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Extension Makes the News
Learning From a Master
On October 18, 2005, students in Charles Sawyer’s course A History of the Blues in America had the pleasure of a visit from blues master Kim Wilson of the Fabulous Thunderbirds. He answered students’ questions, offered advice, and shared the story of his own journey in music.
An accomplished singer and harmonica player, Wilson told of his introduction to the blues in the 1960s, when he was just a teenager hanging around Los Angeles-area clubs. He explained how he was inspired by such greats as George “Harmonica” Smith, Eddie Taylor, and Jimmy Reed to pick up the harmonica. With encouragement from his idols, he began playing the very clubs he had frequented. Quick success motivated him to pursue a music career, and he put in the hard work to make his dream a reality. Wilson’s visit to Sawyer’s class was featured in the October 20, 2005 Harvard Gazette. A video accompanies the online version. Instructor Helps Identify Sailor in Famous Photograph
In spring 2006, Hanspeter Pfister, instructor of Introduction to Computer Graphics and associate director and senior research scientist at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, used high-tech 3D imaging to attempt to uncover the identity of a man in a famous photograph. For years the picture of a sailor kissing a nurse in New York on April 14, 1945, the day WWII ended, was shrouded in mystery. Life magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstadt did not get the names of his subjects. Since then, Edith Shain, 87, has been identified as the woman in the picture, but the man’s identity has been harder to pinpoint since many have claimed to be him. At Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Pfister and his colleagues performed several tests on volunteer George Mendonsa, an 82-year-old Navy veteran from Newport, Rhode Island, who claims to be the man in the photograph. They first used a machine called “the dome,” which, in just seconds, took thousands of photos of Mendonsa’s head from different angles. The photos were then converted to a 3D image and de-aged to more accurately portray Mendonsa’s face as it was 60 years ago. The image was then tilted to the same angle as the sailor’s head in the 1945 photo and compared to the original. Though this technique isn’t 100 percent accurate, it did put Mendonsa one step closer to proving he is indeed the notorious sailor. Defining InnovatorMark Plotkin, ALB ’79, was named one of Smithsonian magazine’s 35 most “defining innovators” for his commitment to rainforest conservation. The ethnobotanist, who founded the Amazon Conservation Team with his wife, was the subject of the 1998 Academy Award-nominated IMAX documentary, Amazon. Read the article from the November 2005 issue on the magazine’s website. A profile of Plotkin appeared in the 1999 Alumni Bulletin. Never Too Late to LearnAt 82, Elizabeth V. McNeil, ALB ’06, was the oldest graduate at the 2006 Harvard Commencement, earning her Bachelor of Liberal Arts from the Extension School. She was profiled in the June 8, 2006 issues of the Boston Globe and the Harvard Gazette, and featured in a WCVB TV-5 newscast. DNA Identifies Criminals, Victims
Over the past year Frederick Bieber, instructor of Principles of Genetics and associate professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School, has received much media attention for his work on DNA identification methods. A May 11, 2006 Harvard Gazette article discussed the kinship DNA mapping project Bieber is pursuing with colleagues David Lazer, associate professor of public policy at the Kennedy School of Government; and Charles Brenner, a mathematician at the University of California at Berkeley. The research is intended to help investigators find criminals through their relatives’ DNA. Bieber was also profiled in the December 12, 2005 Boston Globe for his use of DNA evidence to help identify victims of disasters, including the World Trade Center attacks and Hurricane Katrina. Undergraduate Program Attracts Younger StudentsA November 18, 2005 front page New York Times story raised the profile of the Extension School’s Bachelor of Liberal Arts Program—and in general part-time programs designed for the working adult. In “Harvard, for Less: Extension Courses’ New Allure,” the Times’s Pam Belluck reported that degrees offered by continuing education schools such as the Extension School are becoming increasingly popular among traditional-age college students. “The trend,” Belluck wrote, “reflects the increasing number of students struggling to afford college, even as they realize it is increasingly necessary…” Science Makes Primetime
Robert Martínez, instructor of classical mathematics and a Harvard graduate student in mathematical physics, was featured in a new reality TV series, Chasing Nature, on Animal Planet. In each show top engineering students must create an apparatus that mimics a particular animal’s natural abilities, according to Boston Globe correspondent Keith O’Brien, who profiled Martínez for his January 9, 2006 “Meeting the Minds” column. Martínez and his team were assigned the task of mimicking a scorpion. Martinez’s television debut was also covered in the January 22, 2006 Harvard Crimson article “King of the Animal Planet.” Copyright © 2006 The President and Fellows of Harvard College. Webmaster. Last modified Mon, October 16, 2006. |
