Rutgers News Center

Senator Lesniak wins international award, honored by university

State Senator and Rutgers alumnus Raymond Lesniak (D-Elizabeth) recently received an international humanitarian award and a related tribute from his alma mater.

On February 1, Lesniak won first prize in the Memorial de Caen International Human Rights Competition in Caen, France, for his presentation about the abolition of the death penalty in New Jersey. A week later, he was honored for his win by President Richard L. McCormick and Interim Athletic Director Carl Kirschner at the Rutgers-Seton Hall men’s basketball game.

The annual Memorial de Caen competition brings together lawyers from around the world who plead cases about human rights. This year, lawyers from Washington, D.C., France, Belgium, Guinea, Senegal, and Switzerland competed.

Lesniak's speech, "The Road to Justice and Peace," won the acclaim of a panel of elite international judges. Said Lesniak, "I hope and believe this award will help efforts to abolish the death penalty wherever it exists. I am also proud as an American to receive this award for the defense of human rights at Le Memorial de Caen, the famous museum dedicated to honoring the D-Day invasion and the soldiers who lost their lives fighting for our freedom."

Lesniak said he will donate his first-place winnings, roughly $9,740 from the Caen City Council, to The Road to Justice and Peace, a nonprofit he founded to advance the abolition of the death penalty around the globe, to support the families of murder victims, and to promote humane alternatives to incarceration.

Click here to view the senator's winning speech and the speeches of his competition.

 – Rutgers University Alumni Association

Nathan Yee awarded Houtermans’ Medal for Geochemistry

Assistant Professor Nathan Yee  has been selected by the European Association for Geochemistry as the 2009 Houtermans’ medalist.

The association awards the medal annually to a junior researcher – no more than 35 years of age – whose contributions to geochemistry are considered exceptional. Yee will receive the medal at the Goldschmidt Conference in Davos, Switzerland, this summer, and has been invited to present at a session of his choice. 

Yee’s research focuses on using microorganisms to reduce or mediate the toxicity of certain metals. His work on microbes that sequester metals, including toxic metals such as arsenic and mercury, could lead to significant benefits for public health. 

Yee received his bachelor’s degree in earth and planetary sciences from McGill University and his doctorate in geological sciences from the University of Notre Dame.

He joined Rutgers–Newark’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences in 2004 and moved to Rutgers–New Brunswick in 2006 with a joint appointment in the Departments of Environmental Sciences and Planetary and Earth Sciences.                             

                                                                                                          – Amanda Kolling

Two Rutgers professors receive Sloan Foundation Fellowships

Two Rutgers professors have won prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowships, which are highly competitive awards intended to enhance the careers of exceptional young faculty members working in seven fields of science in the United States and Canada.

They are Alexandre Morozov, assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and a faculty member in the BioMaPS Institute for Quantitative Biology, and Jian Song, assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics. Each will receive a $50,000 grant to support their research over the next two years.

Morozov and Song are among 118 faculty members at 61 major North American universities to receive this year’s awards.

Morozov is a biological physicist working at the confluence of biology, physics, and computer science. His research seeks to improve understanding of the messages encoded in DNA sequence and to link  genetic information with evolution and function of living organisms. Song focuses on the mathematical fields of geometry and topology.

The Sloan Foundation established its research fellowship program in 1955 to support and recognize early-career scientists and scholars, often in their first appointments to university faculties. Recipients typically have more flexibility with Sloan funding than they would with project grants or other more restricted funding sources. In the program’s history, 38 recipients have gone on to win Nobel Prizes and 14 have received the Fields Medal, the top honor in mathematics. Hundreds have received other prestigious awards and honors.

– Carl Blesch

Major gift complements Zimmerli’s Russian holdings

A gift of 180 works from two California art lovers is expanding a collection of Russian art that had already gained national renown for the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers.

Museum officials said the pieces from the Claude and Nina Gruen Collection of Contemporary Russian Art are a valuable addition to the Zimmerli’s holdings of traditional Russian art donated by George Riabov, and the world’s largest collection of Soviet nonconformist art, assembled by Norton Dodge.

The term Soviet nonconformist art generally refers to works produced in the former Soviet Union between 1953 and 1986. The movement is also referred to as “unofficial art” or “underground art.”  The newly donated works at the Zimmerli both complement and advance the museum’s previous holdings.

“This marvelous and much-appreciated major gift reinforces the museum’s focus on the art of Russia and the republics of the former Soviet Union, and at the same time extends the Zimmerli’s scholarship and collections firmly into the contemporary art arena with major works by artists active during the last two decades,” said Marti Mayo, interim director of the museum.

The Gruen Collection reflects art approaches by Russian artists from the Leonid Brezhnev era of the 1970s to the perestroika period of Michal Gorbachev beginning in the late 1980s. Works by leading nonconformist artists, many produced after the collapse of the Soviet Union, examine the Soviet experience against the backdrop of the realities of the newer post-Soviet economy.

Among the items featured in the new collection is “Many Headed Person with Fork,” a large canvas depicting an individual with six heads, each with piercing eyes. Artist Oleg Tselkov painted the orange-glazed oil in 1983.

Selections from the Gruen Collection will be displayed through June 28 at the museum on the College Avenue Campus. The Gruens also helped fund and support the exhibition’s catalogue.

– Rebecca Brenowitz

Alarms up, burglaries down

A study of five years of statistics by researchers at Rutgers School of Criminal Justice (SCJ) in Newark has quantified what many may suspect: Residential burglar alarm systems decrease crime.

While other research has concluded that most burglars avoid alarm systems, this is the first study to focus on alarm systems, while scientifically ruling out other factors that could have impacted the crime rate.

“Crime data provided by the Newark Police Department showed that a steady decrease in burglaries in Newark between 2001 and 2005 coincided with an increase in the number of registered home burglar alarms,” according to study author  Seungmug “Zech” Lee.  Professor Lee received his doctoral degree from SCJ last year and now teaches at Ohio Northern University in Ada, Ohio.

The study also concluded that the entire community benefits from the deterrent effect of alarms. Neighborhoods in which burglar alarms were densely installed have fewer incidents of residential burglaries than the neighborhoods with fewer burglar alarms, the study noted.

The study was conducted with the cooperation of the Newark Police Department and reviewed five years of police data. Members of the study’s advisory committee include SCJ professors George L. Kelling, Marcus Felson, and Ronald V. Clarke, and Robert D. McCrie of John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The study was funded by the nonprofit Alarm Industry Research and Educational Foundation.

For more information about “The Impact of Home Burglar Alarm Systems on Residential Burglaries,” please contact Prof. Lee at 419-772-2597, or email s-lee.8@onu.edu or ezech0725@gmail.com.

 – Ferlanda Fox Nixon