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BRIN Honors and Awards

Information Release: 18 November 2003
For Immediate Release

Contact: Grace Baynes
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7631 9988
Fax: +44 (0)20 7580 1938
E-mail: grace.baynes@biomedcentral.com
Website:http://www.biomedcentral.com

Two new consortia sign up as BioMed Central Members
18 more U.S. institutions support open access publishing

BioMed Central announced today that it has signed institutional membership agreements with two U.S. consortia - the Consortium of Southern BioMedical Libraries (CONBLS) and Maine Biomedical Research Infrastructure Network (BRIN).

BioMed Central has secured membership agreements with three U.S. consortia this month alone. The publisher recently announced that Ohio Library and Information Network (OhioLINK) have purchased membership for 84 institutions in the state. The tally of BioMed Central members now stands at 396, of which almost half (190) are in the U.S. This represents an amazing growth in membership, with over 300 institutions signing up so far in 2003.

CONBLS is a consortium of biomedical libraries in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Puerto Rico, South Carolina and Tennessee. CONBLS exists to “exchange information and share existing resources to mutual advantage, participate in cooperative programs, and strengthen existing resources and library services through joint application for private and government funds.” There are seventeen member institutions in the consortium, of whom twelve have signed up for BioMed Central membership. The membership is the first product that CONBLS has purchased as a consortium, in their twelve years of existence.

The Maine BRIN is a seven-institution network that links biomedical research laboratories, universities and colleges in the state. The BRIN works to “address the statewide need to enhance the biomedical research capacity and competitiveness of students and faculty in Maine.” Twenty-four BRINs are active from Alaska to Wyoming, Hawaii to New Hampshire. North Dakota BRIN was the first to purchase BioMed Central membership in February 2003.

For further information about BioMed Central please contact Grace Baynes (grace.baynes@biomedcentral.com or Tel: +44 20 7631 9988) or visit our website http://www.biomedcentral.com/)

About BioMed Central:

BioMed Central (http://www.biomedcentral.com) is an independent online publishing house committed to providing immediate free access to the peer-reviewed biological and medical research it publishes. This commitment is based on the view that open access to research is essential to the rapid and efficient communication of science. In addition to open-access original research, BioMed Central also publishes reviews and other subscription-based content.

BioMed Central's business model is based on charging authors to publish, and then making the content free to readers. Under the agreement, article-processing charges are waived - for all member institution staff - for publication in any of BioMed Central's 100 peer-reviewed journals. Upon acceptance, the article becomes available online without charge to readers worldwide. Hundreds of researchers from U.S. institutions have already published in BioMed Central journals.

BioMed Central's Institutional Membership Program was launched in January 2002 and now has well over 400 members, including some of the world's most prestigious academic institutions. Harvard, NHS England, the World Health Organisation, all UK universities and over 230 U.S. institutions are all BioMed Central Institutional Members.

About CONBLS:

CONBLS is a consortium of biomedical libraries serving Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Puerto Rico, South Carolina and Tennessee.

The Consortium of Southern Biomedical Libraries, Inc. was incorporated in the State of South Carolina on September 30, 1982 with the stated purpose "to exchange information and share existing resources to mutual advantage, to participate in cooperative programs, to strengthen existing resources and library services through joint application for private and government funds."

Continuing activities include a reciprocal interlibrary loan activity, continuing education opportunities, and an annual CONBLS salary survey. There are seventeen member institutions of CONBLS from the six states listed above, and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

http://www.uab.edu/conbls/

For further information about CONBLS please contact:
Tamera P. Lee, M.L.S.
Professor and Director of Libraries
Robert B. Greenblatt M.D. Library
Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, GA
Tel (706) 721-2856
tlee@mail.mcg.edu

About Maine BRIN:

The Maine Biomedical Research Infrastructure Network is a three year project supported by an institutional development award (IDeA) from the National Center for Research Resources and the National Institutes of Health. The specific aim of this project is to develop a collaborative partnership and strong network for research training of faculty and students that will be advantageous by virtue of the quality and geographic proximity of the institutions involved. This network addresses the statewide need to enhance the biomedical research capacity and competitiveness of students and faculty in Maine by: a) facilitating the networking of high quality biomedical research institutions with undergraduate and graduate degree granting institutions, b) providing training, education and mentoring of undergraduate and graduate students and junior faculty in biomedical research, and c) stimulating the year-round biomedical research program.

The Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory (Salisbury Cove) is the lead institution in the seven-institution network including Bates College, Bowdoin College, Colby College, College of the Atlantic, The Jackson Laboratory, and The University of Maine.
http://www.brinme.net/

About BRIN:

BRINs are NIH funded. In a program launched in October 2001, the NIH allocated 24 grants totaling $45 million to 23 states and Puerto Rico. These states are those with a less than 20% success rate in applying for NIH grants, or those who have received on average less than $70 million in NIH funding between 1995-1999. The BRIN scheme is one half of the Institutional Development Award (IdeA) Program established in 1993. IDeA is run by The National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), the part of NIH responsible for ensuring that essential tools and resources are available to NIH-supported investigators across the US.

Dr. Patricia Hand elected to the board of directors for the EPSCoR Coalition

Dr. Patricia Hand, Administrative Director for the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory, has been elected to the board of directors for the EPSCoR Coalition, based in Washington, D.C. EPSCoR, which stands for the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, is a joint venture of the National Science Foundation and several U.S. states and territories to promote science and technology utilizing federal research and development funding. “I’m honored to be a member of this distinguished board,” Hand said. “The EPSCoR program truly enhances Maine’s ability to be more competitive for federal funding and keeps us informed about new funding initiatives that are so critical to research in our state.” Other new EPSCoR board members are: Dr. Jean’ne Shreeve, Professor of Chemistry, University of Idaho; Dr. Wendy Baldwin, Vice President for Research, University of Kentucky; Dr. Phil Boudjouk, Vice President for Research, Creative Activities and Technology Transfer, North Dakota State University; Dr. John Steadman, Professor of Electrical Engineering, Head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Wyoming; and Dr. Alice Clark, Vice Chancellor for Research and Sponsored Programs, the University of Mississippi.

UMaine's Hutchison Named Maine Professor of the Year

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education have named Keith Hutchison of the University of Maine Dept. of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Molecular Biology the 2002 Maine Professor of the Year. For more information please follow the link below:

http://www.umaine.edu/News/120902/UMaine's Hutchison Named Maine Professor of the Year.htm

Jackson Laboratory's Barbara Knowles Honored by German Scientific Society

Jackson Laboratory Associate Director Barbara B. Knowles, Ph.D., has been appointed an external scientific member of the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology. For more information please follow the link below:

http://www.jax.org/pubinfo/media/releases/knowles.html

Christensen Receives National Award for Undergraduate Research

Ronald L. Christensen, the James Stacy Coles Professor of Natural Sciences in the Bowdoin College chemistry department, has been named the recipient of the 2003 American Chemical Society (ACS) Award for Research at an Undergraduate Institution, sponsored by the Research Corporation.

Prof. Christensen is the first chemistry faculty member from a New England school to receive this prestigious award, which recognizes the importance of research in the education of undergraduates. Research Corporation, a private foundation for the advancement of science, established the award in 1984.

The ACS Award for Research at an Undergraduate Institution honors significant work over the course of a career by a chemistry faculty member whose research in an undergraduate setting has achieved wide recognition, and contributed significantly to chemistry and to the professional development of students.

It recognizes research that constitutes advances in science as evidenced by refereed publications with undergraduate coauthors in leading scientific research journals, external research grant support, and the subsequent professional development of students who have participated in the research program.

Prof. Christensen will be awarded $5,000 and a certificate, and Research Corporation provides a $5,000 grant to Bowdoin College as well. A formal presentation of the award will take place during the 225th ACS national meeting next March in New Orleans.

Ronald L. Christensen joined the Bowdoin faculty in 1976 after earning his bachelor's degree from Oberlin College and his master's and doctorate from Harvard University, and completing post-doctoral work at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.

His research focuses on physical chemistry, photobiology, organic photochemistry, and low temperature electronic spectroscopy. He has directed the senior honors projects of some 60 chemistry majors at Bowdoin.

He has served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for the Sciences at Bowdoin since 2000, and has served two terms as chair of the Bowdoin chemistry department. He was the department coordinator for the renovation of Cleaveland Hall and the construction of Druckenmiller Hall.

Christensen has been a visiting professor or research fellow at Imperial College, London; The University of Melbourne, Australia; Institute for Molecular Science, Okazaki, Japan; and Royal Institution of Great Britain, London.

In early 2003, ACS will publish an official announcement of the award in Chemical & Engineering News. This article will profile Prof. Christensen, and explain why the ACS awards committee selected him as this year's recipient. (The SUN will provide a link to that article when it is published.)

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