The new Mabel Hores Award in Forensic Chemistry is made possible by a gift from the Ngai Family. Dr John Allison, Professor of Chemistry and Director of Forensic Chemistry at TCNJ, said “we are very pleased to have had the opportunity to work closely with the Ngai family to honor one of their own, and to recognize the outstanding graduating Chemistry major with a Forensic Chemistry Specialization.”

Mabel Ngai attended Trenton State College and graduated with a B.A. in Biology in 1974.  It was here that she met her future husband, Ken Hores, who was stationed at the nearby McGuire Air Force Base.  They were married in 1975.

Mabel worked for 25 years in the New Jersey State Police Forensic Labs.  She became an expert in Trace Evidence Analysis – with special expertise in arson investigations, hair and fiber analysis, and gunshot residue analysis.  A valued member of her laboratory, she often testified in criminal trials.  For years, Mabel worked at the Trace Evidence Unit at the Central Labs that were then located in Ewing.

Mabel Hores had a reputation for helping others.  She trained many student interns at the State Forensic Labs.  In 2001 and 2002 she volunteered her time to help with the challenging task of identifying the DNA in human tissue found at the World Trade Center.

Mabel retired as a Senior Forensic Scientist in 2004, and after a long battle with cancer, she passed away the same year.

TCNJ is honored to participate in this recognition of one of our successful alums, who had a substantial impact in her field.

The KPCB Fellows Program offers outstanding college students from across the United States an opportunity to gain significant experience working on unique and challenging technical or design problems, and to develop new relationships that are meaningful to their careers.  Over the course of a summer, KPCB Fellows will be employed at KPCB’s portfolio companies, where the Fellows can develop their technical or design skills and be mentored by an executive within the company. Fellows will also be invited to attend private events held by KPCB and events hosted by portfolio companies, where they can meet other talented engineering and design students, network with luminaries in their respective field, and explore the San Francisco Bay Area.

The KPCB Fellows Program received nearly 2,000 applications from over 200 universities and conducted more than 450 interviews.  The following are recipient institutions (with the number of selected Fellows in parenthesis): UPenn (10), Princeton (3), Stanford (3), MIT (3), Rice (3), George Washington (2), and 1 each from Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Pomona, TCNJ, UCSD, USC, and U of Virginia.

Since its founding in 1972, KPCB has backed entrepreneurs in more than 500 ventures, including AOL, Amazon.com, Citrix, Compaq, Electronic Arts, Genentech, Google, Intuit, Juniper Networks, Netscape, Sun, Symantec, Verisign and Zynga.

For more Information

• KPCB Fellows Program
• KPCB
• TCNJ Department of Computer Science

The College of New Jersey announced that it has been approved for more than $57 million in grants from the state to be used for capital projects supporting STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) initiatives on campus. As the list of projects moves to the state legislature for review, the College is moving forward with its programming phase for the entire STEM Complex, consisting of a new STEM building as well as renovations to Armstrong Hall and the Science Complex. 

A STEM Steering Committee, led by Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Jacqueline Taylor, has been assembled to determine the programming of the STEM Complex. Committee members include: Lisa Angeloni, vice president for enrollment management; Marcia Blicharz, interim dean of the School of Nursing, Health and Exercise Science; John Donohue, vice president for college advancement; Curt Heuring, vice president for administration; Jeff Osborn, dean of the School of Science; Lloyd Ricketts, treasurer; and Steven Schreiner, dean of the School of Engineering. Once the programming has been determined, the design phase for the new STEM Building will begin.

Of the project, Provost Taylor said: “This is a truly exciting time in our history. We have the opportunity to construct facilities that match the caliber of the stellar programs in STEM education we have at TCNJ. We will be able to enhance our ability to offer the kind of undergraduate research and professional preparation that are hallmarks of a TCNJ education.”

Approved by voters in November 2012, The Building Our Future Bond Act provides $750 million in grant money to state colleges and universities. The state is making available a nearly equal amount through the Higher Education Capital Improvement Fund, the Higher Education Facilities Trust Fund, the Higher Education Technology Infrastructure Fund and the Higher Education Equipment Leasing Fund.

TCNJ will use the money for four major projects, including $41 million toward the construction of a 76,000 square foot STEM building. $3.5 million will expand technology infrastructure; $6.9 million will upgrade and expand learning and research equipment in the School of Science, School of Engineering, and School of Nursing, Health & Exercise Science; and $6 million will assist in the renovation of the Science Complex and Armstrong Hall.

“I am tremendously excited about the opportunity that this state investment offers TCNJ, and am thankful to the governor and the state legislature for making this a priority,” said TCNJ President R. Barbara Gitenstein. “I want to thank everyone who had a hand in crafting these documents for the application process. There is much more work to be done and I look forward to receiving the recommendations on the specifics of the new STEM building that will come from the Steering Committee, under the leadership of Provost Taylor.”

