News

A ribbon cutting to mark the opening of the nation’s first cellulose nanofiber pilot plant and a keynote address by U.S. Sen. Angus King will highlight the 63rd annual Paper Days at the University of Maine, April 3–4.

Innovation, with a focus on biobased nanoparticles and biofuels, is the theme of this year’s Paper Days, coordinated by the University of Maine Pulp & Paper Foundation and expected to draw more than 300 industry leaders, researchers and students from throughout the U.S. and Europe. An estimated 60 paper companies and engineering firms are expected to send representatives.

The event is designed to facilitate the connection between the university and industry by getting UMaine students and faculty, and industry representatives together to learn about the latest topics in the field and to network, says Jack Healy, executive director of the UMaine Pulp & Paper Foundation.

Following a luncheon and address by Larry Montague, president and CEO of TAPPI, there will be seminars on biobased nanoparticle opportunities led by Alan Rudie, Forest Products Laboratory; Robert Moon, Purdue University; and UMaine alumna Beth Cormier, Sappi Paper and Agenda 2020 Technology Alliance. All occur in Wells Conference Center.

Tours of Jenness Hall will focus on the Process Development Center, which is observing its 25th anniversary, and the Cellulose Nanofiber Pilot Plant, funded by a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Forest Service.

The ribbon-cutting ceremony for the pilot plant begins at 3:30 p.m. in D.P. Corbett Business Building. Expected to be on hand to offer remarks will be UMaine President Paul Ferguson; Michael Rains, USDA Forest Service; Theodore Wegner, Forest Products Laboratory; and Sean Ireland, TAPPI and Verso Paper Inc.

The pilot plant manufactures cellulose nanofibers (CNF), a wood-based reinforcing material that is increasingly of interest to researchers worldwide in the development of high-value materials. Last year, UMaine and the Forest Products Laboratory began a research collaboration on the conversion of wood components into novel nanomaterials; the incorporation of an array of nanomaterials into forest products to increase their functionality, durability and end-use performance; and development of new generations of high-performance wood-based materials.

UMaine is in a consortium with the Forest Products Lab, six other universities and numerous industrial partners pursuing research using CNF. Nanomaterial has applications in automobile components, paint and coating additives, composites and filtration media.

The Paper Days honors banquet begins at 6 p.m. in Wells Conference Center featuring a keynote address by Sen. King, and award and scholarship presentations.

Also being announced is a leadership gift by Sappi Fine Paper North America to help launch the UMaine Pulp and Paper Foundation’s $2 million fundraising campaign for scholarships.

The following day, Paper Days participants will tour the Forest Bioproducts Research Institute’s Technology Research Center in Old Town, Maine, followed by an industry panel discussion, “Biofuels in the Face of Changing U.S. Energy Availability.” At the luncheon that day, Frederick Clark of EKA Chemicals will speak on “The Business Case for Sustainability.”

Contact: Margaret Nagle, 207.581.3745; 207.949.4149; Pros Bennett, 207.581.2281

The Bangor Daily News reported on a keynote address given by Walter Echo-Hawk, a Pawnee lawyer, professor, activist and author on campus Thursday. Echo-Hawk spoke about indigenous people in Maine and the crossroads between two legal frameworks.

WVII (Channel 7) and the Bangor Daily News covered the University of Maine GradExpo. The annual event was held in the new Innovative Media Research and Commercialization Center, and allowed graduate students to display their research, artistic works, projects and collaborations.

The Bangor Daily News spoke to Alan Majka of University of Maine Cooperative Extension about an Extension program, “Hunger Doesn’t Take a Vacation,” based in Machias to establish free summer meal sites for children.

A study by University of Maine economist Todd Gabe was cited in an opinion piece by State Sen. Rebecca Millett for Current. In her column, “Curbing youth obesity in Maine,” Millett cites the UMaine study that predicts the state will spend $1.2 billion in health care costs on complications from childhood obesity.

Village Soup cited a University of Maine Cooperative Extension publication in an article about healthy eating for toddlers. According to the Cooperative Extension bulletin, “The way we feed our children during the first five years of life affects everything — their physical health, and their emotional and social development, as well as how they learn.”

Natalie Springuel, coastal community development Extension associate with Maine Sea Grant, was quoted in the New Orleans-based Nola.com/The Times-Picayune article “Louisiana’s coastal communities face similar dilemmas as working waterfronts across nation”. Springuel said it’s important to share strategies to “protect working waterfronts that are necessary parts of our local culture and economies.”

