Newsmakers

Al Biles, professor of information technology, is co-editor and author of Evolutionary Computer Music, which examines the application of evolutionary computation to music. Biles wrote chapters on evolutionary computation for musical tasks and improvising with genetic algorithms. An accompanying music CD features a selection of songs by the authors, including two by Biles and GenJam.

Howard Lester, professor in the School of Film and Animation, produced the film One Week in Vietnam, which is currently part of the show “Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era” at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. Showings of the film have been presented daily since May 24 and will run through Sept. 16.

Stephanie Ludi, professor of software engineering, is the recipient of the 2007 myCourses Exemplary Teaching Award for her Secure Software Engineering course. Ludi received a $1,000 award from Online Learning. An award ceremony was held in April.

Elizabeth Reeves O’Connor, lecturer in communication, was awarded a “Top Three Paper in Mass Communication” at the Eastern Communication Association’s April conference for “Cosmetic Surgery and Reality Television: Investigating the Relationship Between College Students’ Viewing of Cosmetic Surgery on Reality Television and Self-Reported Attitudes toward Cosmetic Surgery.” The paper is based on her Communication and Media Technologies master’s thesis.

Michael Radin, professor in the School of Mathematical Sciences, gave his presentation “Boundedness, Periodic and Monotonic Character of the Positive Solutions of a Non-Autonomous Rational Difference Equation,” in November, at the University of Rhode Island.

Douglas Ford Rea, chair of the photojournalism program in the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences, is the author of the book Preventive Photoshop: Take the Best Digital Photographs Now for Better Images Later. The book offers tips to photographers of all skill levels.

Evan Selinger, assistant professor of philosophy, co-edited with Jan-Kyrre Berg Olsen Philosophy of Technology: 5 Questions. The collection of interviews is based on questions presented to prominent scholars regarding their views on technology, its aim, scope and use, the future and their own work.

Hossein Shahmohamad, professor in the School of Mathematical Sciences, presented the talk “Some Sequences of Graphs and their Chromatic Polynomials” in October at the SEAWAY Section of Mathematical Association of America. Shahmohamad also presented “Revisiting Chromatic Polynomials of Some Sequences of Graphs” at the 20th Mid-West Conference on Combinatorics, Cryptography & Computing in October.