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Rebecca Heald '85, a University of California, Berkeley, cell biologist is one of 13 researchers selected this week to receive the 2006 Pioneer Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The annual award, totaling $2.5 million over five years, is designed to fund "high risk" research with potentially high payoff for human health. 

Robert Simon, the Marjorie and Robert McEwen Professor of Philosophy, gave the Warren Fraleigh Distinguished Scholar lecture at the 34th annual meeting of the International Association for the Philosophy of Sport held at Niagara Falls, Canada, in September. The title of his lecture was "Deserving to be Lucky: Reflections on Luck, Desert, and Fairness in Sport." In the lecture, Simon argued first that luck does not ruin or spoil athletic contests which often are conceived of as tests of pure skill, and second that initial inequalities in natural ability and environment do not preclude justifiable attributions of desert in sport although it may lessen their significance. In a section of his paper, Simon discussed colleague Dan Chambliss's book Champions: The Making of Olympic Swimmers.

The Hamilton College Debate Team will host a public debate on Monday, September 25. This event will feature members of the British Debate Team, as well as members of Hamilton's and Hobart and William Smith College's team. British debaters are Gavin Illsley, the current European Debating Champion, and Fraser Campbell, who is active in the British Labour Party. The debate will be in the Science Center, room 3024 from 7-8 p.m. and is sponsored by the Department of Communication.

Tim Elgren, professor of chemistry and chair of the biochemistry/molecular biology program, presented a lecture titled "Harnessing the Power of an Enzyme" at Colgate University. The lecture focused on the recent work of students in his lab and work resulting from a year-long sabbatical leave at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana. The focus of Elgren's research is currently the preparation, stabilization, and characterization of novel catalytic bio-materials.

The Hamilton College Classical Connections series opens on Saturday, Sept. 23, with a performance by the Cassatt String Quartet at 8 p.m. The performance will take place at Wellin Hall in the Schambach Center for Music and the Performing Arts. Tickets are $15 general admission with discounts for groups, senior citizens and students. All seating is general admission. For more information or to order tickets, call the box office at 859-4331.

Associate Dean of Faculty and Associate Professor of Philosophy Kirk Pillow has joined the steering board of the Consortium on High Achievement and Success. CHAS, a 36-member consortium of highly selective liberal arts colleges, promotes the sharing of best practices among member institutions dedicated to enhancing educational outcomes for all students, with an emphasis on the needs of students of color. CHAS-coordinated projects have played a significant role in Hamilton's diversity initiatives for several years, including science faculty workshops, collecting student narratives, meetings of academic support professionals, and data sharing across the consortium. Pillow will join steering board colleagues from Barnard, Colby, St. Lawrence, Trinity and Vassar in planning the initiatives of CHAS, including a President's Forum in New York scheduled for December.

Two students in Hamilton's program in Washington D.C. met U.S. Senator Barack Obama (Illinois). Lynn Wetzel is interning with Rep. Gregory Meeks (6th District, N.Y) and Natasha Jenkins is working in the office of Rep. Bobby Rush (1st District, Ill.) Sixteen Hamilton students are spending the semester in Washington with Professor of Government Ted Eismeier, who is director of the Fall 2006 program.

Author and internationally recognized human rights attorney Geoffrey Robertson spoke at Hamilton on September 19. Robertson’s most recent book, The Tyrannicide Brief, recounts the story of John Cooke, the man who prosecuted Charles I for treason. In his lecture, Robertson recounted some of the story of Cooke and discussed the necessity and difficulty of bringing tyrants before the bar.

Ernest Williams, the Leonard C. Ferguson Professor of Biology, was the first speaker of the year in the Asa Gray Seminar Series at Utica College. His lecture was titled "Population structure and conservation of three rare butterflies."

Theobald Gakwaya, a Rwandan genocide survivor, lectured with the aid of a translator at Hamilton College’s Science Center Auditorium to a large group of students and faculty on the issue of Rwandan genocide on September 18. Gakwaya was a minister to the Rwandan government for one year and has since dedicated his efforts to human rights issues. Calling the genocide in Rwanda the “great humanitarian disaster of the contemporary world,” Gakwaya spoke about the social, political and economic history and problems surrounding the political and ethnic upheaval between the Hutus and the Tutsis. He told the audience that the Rwandan conflict has brought the whole area of the great African lakes onto the brink of war with an estimated five million people dead: two million Rwandan and three million Congolese.