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Assistant Professor of Biology Wei-Jen Chang and Associate Professor of Computer Science Alistair Campbell presented at a Bioinformatics retreat held at Bates College in July. They joined colleagues from 11 other liberal colleges and discussed progress made on building bioinformatics curricula. Bioinformatics is a rising interdisciplinary field which involves the use of computer programs and computation algorithms to solve biological problems. 

Patrick Hodgens '09 and Assistant Professor of Anthropology Chaise LaDousa spent seven weeks this summer talking to students and teachers in schools and universities in Delhi and Varanasi, India, in order to understand the social lives of languages in a postcolonial society.

Ben Noble '08, a native of LaGrange Park, Ill., is preparing to move from one hill to another. A summer intern in the office of Congressman Peter Roskam (R-Ill.), Noble spent his summer networking, absorbing political savvy, and getting the necessary experience for a potential D.C. employee.

Chris Sullivan ’09 (Shutesbury, Mass.) has a research grant for this summer, but he won’t spend his time in a library. Sullivan, an environmental studies major, has been awarded a Levitt Fellowship to spend his summer traveling across the country on a motorcycle as he researches community-sustained agriculture in the U.S.

Archery Capital, a fund of funds based in New York City, was also a fund for Hamilton students this summer. The office was home for three Hamiltonians: Timothy Foley '06, Xiaobo Ma '09, and Ramunas Rozgys '09 (Naujoji Akmene, Lithuania). Rozgys, whose responsibilities were fluid and varied, enjoyed the environment. "It's like a small family group," he said.

Thanks to the generosity of Home Depot and the Community Foundation of Herkimer & Oneida Counties, Inc., the cooperation of the Utica Municipal Housing Authority and the organizational skills of Hamilton College student Jenney Stringer ’08, a community garden will be created for and by public housing resident families at Utica’s F.X. Matt Apartments, on Tuesday, Aug. 21. Volunteers are needed and invited to particpate in the initial preparation of these permanent garden beds.

Internships took Hamilton students all over the globe this summer, from rural Vermont to Delhi, India, where Abhishek Maity '08 (Kolkata, India) spent his summer interning with Research and Information Systems for Developing Countries (RIS), a government policy think tank. Maity also had a Levitt Fellowship for the summer to research optimal foreign reserve holdings – a topic which is closely related to his internship.

Maurice Isserman, the James L. Ferguson Professor of History and co-author of America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s, was quoted in an Aug. 9 TIME magazine article titled "The Return of SDS to Campus." In another look back at the '60s, Isserman, with co-author Michael Kazin of Georgetown University, penned an opinion piece that appeared in the Sunday, Aug. 12, edition of Newsday titled "Summer of love beats cynicism of today."

Although creative writing types tend to be easily stereotyped, Victoria Schacht '08 (Rome, N.Y.) shows that the creative writer, like the field itself, is more complex than the prevailing image of an author in black with a notebook. The English major has an Emerson grant this summer to work on found literature and build creative writing pieces from old periodicals.

Lauren Tom '10 (Stevensville, Mo.) studied general electrochemistry techniques this summer with Professor of Chemistry Timothy Elgren. Electrochemistry is the study of the relationships between chemical reactions and electrical energy. There are two general types of electrochemical reactions: spontaneous reactions that produce electrical energy and nonspontaneous reactions that consume electrical energy. Both types of reactions always involve a transfer of electrons, and, according to Tom, electrochemistry basically "shows where an electron is added or taken away" during a reaction. Thus, electrochemistry is useful for studying electrically active species and aids in identifying their reduction/oxidation potentials (the tendency of a chemical species to be reduced and gain electrons or to be oxidized and lose electrons).