May 22, 2009

Appointments, honors and activities

— Discovery Park will sponsor a lecture by Terry Wall on "Coal Based Oxy-Combustion for Carbon Capture and Storage: Status, Prospects, Research Needs and Roadmap to Commercialization," at 3:30 p.m. Thursday (May 28) in Stewart Center, Room 318. The presentation will provide a comprehensive overview of current and projected pilot plants and demonstration projects in the United States, European Union, Asia and Australia. Wall is a professor of engineering at the University of Newcastle in Australia and project leader of the Asia-Pacific Partnership Oxy-fuel Working Group. He has contributed in most technical areas related to coal combustion, including flame aerodynamics, coal ignition and burnout, ash formation, collection deposition, pollution control and fuel characterization, and research developing technologies for carbon dioxide capture involving IGCC and oxy-fuel technology. He has published more than 200 papers in international journals and supervised more than 50 Ph.D. students.

• Faculty and staff honors:

— The memoir by Bich Minh Nguyen, an associate professor of English, has been selected as the 2009-2010 Great Michigan Read, which is sponsored by the Michigan Humanities Council and Meijer. Nguyen's book, "Stealing Buddha's Dinner," chronicles her migration from Vietnam in 1975 and her coming of age in Grand Rapids, Mich., in the 1980s. The book, which also looks at cultural identity through food, is Purdue's selection for its Common Reading Program.

— Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth, director of the Center for Families and Military Family Research Institute, has been appointed to serve on a committee that will identify the readjustment needs of deployed armed forces and their families and then carry out a comprehensive assessment. Appointed by the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, the committee will advise the Institute of Medicine on health and needs of members and former members of the armed forces who were deployed in Operation Iraqi Freedom or Operation Enduring Freedom and their families. The Institute of Medicine is part of the National Academies, the primary advisory body to the nation on science, engineering and medicine. The committee members bring expertise in medicine, public health, epidemiology, military families, public policy, post-traumatic issues and neurosciences of children and adults.

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