Alumni Gazette

In the News

“Better to have honest simplicity than false innovation.”

—Composer Emma Lou Diemer ’60E (PhD), in the San Francisco Chronicle, talking about some of her recent work. Her choral composition Songs for the Earth was given its world premiere by the San Francisco Choral Society last August.

Risk Expert Named to EPA Post

One of the nation’s leading experts on risk assessment has been nominated to serve as a top administrator in the Environmental Protection Agency. Toxicologist George Gray ’90M (PhD), the executive director of the Center for Risk Analysis and a faculty member at the Harvard University School of Public Health, was named to head the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development, a position that oversees the agency’s research labs and serves as the agency’s chief science advisor.

Down Beat Up on Schneider

Composer Maria Schneider ’85E (MM) received accolades from the critics at a top jazz magazine last summer. Down Beat named her the Composer and Arranger of the Year and cited her 2004 album, Concert in the Garden, as the Jazz Album of the Year.

Groat Directs Texas Policy Center

Charles (Chip) Groat ’62, the director of the United States Geological Survey for the past seven years, has taken a new post at the University of Texas at Austin. Groat became the founding director of the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy at Texas last June after stepping down from the geological survey he had led since 1998. The new center supports research for governments and corporations on policies focusing on energy and the environment.

‘Edison of Medicine’ Clark ’44M (PhD) Dies

Leland C. Clark Jr. ’44M (PhD), one of the nation’s most highly regarded inventors, died September 25. He was 86. Best known as the inventor of the first devices to rapidly measure glucose, lactates, oxygen, and other components in blood, Clark also invented the first heart-lung machine. During the course of a 60-year academic career at institutions such as Antioch College and the University of Cincinnati, he is credited with about 80 inventions and as the holder of about 25 patents. His prolific and influential output earned him such nicknames as the “Father of Biosensors” and the “Edison of Medicine.” Just months before he died, he was awarded the 2005 Fritz J. and Dolores H. Russ Prize from the National Academy of Engineering, an honor that’s presented every two years.