environmental Impact Assessments held in Glyfada-Athens, Greece. The workshop was organized and partially sponsored by the University of Athens, Department of Physics, Atmospheric Modeling, and Weather Forecasting Group. Dr. El-Askary presented a paper titled “Multi Sensor Observations on the Implications of Desert Dust transport to the Nile Delta, the Indo-Gangetic Basin and Himalayan Glaciers,” co-authored with Menas Kafatos, Ph.D., dean of Schmid College, and Anup Prasad, Ph.D., assistant professor, Physics, Computational Science and Engineering, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences.

Dr. El-Askary was also selected in the steering committee of the seventh workshop to be held in two years.

During his trip to Egypt, Dr. El-Askary gave a talk to the faculty of Science, Alexandria University and discussed possible ways of potential collaborations. He is in the process of establishing a collaboration between NASA, Chapman University and Alexandria University. An Aeronet station for monitoring air quality will be deployed by NASA in Alexandria having Dr. El-Askary (Chapman University) as the P.I.

Michael Griffin, Ph.D., professor, Crean School of Health & Life Sciences, Schmid College of Science and Technology, recently published two papers in the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics titled:  ”Analysis of Functional Responses at G Protein-Coupled Receptors: Estimation of Relative Affinity Constants for the Inactive Receptor State” and “Analysis of Agonism and Inverse Agonism in Functional Assays with Constitutive Activity: Estimation of Orthosteric Ligand Affinity Constants for Active and Inactive Receptor States.”

Donald Guy, assistant professor of theatre, has been commissioned to serve as lighting designer for the production of Shirley Valentine by Willy Russell at The Laguna Playhouse. Shirley Valentine runs Sept. 27 to Oct. 23.  For more information, visit the Laguna Playhouse website. 

Louise Thomas, D.M.A., associate professor and director of keyboard collaborative arts, Conservatory of Music, College of Performing Arts, performed at a gala benefit for the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA Sept. 18 with Elizabeth Pitcairn, who plays on the iconic “Red Violin.”

On Sept. 21 Dr. Thomas performed at a meeting of the Young Presidents’ Organization at the Fish Interfaith Center at Chapman University. Thomas performed the Lakmé Duet with soprano Anna Schubert, ’11, and Christina Alexopoulos, voice faculty member in CoPA. The evening included presentations by Menas Kafatos, dean of the Schmid College of Science and Technology, and Deepak Chopra.

Dimitar Ouzounov, Ph.D., associate professor, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Schmid College of Science and Technology, was the keynote speaker for the APSCO Third International Symposium on Earth Quake Monitoring and Early Warning by Using Space Technology held Sept. 13-15 in Beijing, China.

Robert Slayton, Ph.D., professor, Department of History, Wilkinson College, has an article in the October, 2011, issue of Commentary magazine titled “Reenacting Evil.”