Dr. Phaedra Agius

“The New Crystal Ball: Computational Methods in Biology”

Abstract: With the plethora of next gen sequencing and genomics data, computational methods in biology are racing to become the best detectors and forecasters of health issues. Accurate detection of diseases promises preventative care and proper medical prescription, reducing the overall cost of health care management and improving our general well being. In this talk, I will discuss some basic computational, data mining, and machine learning methods used for analyzing biological data. I will briefly describe a computational method that we developed for predicting transcription factor binding sites, a novel method for comparing RNA secondary structures and some current data integration approaches that we are using to model genomics and clinical data.

Schools of Science and Arts & Communication Welcome Smithsonian Biologist Nathan Erwin for a Presentation and Concert on the Music of Insects

On April 9 and 10, 2013, 50 juniors and seniors from the School of Science students were inducted into two premiere national honor societies.  Phi Beta Kappa is the nation’s oldest academic honor society and Phi Kappa Phi is the oldest all-discipline honor society in the United States.

Phi Beta Kappa Inductees

 Phi Beta Kappa celebrates and advocates excellence in the liberal arts and sciences. The society sponsors activities to advance these studies — the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences — in higher education and in society at large.  Typically, no more than 10 percent of the candidates for degrees in liberal arts and sciences are elected. Each year, about one college senior in a hundred, nationwide, is invited to join Phi Beta Kappa.

Phi Kappa Phi Inductees

 To be eligible for membership in a Phi Kappa Phi Chapter a student must be an outstanding student of sound character.  Juniors must have completed 72 credit hours and rank in the top 7.5% of their class. Seniors must rank in the top 10% of their class.

Friday, April 12th, 2013 from 7:00-9:00PM

Edward Mayo Concert Hall

Light refreshments will be served.

Dr. Parviz Gharagozloo, PhD

CellOxess LLC, Chief Executive Officer and Founder

Dr. Gharagozloo is the founder of CellOxess LLC and currently serves as its president and Chief Executive Officer. Dr. Gharagozloo has over 25 years of experience in Organic and Medicinal Chemistry gained in academia, Tech Transfer, Biotech and Pharmaceutical companies in the UK and USA. Prior to CellOxess, he led a group of medicinal chemists at Purdue Pharma in Cranbury, NJ targeting receptors, enzymes and ion-channels for the discovery of novel analgesics. Before joining Purdue in 2000, Dr. Gharagozloo was as the head of medicinal chemistry at Napp pharmaceuticals, a pain specializing company in Cambridge, UK where he led multiple research programs in drug discovery and served on the board of directors. Dr. Gharagozloo started his professional research career back in 1990 at the Medical Research Council Technology Center at Mill Hill in London, UK, where he spent 3 years as a postdoc and a further 5 years as a senior scientist and later as the head of medicinal chemistry department. Dr. Gharagozloo received his honors BSc degree in Chemistry and PhD in Medicinal chemistry in 1990 at University College London, UK. He has published extensively in the fields of organic and medicinal chemistry. His work is recognized by a number of international patents and he is the sole inventor of the Fertilix^TM.

My current interests: The study of chronic cell oxidative stress in disease particularly in gamete biology.

Objectives: To identify tissue specific biomarkers of oxidative stress and treat the condition with natural antioxidants before disease becomes manifest.

Dr. Hock M. Ng

Technical Staff Member, Bell Labs
Alcatel-Lucent

April 2, 2013
Education Building Rm. 113 (tentative)
11:30am – 12:30pm
Refreshments to follow the presentation

iRoom: Experiments with an Intelligent Room

In this talk, I will describe our iRoom research project which shares the vision of smart environments responding to human presence and activity. The goal of iRoom is to make the room environment itself become the human computer interface. For example, the iRoom can determine the identity, location, and visit duration of a person entering the room using inputs from a variety of networked sensors and cameras. We use sensor fusion to determine context from sensor inputs and produce actions responding to the identity and/or activity of the visitor in the room. The iRoom generates in real-time several abstractions of contextual messages that developers can subscribe to in order to build third-party applications. I will describe the architecture, sensors, messaging protocols, algorithms, and potential applications of the iRoom.

Biography: Dr. Hock M. Ng is a member of technical staff at Bell Laboratories, Alcatel-Lucent in Murray Hill, NJ. He received the B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Boston University in 1994, 1997, and 2000, respectively. Currently, his research interests are in the area of sensor fusion, computer vision, data visualization and pervasive computing. Prior to 2008, his research contributions were in the field of molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) of wide bandgap semiconductor materials and devices, with a focus on GaN and ZnO. His work was recognized by the Electrochemical Society with the 2006 Charles W. Tobias Young Investigator Award and by the North American MBE conference with the inaugural 2006 Young Investigator Award. He is also an alumnus of the National Academy of Engineering Frontiers of Engineering Symposium (2004). He is a
senior member of the IEEE. In his spare time, he likes to tinker with robotics and 3D-printers.