Christopher Bystroff, assistant professor of biology, presented a paper in August at a computational biology conference in Glasgow, Scotland. The paper proposed a method to predict protein folding pathways and was one of 67 chosen from more than 500 entries at the conference, which combined the 12th International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology and the 3rd European Conference on Computational Biology. Bystroff's co-authors include Mohammed J. Zaki, associate professor of computer science, and computer science graduate students Vinay Nadimpally and Deb Bardhan.

The Fund for Lake George awarded Rensselaer's Darrin Fresh Water Institute the first annual James D. Corbett Award, for advancing environmental education and research on Lake George since 1967 and partnering with the Fund in developing lake water quality monitoring programs since 1979. To accept the award on behalf of DFWI was Margaret A. Darrin, Sandra Nierzwicki-Bauer, Charles Boylen, Larry Eichler, and David Diehl. Corbett, the founder of the Fund, was a lifelong champion of Lake George.

Loretta Ebert, director of Rensselaer Research Libraries, has been elected to a three-year term on the Members Council of the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), a nonprofit international collaborative of libraries. There are 60 Member Council delegates who are elected by and represent the OCLC member libraries in their respective regions.

Michael Shur, the Patricia W. and C. Sheldon Roberts '48 Professor of Solid State Electronics, edited the book UV Solid-State Light Emitters and Detectors, which was published by Kluwer. Shur, who is also the director of the Center for Broadband Data Transport, edited the book with Arturas Zukauskas.

Doug Whittet, professor of physics, applied physics, and astronomy, was awarded 40 hours of observing time on NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope for studies of the evolution of ices in interstellar clouds and proto-planetary disks. He was also awarded a $116,500 grant to analyze the data. The project will continue to July 2007.

Xi-Cheng Zhang, the J. Erik Jonsson'22 Distinguished Professor of Science, was elected a fellow of the World Innovation Foundation on June 8. Zhang is also director of Rensselaer's Center for Terahertz Research.

Rensselaer researchers Xi-Cheng Zhang, Nachiket Raravikar, Pulickel Ajayan, Toh-Ming Lu, Gwo-Ching Wang, and Linda Schadler received U.S. Patent No. 6,782,154 for an "Ultrafast all-optical switch using carbon nanotube polymer composites." Researchers Yiping Zhao and Yuchuan Chen also participated in receiving the patent.

Michael Zuker, professor of mathematics, published an articled titled "Mfold web server for nucleic acid folding and hybridization prediction," in Nucleic Acids Research on July 1, 2003, that has been identified by Thomson-ISI® as one of the most cited papers in the field of biology and biochemistry.