Kudos: Green Returns and More

Green Returns

In an effort to improve upon an existing green initiative—and clear out “science experiments” growing in dorm rooms—a student team has developed a return system for Dartmouth Dining Service’s (DDS) Green2Go reusable food containers. “We’re students and so we’ve gotten these containers of food and then had them sit in our dorm rooms for a week or two,” says Sebastian Logue ’22. “Over time they grow nasty things.” That contamination has also meant DDS has had to discard the containers, which are not biodegradable or recyclable. “It defeats the sustainability aspect of the whole system,” he says. Logue, Christopher Connors ’21, Seamus Hall ’20, Jenna Lee ’22, and Maxwell Holden ’22 won the Phillip R. Jackson Award for their solution. The team modified an existing trash can with a scanner to read a food container’s bar code, credit the student’s account, and then unlock the unit. Each day DDS can collect the used containers, reset the scanner, and prepare for the next meal. The team hopes to roll out 20 autonomous cans across campus to augment the three return points currently at the dining halls. “It’s good for people to see that students care,” says Logue, “and that we’re trying to improve upon what exists already.”

ELECTED Professors Laura Ray and Stuart Trembly have been named senior members of the National Academy of Inventors for producing technologies that impact society’s welfare.

NAMED Jennifer Lai Th’20, a recent PhD graduate, has been named 2020 Schmidt Science Fellow along with just 21 other early-career scientists from around the world. Lai, a protein engineer who designs vaccines, will shift her research focus to high-throughput analysis of antibody repertoire data. .

HONORED Professor Geoffrey Parker, director of Dartmouth’s MEM program, won the Thinkers50 Digital Thinking Award. He was recognized for his analysis of the concept of the inverted firm—in which value is increasingly created outside rather than inside a firm.

PUBLISHED PhD graduate Irwin Tendler Th’20 is part of a Dartmouth team that found evidence to support the common phenomenon of seeing flashes of light during brain radiotherapy. Their research was published in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, & Physics.

AWARDED Biomedical engineering major Delia Friel ’20 has earned a full scholarship to pursue a master’s in global affairs at the Schwarzman College at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China.

WON Her ability to teach beginning coders online has earned Professor Petra Bonfert-Taylor the 2019 edX Prize for Exceptional Contributions in Online Teaching and Learning.

SELECTED The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics has recognized Professor George Cybenko as a 2020 SIAM fellow for his contributions to theory and algorithms in signal processing, artificial neural networks, and distributed computing systems.

HONORED The Optical Society and the Society for Imaging Science and Technology have awarded Professor Eric Fossum the 2020 Edwin H. Land Medal for his “groundbreaking contribution to digital imaging technology.”

AWARDED Professor Jifeng Liu is a principal investigator on a team receiving a U.S. Department of Defense grant to develop infrared imaging sensors that could significantly improve night-vision systems for self-driving vehicles.