Appointments, honors and activities

• Faculty and staff honors:

- Claire Stirm, science gateway manager for HUBzero, and Jieyu Gao, an emerging IT leader working for ITaP Research Computing’s research services and support team, were among the six Gender Diversity Award winners recently announced by higher education IT consortium Internet2. The awards provided support for travel to Internet2’s Global Summit held last month in Washington, D.C., where Stirm and Gao networked with leaders in the field and attended technical talks relevant to their work. They also participated in programming from the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT) and discussed ways to engage with gender diversity issues. Additional information is available at https://www.itap.purdue.edu/newsroom/news/170522_Internet2Awards.html.

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• Notables:

- Purdue University recently received the 2017 Chelsea Santucci Greenovation Award from Kimberly-Clark Professional for diverting more than 4,000 pounds of nonhazardous laboratory waste from landfills over the past year. The laboratory gloves that were recycled as part of Purdue’s participation in the RightCycle Program by Kimberly-Clark Professional were converted into raw materials which can be used to make eco-friendly products. This is the third time Purdue has been selected to receive this award. In addition, several Purdue staff members were recognized for their contributions to this initiative. Suzy Gustafson, manager of the Chemistry Procurement Center, was recognized for growing the RightCycle program across the Purdue community. Susan McCreery and Steve Rudolph were recognized for implementing glove collection in the Bindley Bioscience Center. Robert Rode in the Forestry and Natural Resources department was recognized for implementing glove collection in the Aquaculture Research Lab.

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• Student honors:

- The Purdue Research Center for Open Digital Innovation honored three Purdue students from its IronHacks competition, a virtual, multi-staged open data competition focusing on digital innovations that make a social impact.

Niveah Abraham, a master’s degree student in technology, received Best Solution; Sijin Wang, a bachelor’s degree student in computer graphics technology, won for Best Winning Spirit; and Amin Zareei, a doctoral student in technology, won for Best Community Spirit.

Forty students created interactive apps using open data sets to locate places to buy vegetables from markets in the Lafayette area. IronHacks is supported by the National Science Foundation as corporate partners including Red Hat and Socrata.

In addition, 160 College of Engineering students from the National University of Colombia in Bogota participated for the first time in a separate IronHacks competition asking students there to create an app helping university students living in the Chicago area find safe and affordable housing. Apps by 12 of those students came away with honors.