New face at the Graduate School
The Graduate School has recruited Allegra di Bonaventura ’93MA, ’02JD, ’08PhD (history), to help provide guidance and support to students in the humanities and social sciences. As assistant dean, di Bonaventura runs the Dean’s Fund, which gives financial support to student-organized research workshops, seminars, and colloquia. She is also responsible for non-degree students, student leaves, fellowship programs, and joint degrees with the law school. Di Bonaventura continues to work half time as an assistant editor of the Benjamin Franklin Papers, where she focuses on Franklin’s French and Italian correspondence as well as on legal issues in his writings.
Bacteria in the gut fight lung infection
Graduate student Iris Pang (immunobiology), working with former postdoc Takeshi Ichinohe in Akiko Iwasaki’s lab, has shown that “commensal” bacteria—the harmless or helpful kind—in the intestines actually play an important role in fighting flu infection in the lung. Her recent publication inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has attracted a lot of attention and led to articles in American Scientist, Nature, and Scientific American. The study is the first to demonstrate that commensal bacteria provide a signal to the body that prepares other organs, in this case the lungs, to mount an immune response against viruses. Antibiotics, which suppress bacteria in the gut, seem to impair the body’s ability to send those signals.
Alumnus wins Humboldt Award
Robert Entman ’77PhD (political science) has won the Alexander von Humboldt Research Award for his groundbreaking contributions to the field of political communication. He is the world’s first political communication scholar to receive this award. Entman, the Shapiro Professor of Media and Public Affairs and professor of international affairs at George Washington University, studies media “framing” and bias and the media’s influence on foreign policy, race relations, and other aspects of American politics. His work has been cited in thousands of scholarly publications and has profoundly influenced current thinking about the media. In his forthcoming book, Scandal and Silence: Media Responses to Presidential Misconduct (Wiley, 2012), he challenges the conventional wisdom that the media seek out and publicize scandals, arguing that, in fact, most instances of corruption are ignored. Entman advances a theoretical model that reveals an underlying logic to what might seem arbitrary and capricious journalism.
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