In this latest RoomHop, dorm design professional Alexandra Svokos traveled to the Woodbridge abode of a pair of seniors involved—among other things—in XMAS!6, which is tonight(!) in Roone at 8:15pm.

“His name is Nero,” Lila Neiswanger,CC ’12, and Will Brown, SEAS ’12, say in unison about their betta fish. “Oh, the apartment’s name is Antium, ” Will goes on, “which is the birthplace of Emperor Nero.” “But the fish came first,” Lila quickly clarifies. The fish is just one object in this Woodbridge room of wonders. As a fighter fish, they felt it deserved an ancient dictator’s name; given the choice between Nero and Artaxerxes, Lila chose Nero.

Artaxerxes was not forgotten, however. “Will’s one of those people who names his computers,” Lila explains. Boasting six computers, Will is a CS senior. The name Artaxerxes was bestowed upon the desktop computer that he built and uses. “It’s just kinda sliding stuff into stuff,” he shrugs when asked about building it before explaining the pieces inside the computer. “Just go with it,” Lila says.

The 3D printer the duo assembled by hand

Controlled through the computer is a projector that continually shines on the wall. It cycles through webpages or plays a youtube video of a fireplace. “It just keeps interesting things on the screen,” Will explains. It has also been used for movies and TV and can be hooked up to an Xbox. Next to the projector is a lamp made by Will’s parents from an old French camera with a soda can painted black for a lampshade.

Together, Lila and Will built a 3D printer that looks like it came from Dexter’s laboratory. Melting down plastic filaments, it creates little objects like colorful Pacman ghosts that shine under blacklight. They have been updating the machine over time, with additions like LED lights that change colors. Read more…

Yesterday, while you were skipping class and sleeping in, the MacArthur Foundation announced this year’s 22 Genius Grant recipients, and Columbia graduate Alisa Weilerstein is one of them. A member of the Class of 2004, Weilerstein started playing the cello when she was four years old and debuted with the Cleveland Orchestra at just 13. The Foundation describes her as “a young cellist whose emotionally resonant performances of both traditional and contemporary music have earned her international recognition.” In other words, you are a complete failure in comparison to Alisa.

The MacArthur Genius Grants are awarded based upon anonymous nominations, and when Weilerstein heard the news, she was taken completely by surprise.

“I wrote kind of a rude email back because I really thought it was spam,” she says. Finally she contacted the MacArthur official, who had to explain to her exactly what the award was and told her that someone she knew “very well” has won the grant.

“Like a total idiot, I said, ‘who?’ And he said, ‘Well, you.’ I was in complete shock. I screamed and everything. I think they were highly amused.”

[NPR]

Along with the luxury of being called a genius, all Genius Grant recipients receive $500,000 in cold, hard cash.

Image from MacArthur Foundation

On Monday, we learned the identities of the academic top dogs in CC, and last night, Bwog caught up with this year’s valedictorian, Arianne Richard.

How did you find out that you were valedictorian, and did you do anything special to celebrate? Dean [Michael] Pippenger emailed me about two weeks ago with the news of the committee decision. After a laughing fit in a stairwell (lame, I realize, but I was not in a place where I could start jumping up and down publicly), I called my parents and told several friends. My weekend then became a series of celebratory dinners and drinks.

Do people treat you differently now that you’re valedictorian? Not at all. And I am very glad. Except campus publications…this is new.

Did you ever find the Alma Mater’s owl? I hate to burst any legend-loving bubbles, but I never even looked for it. I actually don’t know where it is.

What’s your go-to study strategy when trying to stay focused? I write. Everything. I have a terrible time paying attention to anything I read unless I’m taking some sort of notes. (Several of my classmates can probably attest to my frantic scribbling during lectures.) Even when I am reading my class notes before an exam, I write all over them. In the end they’re illegible. Read more…

Photo via Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phi_Beta_Kappa_Key.JPG

The first round of Phi Beta Kappa results are out; these lucky individuals were elected to the society in December. Congratulations to all!

For the unknowing, Phi Beta Kappa is the “nation’s oldest academic honor society,” and eventually about 10% of the graduating class becomes a member. The first round of elections took place last December, and these people were selected based on GPA and faculty recommendations. The rest will be elected and announced in May.

