British Ambassador to the United States Sir Peter Westmacott delivered a lecture on "How Climate Challenges Are Impacting Security Worldwide." The event was co-sponsored by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs and the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society.

Nirupama Rao, former Indian ambassador to the United States, has returned to Brown as senior fellow in international and public affairs and is teaching "India in the World." She was the Brown-India Initiative 2014 Meera and Vikram Gandhi Fellow.

David Birnbaum ’76 was awarded the Marin Drinov medal from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the highest honor for foreign scholars. Birnbaum is chair and professor of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pittsburgh.

Wm Patrick Cranley ’82 (China) and his wife, Tina Kanagaratnam, organized the World Congress on Art Deco: Shanghai 2015. He moved to Shanghai in 1997 and has become an expert in Shanghai’s Art Deco era, which lasted from the post-World War I building boom in the 1920s through the mid-1940s.

Award-winning filmmaker Davis Guggenheim ’86 visited campus and screened He Named Me Malala, his powerful documentary on 2014 Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl whom a Taliban soldier shot and severely wounded for going to school.

Silvia Giorguli Saucedo PHD ’04 (Mexico) has been named president of El Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City. El Colegio is the top research university in the social sciences and humanities in Latin America.

Adam Braun ’06 and his organization Pencils of Promise honored the 50th anniversary of International Literacy Day on September 8 by lighting the Empire State Building’s tower in yellow lights to represent a pencil. The event was organized to help bring attention to the 250 million children worldwide who lack basic reading and writing skills.

Bongani Ngqulunga PHD ’09 (South Africa) has been appointed deputy director general and head of the private office of President Jacob Zuma. Ngqulunga joined the administration in 2006 as a senior policy analyst and later head of governance and administration.

Sriram Subramanian ’10 and Chinmaya Kulkarni ’12, based in India, are co-founders of Callido Learning LLP. The educational startup recently launched its first online course, Callido Basecamp, which equips students with research, critical thinking, and communication skills.

In November, the Brown Club of Switzerland in Geneva hosted John Donoghue PHD’79 P’09 P’12 MD’18, Henry Merritt Wriston Professor of Neuroscience, who spoke about "Turning Thoughts to Action: Restoring Movement to the Paralyzed."

Ghouse Akbar ’90 hosted an alumni lunch in Karachi in honor of U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Richard Olson ’81 P’14.

Photo: Ambassador
Olson speaks at the event.

Albert Bennett, Class of 1872, was president of the Baptist Theological Seminary of Japan. In 1896 after a devastating tidal wave hit Japan, he collected and distributed relief funds. In gratitude for his service, the Imperial Government presented Bennett with a gold cup, which he gave to Brown.

The Albert A. Bennett 1872 Prize Fund was established in Bennett’s memory at the University in 1941 by an anonymous donor.

Brown Alumni Association

Alumni College Advising Program

Alumni Careers & Connections

BrownConnect

Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs

Giving to Brown

BrownTogether: $3-Billion Campaign
In October, Brown launched the largest comprehensive campaign in its history with a series of events, including breaking ground on a new engineering building, faculty presentations, and student performances. The $3-billion BrownTogether fundraising campaign will allow the University to realize its vision of advancing knowledge to help the community, the nation, and the world meet 21st-century challenges. Through the campaign, Brown will secure the support necessary to implement Building on Distinction, the strategic plan that will guide the University’s growth and development over the next decade.

Photo: President Christina Paxson speaks during an evening celebration on Pembroke Field on October 23, when Brown’s senior leaders and members of the campus community gathered to launch the campaign.

New Home for Engineering
On October 22, as part of the campaign launch celebration, Brown broke ground on a new building for its School of Engineering. The three-story, 80,000 square-foot structure will include facilities for nanoscale and biomedical engineering, along with two floors of lab space designed to expand cross-disciplinary research aimed at addressing the world’s critical problems and challenges. Brown’s undergraduate program in engineering was established in 1847, making it the oldest in the Ivy League and the third-oldest civilian engineering program in the United States.

Image: KieranTimberlake

Watson Institute Receives Gifts Totaling $50 Million
The Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs has received gifts totaling $50 million from three donors—Chancellor Emeritus Stephen Robert ’62 LHD’04 P’91, Chancellor Thomas Tisch ’76 and his wife, Alice Tisch P’18, and the Thomas J. and Olive C. Watson Jr. Foundation. The joint gift, which is part of the BrownTogether campaign’s early fundraising efforts, will fund construction of an auxiliary building, expansion of the Institute’s faculty, and initiatives aimed at deepening the University’s impact in creating peaceful, just, and prosperous societies.

Brown received major gifts and pledges from international alumni, parents, and friends for various purposes, including:

• Professorship and Endowed Scholarship (Ecuador/New York)
• Experiential Peer Learning Fellows and Brown Design Workshop (Thailand)
• Fernando Henrique Cardoso Professorship (Brazil)
• Brown Annual Fund Scholarship (Switzerland)

In addition, the University received Brown Annual Fund gifts from donors in 28 countries.

Brown Launches the Middle East Studies Advisory Council
The University held the inaugural meeting of the Middle East Studies Advisory Council in London on October 11. The Council will support the mission of Middle East Studies by promoting knowledge, understanding, and informed discussion of the Middle East through research, teaching, and public engagement.

