Fundraising Highlights for Fiscal Year 2016
During fiscal year 2016 (July 1, 2015-June 30, 2016) international alumni, parents, and friends made new gifts and pledges totaling $22.7 million—about 7.5 percent of the $300 million raised by the University. Alumni, parents, and friends from Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Russia, Brazil, Thailand, Switzerland, Canada, Belgium, and India led international constituent giving.

Brown Is Global (BIG) Challenge Has a Local Impact
This was the second year that the Brown Annual Fund challenged both international and U.S. regions to compete for the highest percentage of Annual Fund donors in order to earn a Brown Annual Fund Scholarship for a local student. For the fiscal year 2016 competition, the British Isles won the international BIG Challenge with a 16 percent participation rate (164 donors); the Mid–Atlantic in the United States won with 26 percent (6,999 donors).

Center for Contemporary South Asia
In July, the Brown-India Initiative and the South Asian Studies program merged and became the Center for Contemporary South Asia. Based at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, the center will promote research, teaching, and public engagement on key issues of modern South Asia in an interdisciplinary framework. Ashutosh Varshney, Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences, is the center’s inaugural director. Visit the center’s website.

Eighth Brown International Advanced Research Institutes
In June, 150 young scholars and practitioners from more than 50 countries participated in the Brown International Advanced Research Institutes (BIARI). With generous ongoing support of Santander Universities (Spain), BIARI meets for two weeks in June to address pressing global issues through collaboration across academic, professional, and geographic boundaries.

Photo: President Christina Paxson (middle) with BIARI participants.

Global Hebrew Scholars Converge at Brown for Conference
Nearly 200 scholars, teachers, and graduate students working in fields related to the study of Hebrew gathered at Brown for the 2016 International Conference on Hebrew Language, Literature and Culture. The intensive three-day program was hosted by Brown’s Program in Judaic Studies.

Photo: Conference participants entering Brown RISD Hillel for the opening reception.
Credit: Nick Dentamaro/Brown University

U.N. Grant to Expand Brown’s Digital Archive on U.S.–Brazilian Relations
The Brazilian Amnesty Commission and the United Nations Development Programme have awarded the Opening the Archives Project a grant to increase the number of declassified U.S. government documents on Brazil produced during that country’s military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985. These documents are publicly accessible through the project’s open-access website. The project is led by Brown’s Brazil Initiative.

Brown University Book Award
The Brown University Book Award is presented to outstanding high school juniors who best combine academic excellence with clarity in written and spoken expression. The award itself is a book written by a Brown faculty member or alumnus/a. The program was started when the Brown Alumni Association awarded 100 books in 1960, and has grown through the generosity of our alumni. The 2015-2016 award—Liberty’s Torch: The Great Adventure to Build The Statue of Liberty by Elizabeth Mitchell ’88—was given to more than 400 students.

We currently have international book award program sponsors in Geneva, Rome, Taipei, and Vienna. If you would like to start a sponsorship in your region, please contact priscilla_sutton@brown.edu.

Brown Faculty Members Recognized
A number of faculty members were recently recognized for outstanding research, teaching, and service. Those who received international awards include the following:

• Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, professor of modern culture and media and professor of history of art and architecture, and Paul Guyer, Jonathan Nelson Professor of Humanities and Philosophy, earned Berlin Prize fellowships from the American Academy in Berlin.
• The American Medical Association (AMA) honored Dr. Adam Levine, associate professor of emergency medicine, for his global health work with the Dr. Nathan Davis International Award in Medicine, named for the AMA’s founder.
• Julio Ortega, professor of Hispanic studies, was nominated as a corresponding foreign scholar by the Real Academia Española—the Spanish Royal Academy. Founded in 1713, the academy is charged with safeguarding the correct use of the Spanish language.

Prasad Named Assistant Provost for Global Engagement and Strategic Initiatives
Shankar Prasad AM’03 PHD’06 has been appointed assistant provost for global engagement and strategic initiatives, effective July 1. In this new role, he oversees the Office of Global Engagement. Prasad joined the Brown community in 2014 as associate director of the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.

Steinbach Plays at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris
In July, Mark Steinbach—University organist, curator of instruments, and senior lecturer in music—gave a performance at the Cathédrale Notre–Dame de Paris that included world premieres of compositions by Eric Nathan and Lu Wang, both assistant professors of music at Brown. Steinbach also gave concerts at five sites in Germany, concluding with a performance at Handel and W.F. Bach’s former church, Marktkirche in Halle.

Photo: Eric Nathan, Mark Steinbach, and Lu Wang in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.
Photo Courtesy: Mark Steinbach

Student Uses UTRA to Research in Kenya
With an Undergraduate Teaching and Research Award (UTRA), this past summer, Aidea Downie ’18 pursued research in Kenya with Professor of History and Africana Studies Nancy Jacobs. Downie interviewed former diplomat Washington Okumu, who is famous for participating in the 1994 peace negotiations between Nelson Mandela of the African National Congress and Mangosuthu Buthelezi of the Inkatha Freedom Party in South Africa.

Photo: From left, Aidea Downie, Washington Okumu, and Professor Jacobs.

India Initiative Fellow Travels to Mumbai
Tenzin Lama ’17, an India Initiative fellow, traveled to India this summer to work with the Right to the City India Campaign and to work on her thesis on the housing crisis in contemporary Mumbai. While there, she studied the role of state coercion in the creation and restructuring of housing in the neo-liberal market economy.

Graduate Student Wins Best Poster Award at ICMMES
Yu–Hang Tang, a doctoral student in applied mathematics, won the Best Poster Award at the annual International Conference for Mesoscopic Methods in Engineering and Science (ICMMES) in Hamburg, Germany. Tang’s dissertation research focuses on a method of mesoscopic modeling called Dissipative Particle Dynamics.

Brunonians Compete at the Rio Olympics
Sovijja Pou ’17 MD’21—a member of the Brown men’s swimming and diving team and a dual citizen of Cambodia and the United States—represented Cambodia in the 100 meter freestyle competition at the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Three Brown alumni also competed at the Olympics: Tessa Gobbo ’13, who won a gold medal in women’s rowing; Louisa Chafee ’14, in sailing; and Anders Weiss ’15, in men’s rowing.

Student Represents Ireland in the World Championships
Owen Russell ’19 of the Brown men’s track and field team won the hammer throw at the GloHealth National Junior and U23 Track and Field Championships and represented Ireland in the World Championships in Bydgoszcz, Poland. Russell, who has dual citizenship and represented St. Andrews A.C., captured the hammer throw at the All–Ireland U20 with a winning toss of 70.33m.

Brown–Kobe Simulation Summer School 2016
The two–week intensive research summer school from August 22 to September 5 provided graduate students with opportunities to acquire fundamental knowledge and skills in high performance computing, work in teams with other students, and expose them to the research carried out at Brown and at Kobe University. The first part of program was conducted in Providence; the second, in Kobe, Japan.