Initiation into Phi Beta Kappa for these inductees (below the jump) will take place in Low on Thursday. If you recognize some and would like to let us know about anything notable about them, please feel free to leave a message in the comments!

Read more…

Thursday afternoon saw NYU professor Edward Wolff (the happy guy at right) visit IAB 801 to lecture on “Long-Term Trends in The Levy Institute Measure of Economic Well-Being, 1959-2004.” Sounds complicated? That didn’t stop Bwog’s Wealth and Mad Men correspondent Emily Ahn from filing a report.

Like a book, you can’t judge a lecture by its title. Edward Wolff, a professor of economics at NYU, is the author of several books, a former Marxist economist, and overall genius. Wolff, who gave off an air of success in a crisp blue button down, belted chinos, and Sperrys with dress socks, has since abandoned Marxism, and now studies “wealth.”  This lecture was clearly not meant for your typical undergrad and, fittingly, the median age of the audience around 30 years old.

The lecture started with The Levy Institute of Economic Well-Being’s (LIMEW) definition of economic well-being, which is the command or access people have over the products produced in an economy based on consumption. With simple arithmetic as the main component to what is an intensively analytic process, the equation boils down to this: Read more…

- Photo by JNW

Spotted in Lerner: blogger and Entertainment Weekly creator/founding editor Jeff Jarvis (dim photo at right). Jarvis, who is also now the director of the interactive journalism program at CUNY’s new journalism school, was part of a pre-lunch panel in the Business School’s BRITE Conference, which is taking place during today and tomorrow in Roone Arledge Cinema.

Our heartiest congratulations to Emily Rose Jordan, CC ’09, on becoming the second Columbian in two days to win the Gates Cambridge Scholarship. Jordan, who is also a member of Phi Beta Kappa, will pursue a PhD in Experimental Psychology at Cambridge next year.

A Chicago native, Jordan studied psychology and anthropology (see, it is practical!) at Columbia and plans on becoming a professor of neuroscience. Her honor thesis project showed how “social enrichment can impact the brain and behavior of mice so that animals with enriched experiences exhibit more appropriate social behaviors.”

Jordan will be taking a step up in the rodent world next year, focusing on the development of impulsive behavior of rats, a species we at Columbia are far too acquainted with in a non-laboratory setting. Huzzah, Emily!  

Caroline Robertson, CC ’09, has been named a Gates Scholar this year.

The Gates Cambridge Scholarship, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, offers full rides to non-UK students for graduate work at the University of Cambridge.

The scholarship is awarded based on “intellectual ability, leadership capacity and desire to use their knowledge to contribute to society.”  Past winners include four other Columbia undergraduates.

Caroline says, “I’ll be doing a PhD on the neuroscience of autism in Simon Baron-Cohen’s lab.”  If the name sounds familiar, his first cousin is Sacha Baron-Cohen.

If you’re looking for the official word online, the announcement hasn’t been posted just yet just yet.  Caroline is a resident of Potluck House and a neuroscience/religion double major.  She is also an accomplished oboist and a well-known Tibet activist.

Congratulations, Caroline!

Communal fake-boyfriend/dishy stats wizard Nate Silver has been spotted in Hamilton Hall!

After some frantic Googling, Bwog’s discovered that Silver’s in town to give a lecture about election website methodology at Lincoln Center from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM. 

If Silver’s still in Hamilton, that means there’s still time to head down to catch the lecture.

Wondering what you have to do to be an early member of Phi Beta Kappa? Here’s what Bwog found out about our early nominees:

• Rajiv Agarwal, Philosophy, co-president of Columbia Global Justice
• Rudi Batzell, History, Undergraduate History Council chair, editor/reviver of the Undergraduate History Journal, former editor of Lucha’s El Participante, and anti-ROTC panelist.
• Mikaela Bradbury, Anthropology, observer of street vendors.
  