Photo: Members of the Middle East Studies Advisory Council and the Brown delegation at the meeting hosted by council members Hassan Alaghband P’15 and Farah Asemi P’15. The Brown delegation included Director of Middle East Studies Beshara Doumani, Senior Fellow in International and Public Affairs Stephen Kinzer, Assistant Vice President for International Advancement Josh Taub ’93, and Regional Director for International Advancement Robert Ayan.

CineBrasil 2015: A Brazilian Film Festival
The Brazil Initiative and Portuguese and Brazilian Studies co-sponsored an annual film festival showcasing the best in recent Brazilian cinema. Held at the Martinos Auditorium in the Perry and Marty Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, the four-day film festival included documentaries, feature films, and shorts of great artistic quality from Brazil.

A Book Panel on Meeting China Halfway: How to Defuse the Emerging US-China Rivalry
The China Initiative presented a book panel featuring author Lyle Goldstein, associate professor in the Strategic Research Department at the U.S. Naval War College (NWC) and former director of the NWC’s China Maritime Studies Institute. Goldstein’s book features 100 proposals regarding cooperative policy solutions to the most complicated problems in U.S.-China relations. Commentators on the panel included Diplomat in Residence Richard Boucher, Senior Fellow in International and Public Affairs Stephen Kinzer, and Director of the China Initiative Edward Steinfeld.

The O.P. Jindal Distinguished Lecture Series on India
The Brown-India Initiative presented the O.P. Jindal Distinguished Lectures with economist Montek Singh Ahluwalia, who has served as a high-level government official in India, as well as with the IMF and the World Bank. He delivered two lectures titled "India’s Economic Performance: A Retrospective Assessment" and "India’s Future Prospects and Policy Imperatives." The lecture series was established by Sajjan and Sangita Jinal P’12 to bring important figures from politics, academia, business, the arts, and media from India to the University.

Teach-ins on Global Issues
Dedicated to understanding the world’s pressing issues, the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs organized teach-ins this fall including:

• Assessing the Iran Nuclear Deal
  Experts from Brown and the U.S. Naval War College discussed the science and politics of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Panelists included Nobel laureate Leon Cooper, Thomas J. Watson Sr. Professor of Science and director of the Institute for Brain and Neural Systems. Watch webcast
• The Refugee Crises: Reshaping Europe and the Middle East
  Brown faculty and alumni with intimate knowledge of the causes, realities, and consequences of these crises gave presentations and led discussions. Watch webcast

Steinfeld to Head the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs
Edward Steinfeld—the Dean’s Professor of China Studies, director of the China Initiative, and professor of political science—has been named the Howard R. Swearer Director of the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. Steinfeld will succeed Richard Locke, who has served as Watson Institute director since 2013 and was appointed the University’s provost in June 2015. Steinfeld will begin his duties January 1, 2016.

Karniadakis Leads a Team of International Researchers
George Karniadakis—Charles Pitts Robinson and John Palmer Barstow Professor of Applied Mathematics—is leading a team of researchers from Brown, ETH Zurich, and the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre. They are using the Cray XK7 Titan supercomputer to simulate hundreds of millions of red blood cells in an attempt to develop better drug delivery methods and predictors to fight against tumor formation and sickle cell anemia.

Johnson, Europeans to Study Plant Fertility Evolution
Associate Professor of Biology Mark Johnson has joined a consortium of seven other researchers in four European countries to understand how fertilization evolved in flowering plants. The research, employing techniques such as comparative genomics and molecular biology, could ultimately help agronomists improve crop yields for a hungry world.

Photo: Mark Johnson, with former graduate student Kristin Beale, has used Arabadopsis as a model to study the evolution of plant reproduction.
Credit: Mike Cohea/Brown University

Hastings Partners Chilean Government on Student Loans
Associate Professor of Economics Justine Hastings and her co-authors partnered with the Chilean Federal Government to improve federal student loans in light of student protests over rising debt and default rates. The research agenda and resulting working papers are an example of big-data and research driving smart policy decisions.

Student Produces Films of O Companheiro and Horas
Marga Kempner ’16, a history concentrator, produced films about Marcos Arruda, a man who was persecuted in 1970 during the military dictatorship in Brazil. She became interested in his story in a seminar on Brazilian history. The Scarritt Fellowship from the Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies made the film’s production possible; she traveled to Rio de Janeiro to conduct interviews and research in the National Archives.

Graduate Student Heads to the U.N. to See Policymaking in Action
Samuel Klarich MPA ’16 participated in a research internship with the United Nations’ Joint Inspection Unit in Geneva, Switzerland. He said that the experience broadened his interests and increased his understanding of other cultures.

Photo: Samuel Klarich MPA ’16, second from left.

Global Research Internship Program in Japan
The Global Research Internship Program offers Brown graduate students in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields the opportunity to conduct supervised research at Kobe University, its partner research centers, and corporations in Japan.

Brown Hosts Botín Foundation Scholars
In October, 32 students from 14 Latin American countries visited Brown for a week to participate in the 2015 Botín Foundation Program for Strengthening Public Service in Latin America. They took part in workshops and lectures by Brown faculty, former president of Chile Ricardo Lagos, and other experts on Latin America. Since 2010, Brown has hosted Botín Foundation scholars—undergraduate students from Latin America who are committed to public service—every year.

Brown to Help Ghana Build HIV, TB Research Capacity
Brown faculty members will work with colleagues at the University of Ghana to build the research capacity needed to address deadly HIV and tuberculosis co-epidemics with a $1.45 million grant over five years from the Fogarty International Center of the National Institutes of Health.