Dr. Jamie Perry, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, recently received a patent through the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) for her work entitled “3D Imaging of Anatomical Structures.” Perry, along with University of Illinois colleagues Dr. David Kuehn, Dr. Michael Goldwasser, and Dr. Brad Sutton, completed a four-year project developing a method for creating surgical simulations for cleft palate repair using Magnetic Resonance Images (MRI). The method was successfully applied to two patients at Carle Hospital (Urbana, IL) in 2007. The oral maxillofacial surgeons were able to manipulate the soft tissue structures and perform surgical planning maneuvers on the computer model prior to the actual scheduled surgery date. 

The Graduate School has announced that Dongming Guan (Department of Biological Sciences) and Brent A. Sylvester (Department of Psychology) are the 2008 recipients of the Clarence W. Sorensen Distinguished Dissertation Award. Guan’s dissertation was titled, “Fitness, Developmental Stability, and Germline Mutation Rates in White-Footed Mice (Peromyscus Leucopus) Chronically Exposed to Heavy Metal Contamination.” Sylvester’s dissertation was titled, “Exploration of Processes Related to Outcomes of Adolescent Parenting: Caregiving Self-Efficacy Among Adolescent Mothers.” “Dongming's dedication, breadth of knowledge, and expertise made him an excellent PhD candidate and ensured careful examination of the mutagenicity and fitness effects of heavy metals in this mammalian model organism,” said Professor Sabine Loew, Guan's doctoral advisor and director of his dissertation committee. 

The Department of Politics and Government hosted 30 alumni and family members at the Scholarship Suite in the Redbird Arena on February 13 to cheer for the ISU men's basketball team against Missouri State. Organized by the department's newly formed Alumni Relations Committee, the event attracted enthusiastic responses from the alums and well-wishers. State Representative Dan Brady, Trustee Betty Kinser, and First Lady Linda Bowman also attended the event.

Holly Hughes, a lesbian performance artist known for her poetic imagery, political satire and humorous delivery, will be featured at three events on the ISU campus February 27-29.  On Wednesday, she will speak at the School of Art and School of Theatre Colloquium at 4 p.m. in the University Galleries in the Center for the Visual Arts. She will perform "Preaching to the Perverted," a one-woman performance, at 8:30 p.m. in Westhoff Theatre on Thursday. Hughes will also deliver the keynote address at the Women's and Gender Studies Symposium at 1 p.m. on Friday in the University Galleries. All three events are free and open to the public.

Hughes won two Obie Awards for excellence in off-Broadway theater and gained national attention in the 1990s when the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) rescinded her performance grant on the grounds it would not subsidize "filth and patently blasphemous material."