Mark Buttner and Patricia Cruz (Community Health Sciences) received a $1.1 million, 16-month award from the Nevada department of health and human services to conduct environmental monitoring.

Stephen Brown (Economics) and Hillard Huntington of Stanford University are the authors of "Assessing the U.S. Oil Security Premium," which was published in Energy Economics.

Dale "Shag" Shigenaga (Hotel) was inducted as an American Academy of Chefs (AAC) Honorary Fellow at the AAC dinner that took place during the American Culinary Federation national convention at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in July.

Travis Olson (Teaching & Learning) was featured in the latest edition of "Discoveries" newsletter. The article describes his use of software and web resources in teaching mathematics. The newsletter also describes his teacher professional development project that was funded through the Nevada collaborative teaching improvement program.

Dan Bubb and Lindsay Couzens (Academic Assessment) presented a poster at the annual LiveText Assessment Conference in Chicago in July. The poster shared strategies for developing comprehensive assessment programs, including the critical role faculty play in them. It also showcased the progress some UNLV programs have made in response to the…

Kwang Kim (Mechanical Engineering) was a presenter at the third international conference on Electromechanically Active Polymer transducers and artificial muscles (EuroEAP) in Zurich in June. His presentation centered on recent progress in ionic polymer-metal composites. He was one of only a handful of speakers from the United States invited to…

Mohamed Trabia (Engineering) was a keynote speaker at the 5th International Conference on Mechatronics in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, last month. His presentation, "Smart Finger-Wearable Assistive Display for the Well-Being of the Blind and Visually Impaired" covered his ongoing research in advancing portable "seeing" assistive devices for the blind…

John Filler (Educational and Clinical Studies) co-authored a new book with Keith J. Hyatt, a professor at Western Washington University. Writing Educationally Relevant and Legally Compliant Individual Education Programs (IEPs) for Preschool & Elementary Age Students with Disabilities (Kendall Hunt Publishing Co. 2013) is available Aug. 1.

Pamela Burnley (Geoscience) wrote an article, "The Importance of Stress Percolation Patterns in Rocks and Other Polycrystalline Materials" that was published in the journal Nature Communications last month. She has discovered a new paradigm for understanding the deformation behavior of polycrystalline materials. Many familiar solid objects are…