The director of a network that evaluates early youth intervention education programs will be the guest at an April 12 campus workshop, “Community Engagement: Alignment of Needs & Capacity.” Maryann Corsello, associate director of positive youth development at Spurwink Services and director of REACH Collaborative, will attend the 10 a.m.-2 p.m. meeting in 107 Norman Smith Hall. The interactive Friday workshop will focus on creating community-university relationships, moving from idea to partnership and overcoming collaboration obstacles. It is sponsored by Community Engaged Research, Teaching and Service (CERTS), Center for Excellence in Teaching and Assessment (CETA), and a grant from American Association of Colleges and Universities. To RSVP, or for more information or to request disability accommodations, email Claire Sullivan, Claire_Sullivan@umit.maine.edu.

The 2013 University of Maine Humanities Initiative’s spring symposium, “Bibliopoetics: The Art and Future of the Book,” will be held April 5-6. The symposium, organized by Christopher Ohge, UMHI postdoctoral fellow in digital humanities, will feature seminars and workshops on topics such as “The Book as Object,” “Editing and Publishing in the Digital Age,” and “Poets and Books: A Reading and Discussion.” The symposium program can be found online. For more information or to request disability accommodations, call Christopher Ohge, 781.366.2972.

Los Hermanos Islet, 2007
Oil on canvas
Courtesy of the artist and ClampArt, NYC

The mixed-media art of John Bailly, produced in collaboration with poet Richard Blanco, will be featured in an exhibition opening to the public April 5 at the University of Maine Museum of Art. The exhibition is then available to travel nationally.

“Place of Mind: Works by John Bailly” will run through June 8 at the UMaine Museum of Art in Bangor, Maine.

“Place of Mind” comes to Maine from an exhibition that opened Feb. 21 at ClampArt gallery in New York City, directed by Brian Paul Clamp, and organized in collaboration with UMaine Museum of Art Director George Kinghorn.

The UMaine exhibition will feature three large-scale paintings and a selection of works on paper from the “Place of Mind” series, including three owned by the university.

Bailly is a French-American painter and printmaker who teaches at Florida International University in Miami. Blanco is the Cuban-American poet from Bethel, Maine, selected as the inaugural poet for President Barack Obama.

The pair produced the collaborative project, “Place of Mind,” primarily in 2007. Bailly’s 25 works on paper and paintings are responses to Blanco poems, says Kinghorn. The art and poems “share a common search for sense of identity and place.”

“They started this project as a way to explore the creative process in different media — the visual and literary arts — and how they inform each other,” Kinghorn says. “There was a dialog between them — a give and take, a call and response.”

Bailly’s works first came to Kinghorn’s attention when he was deputy director and chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, where a large-scale solo exhibition featured some pieces from the “Place of Mind” series. It was also in Florida that Kinghorn met Blanco.

The year after Kinghorn came to Maine in 2008, he curated the exhibition, “A Bit of Colored Ribbon,” featuring some of Bailly’s newest works, as well as a selection from “Place of Mind.”

Kinghorn also brought Blanco to UMaine, where the poet gave readings on campus in collaboration with the English Department. The reading at the Museum of Art included the poem, “Looking for The Gulf Motel,” which was published in 2012 and was the title of Blanco’s third book of poetry.

“This is a great opportunity for the museum and the university,” Kinghorn says. “Bailly is an exceptional painter and I have championed his art for many years. Now three friends working on a project like this is very exciting.”

Contact: Kathryn Jovanelli, 207.561.3352

Dear Graduate Students,

Please read the attached letter from University of Maine Provost Susan J. Hunter. I would also like to recognize your excellence and add my deep appreciation for all you do to benefit the University, the State, and beyond.