• Jennifer Brown, English
• Cindy Cai, Biology/Music, member of Kappa Phi Lambda, piano player
  
• Willy Chang, Physics, researcher of things Bwog doesn’t understand, born in 1984 (Bwog loves an older man…)
• Emily Clader, Mathematics/Philosophy, Bach Society alto
• Yasemin Erboy, Environmental Sciences, EcoRep, part of the Lamont-Doherty Observatory
  
  
• Amari Hammonds, Sociology, former Bwog and Spec writer, Vagina Monologuer, reality TV star. Read more…

And you thought cell phones were only for what the kids call “texting”: six SIPA students, in partnership with UNICEF, have received the first-place award in the US Agency for International Development’s “Development 2.0 Challenge” for their project incorporating cell phones in monitoring child malnutrition. According to their project proposal, the students intend to replace the current paper-based system of monitoring children’s health with one using cell phones, allowing countries “to geographically map and track child malnutrition trends accurately and in real time. This tool will provide a critical means of intervention into rapidly unfolding food and nutrition crises.” The project will be tested in Malawi from this month through May.

Also, we don’t want to let any more time go by without congratulating Sam Daly, CC ’09, who last month recieved a prestigious Marshall Scholarship. Daly, whose “studies at Columbia have focused on African history and languages, specifically Swahili and Yoruba” will pursue a master’s degree at Oxford in the fall, joining Rhodes Scholar Jisung Park. Congrats to Sam!

Today’s New York Times Sunday Book Review includes a letter to the editor from philosophy and English professor Philip Kitcher, in which he masterfully corrects Slate overlord Jack Shafer. The latter had hypothetically asked in last week’s review of Roy Blount, Jr.’s Alphabet Juice: “Who before Blount thought to construct a complete conversation using only English vowels?”

Writes Kitcher: “The answer is James Joyce. Almost. The conversation Shafer cites, with the five vowels in order, has a precursor in a sentence from ‘Ulysses.’ In Chapter 9, Stephen Dedalus is meditating on his debt to the writer George Russell, whose pseudonym was AE. Stephen concludes his musings with a five-letter sentence: A.E.I.O.U.”

The 2008-2009 Rhodes Scholars have been announced, and Columbia’s very own R. Jisung Park of Shelton Connecticut has made the list! 

Per the winners’ bios press release: “R. Jisung Park, Shelton, Connecticut, is a senior at Columbia where is a double major in economics and political science.  Jisung has done research in tropical rainforest studies in Australia and has developed a cross-disciplinary course of study at Columbia in sustainable development.  He serves on the editorial board of a journal on sustainable development, is an a capella bass singer, has taught English in Korea, and spent a year studying at Oxford.  He will return to Oxford to do an M.Sc. in nature, society, and environmental policy.”

Congratulations R. Jisung Park! We look forward to congratulating you once again when PBK is announced. 

Last year two Columbians were awarded the scholarship: Jason Bello and George Olive. In terms of inter-Ivy competition, Princeton was the big winner this year, with three students represented. Harvard was runner-up with two, and Brown, Penn and Yale tied with Columbia. Hear that Yale? Tied.

Dr. Rosalind Franklin, the woman who took the picture that provided James Watson and Francis Crick with the “critical evidence” for their model of DNA, was posthumously awarded an Honorary Horowitz Prize by the Columbia University Medical Center yesterday.  When employed at King’s College London, she worked with x-ray diffraction analysis of DNA and took the picture below, which showed the inner structure of DNA’s double helix.  Her work was shown to Watson and Crick before it was published, so they did not properly cite her in their series of seminal articles published in Nature in 1953.  Read more…

As you well know, Columbia has a long history of Nobel Laureates, and now the presitgious group can also claim Martin Chalfie, Chair of the Biological Sciences Department, who, along with a professor from UC San Diego and a professor emeritus from BU Medical School, won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry today. 

Their Nobel nod came after they discovered the gene for the protein that makes jellyfish glow — the protein is the tricky looking thing at right. The protein, which has become famous as Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP), has since been used in a myriad of important experiments looking at cellular development in neurons and cancer cells. 

Good luck trying to get into his class — this semester he is only teaching a Genetics class for Biology Ph.D. students.  The Biological Sciences Department also has a more jargon-y explanation of Chalfie’s work.