The UB Learning Experience

UB Researcher to Study Gambling Trends

Are Americans gambling more and developing more gambling problems? Do gambling problems tend to concentrate in disadvantaged neighborhoods? What has been the impact of increased Internet gambling, NCAA pools, Fantasy Football and poker tournaments?

These are some of the questions John W. Welte, Ph.D., a senior research scientist at the University at Buffalo Research Institute on Addictions, intends to answer in a new research study called “Problem Gambling — A Decade of Change.” Welte previously conducted the groundbreaking 1999-2000 investigation of problem and pathological gambling that provided answers about U.S. adult gambling frequency, locations and consequences.

With the award this month of a $3 million grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Welte will conduct a second national telephone survey of adults to learn about gambling trends during the past decade. Additionally, the new survey will include the relationship between respondent gambling and neighborhood characteristics, the distance traveled to gambling facilities and the permissiveness of state gambling laws. It will also gather information about growing forms of gambling such as Internet gambling, fantasy football and Texas Hold’em poker. Read more.

Posted August 20, 2009 in Uncategorized

UB Research Offers Potential Cure for Muscular Dystrophy

UB chemists have used rational drug design to synthesize small, cell-permeable molecules that are effective in vitro against two common types of myotonic muscular dystrophy, a result that has implications for potentially curing muscular dystrophy, as well as other diseases.

The UB research was reported in two papers published in the May and July issues of ACS Chemical Biology and Journal of the American Chemical Society, respectively.

Together, the papers demonstrate that rational drug design—where information about a target’s molecular structure is used to “custom-design” potential drugs—can greatly expedite the drug-discovery process in the fight against RNA-mediated diseases, including myotonic dystrophy type 1 and type 2. There currently is no cure for these diseases, which attack muscle tissue. Read more.

Posted August 17, 2009 in Uncategorized

Forbes ranks UB School of Management as a “Best Business School”

Forbes magazine has once again ranked the UB School of Management as one of the best business schools in the world based on the “return on investment” it provides MBA graduates.

The ranking of No. 48, up two spots from the last ranking in 2007, puts the school solidly in the top 10 percent of the more than 525 graduate business programs accredited by AACSB International — The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business.

Read more.

Posted August 11, 2009 in Uncategorized

UB Students Head to Hollywood to Learn “Tricks of the Trade”

Forty-two University at Buffalo students and recent graduates with dreams of making it in the entertainment industry will be in Los Angeles June 27-28 to attend the University at Buffalo’s first “Coast to Coast Entertainment and Media Symposium” (UBC2C Hollywood) in the hopes of getting a foot in the door.

The students will attend workshops in acting, writing, directing, vocal performance, stand-up comedy, magazine journalism, independent film production and marketing, as well as on new trends in media coverage of the entertainment industry. A special Sunday mentoring session will give the students one-on-one access to industry veterans and Hollywood VIPs.

A generous donation by an anonymous UB alumnus is funding travel and attendance at the workshops for many of the UB students. Read more.

Posted June 23, 2009 in Uncategorized

UB Grads Help Send NASA Back to the Moon

University at Buffalo graduates Frank Centinello and Kristen Paris helped in the creation of the first spacecraft in NASA’s return to the moon.

“I guess, when you think about it, for me this is one giant leap … with my work going to the moon and all,” Centinello told The Buffalo News. “This whole experience has been really serendipitous.”

The two UB alums are part of a 50-member team at Arizona State University that created and tested a camera attached to NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which lifted off Thursday.

The orbiter will record the moon’s surface to better facilitate future landings. Read more.

Posted June 19, 2009 in Uncategorized

UB Researcher Among First to Receive NIH Stimulus Funding

A University at Buffalo addictions researcher is among the first in the country to receive National Institutes of Health (NIH) stimulus funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The two-year $431,000 grant will support several laboratory positions while accelerating research into the relationship between impulsivity and drug abuse. “This award will support research into a novel approach of understanding about how negative consequences influence consumption of drug and non-drug rewards,” according to Jerry Richards, Ph.D., principal investigator on the study. Read more.

Posted June 11, 2009 in Uncategorized

Classics Professor Elected Fellow of the London Society of Antiquaries

Stephen L. Dyson,  Park Professor of Classics at the University at Buffalo, has been named a fellow of the convivial and scholarly Society of Antiquaries of London, a 300-year-old society designed to advance and further the study and knowledge of the antiquities and history of Britain and countries abroad.

Fellows are elected by existing members of the society in recognition of their significant achievement in the heritage field, and are entitled to use the initials FSA after their names.

Dyson, a former president of the Archaeological Institute of America, is a specialist in the history and archaeology of the City of Rome, the archaeology of Roman Italy and the western empire, and the history and theory of archaeology, Roman social history and the Roman countryside.

Read more.

Posted June 8, 2009 in Uncategorized

UB Grad Wins Inaugural SUNY Doctoral Fellowship

A University at Buffalo student who took a circuitous route from undergraduate psychology major to cancer-researcher-in-training received one of four inaugural Doctoral Diversity Fellowships in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) awarded by State University of New York’s Office of Diversity and Educational Equity.

Carlos Cedeno, a Buffalo resident, will receive an annual $20,000 stipend for three years to support research and professional development. He will use the fellowship to enter UB’s Molecular Pharmacology and Cancer Therapeutics Doctoral Program at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in fall 2009.

Read more.

Posted June 8, 2009 in Uncategorized

UB Receives $1.5M to Establish Clean Energy Business Program

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) announced an award of $1.5 million to the University at Buffalo Office of Science, Technology Transfer and Economic Outreach to establish a clean energy business incubator program that will provide business support to accelerate the successful development of early-stage, clean energy technology companies in Western New York.

UB’s program, Directed Energy, is designed to utilize the technical expertise of scientists and engineers at the university with the business development skills of the university’s Technology Incubator in order to foster clean energy companies and job growth in Western New York. NYSERDA funds are intended to assist companies throughout the incubation process, and to develop a financially self-sustaining program that makes Western New York a regional center for developing clean energy technologies.

“We are creating a regional foundation for a healthy green economy in Western New York,” said Martin Casstevens, business formation and commercialization manager for the UB Office of Science, Technology and Economic Outreach (STOR) and director of Directed Energy. “This is just the beginning of a long-term program to concentrate resources and technical skills to grow alternative energy businesses in Western New York. We have programs to assist local energy companies, energy entrepreneurs and scientists to develop sustainable clean energy technologies.”

Read more.

Posted June 5, 2009 in Uncategorized

UB Anthropology Professor Named Resident Fellow of the National Humanities Center

UB associate professor of anthropology Ana Mariella Bacigalupo, a scholar recognized for her research into the shamanic practices of Chile’s Mapuche Indians, has been named a 2009-10 Fellow of the National Humanities Center (NHC) in North Carolina’s Research Triangle. She will be one of 33 distinguished scholars from institutions across the United States who will take leave from their normal academic duties to comprise the center’s class of resident fellows.  Bacigalupo’s NHC project is titled “Mapuche Memory, Forgetting, Shamanic Historical Consciousness: The Making of Francisca Colipe and Her Mapuche Community in Chile,” for which she also has received a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship and an NEH Fellowship. Read more.

Posted June 5, 2009 in Uncategorized