Best wishes,

Dan Sandweiss

The College of Natural Sciences, Forestry, and Agriculture has made the following graduate student awards:

George F. Dow Graduate Scholarship Fund — Yucheng Peng, Ph.D. candidate, Forest Resources, School of Forest Resources

Fred Griffee Memorial Award — Stefano Vendrame, Ph.D. candidate, Food Science and Human Nutrition, Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition

Norris Charles Clements Graduate Student Award — Matthew Jones, M.S. candidate, Ecology and Environmental Sciences, School of Biology and Ecology

Research Excellence Award — Nathan Briggs, Ph.D. candidate, Oceanography, School of Marine Sciences

Outstanding Service Award — Spencer Meyer, Ph.D. candidate, Forest Resources, School of Forest Resources

Outstanding Ph.D. Award — Alper Kiziltas, Ph.D. candidate, Forest Resources, School of Forest Resources

Outstanding Masters Award — Alisha Autio, M.S. candidate, Forest Resources, School of Forest Resources

University of Maine Cooperative Extension’s Maine Harvest for Hunger has been awarded a two-year, $45,000 grant from The Betterment Fund. Harvest for Hunger is a statewide initiative that collects donations of fresh produce from home gardeners, farmers, businesses, civic organizations and schools in the state to feed Maine people in need. Since 2000, hundreds of volunteers have donated more than 600 tons of fresh produce to feed hungry Mainers. A portion of the grant funding will support creation of a new program, Eat Well Volunteers, focused on providing cooking demonstrations and recipe sampling at food pantries in an effort to promote UMaine Extension’s Eat Well Nutrition Education Program.

The Portland Press Herald spoke with James Dill, a pest management specialist with the University of Maine’s Cooperative Extension, for an article about the use of pesticides on medicinal marijuana. Dill said he has been asked for tips on how to control pests in marijuana growing operations and says he can’t recommend more than spraying them with water because he is concerned about pesticides’ potential effects on smokers’ lungs.

Mainebiz spoke with Tanna Clews, executive director of Educate Maine, about Project>Login, the nonprofit’s collaboration with the University of Maine that aims to attract students to computer technology-related majors and support them throughout their studies. Clews said the initiative to double Maine’s computer science and IT graduates in four years could serve as a model for workforce development in other areas.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration published an article about its 2013 red tide forecasting project for the Gulf of Maine. The University of Maine is part of a large group of collaborators working with NOAA to provide forecasts that are updated on a weekly basis on the “Current Status” page of Northeast PSP website.

The University of Alabama’s UA News published an article on research that found clamshells used in ancient funeral ceremonies offer more evidence as to how climate change may have contributed to the gradual collapse of the Moche, an early South-American civilization. The research, which was recently published in the scientific journal Geology, was conducted by University of Alabama scientists as well as representatives from the University of Maine, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Arizona Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Facility, the University of Arizona, the University of Trujillo in Peru and Harvard University. The researchers found El Nino and an intertwined ocean phenomenon likely contributed to the Moche’s downfall.

Vice president for research candidates will be on campus in April and members of the University of Maine community are invited to their presentations on the topic “Vision of Research in a 21st Century Land Grant University.” The candidates’ vitae are online. Their campus presentation schedules: Satyendra Kumar, associate vice president for research and sponsored programs, physics professor, Kent State University, 1:30–2:30 p.m., April 2, Arthur St. John Hill Auditorium, 165 Barrows Hall; James Rice, professor and head of chemistry and biochemistry and executive director of the South Dakota EPSCoR Program, South Dakota State University, 1:30–2:30 p.m., April 16, Bangor Room, Memorial Union; David Conover, director, Division of Ocean Sciences, National Science Foundation professor, School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, Stony Brook University, 1:30–2:30 p.m., April 18, Minsky Recital Hall, Class of 1944 Hall; Morris Foster, associate vice president for strategic planning (Norman and Health Sciences Center campuses), associate vice president for research (Norman campus), deputy director for prevention and control, OU Cancer Institute, anthropology professor, University of Oklahoma, 1:30–2:30 p.m., April 29, 130 Little Hall. For more information, contact Dianne Avery, 207.581.1595.

Boston.com, MPBN, WGME (Channel 13), WABI (Channel 5), Portland Press Herald and WLBZ (Channel 2) were among several news organizations that carried an Associated Press report on University of Maine Professor Robert Steneck’s latest research. Steneck, who works at UMaine’s Darling Marine Center, led a study that found when Maine fishermen harvested millions of pounds of sea urchins in the 1990s for the Japanese market they depleted the creatures, turning the ecosystem upside-down and creating an ideal habitat for the Jonah crab, an urchin predator. Steneck warns the urchin population might not recover unless fishery managers find ways to increase the number of fish that prey on Jonah crabs.

WABI (Channel 5) reported that in May, a group of University of Maine students will deliver medical supplies to Guatemala clinics. The UMaine chapter of Partners for World Health will spend two weeks in Guatemala.