April 7, 1997

Awards and Honors

A simulated collision between two galaxies, created by UCSC astrophysicist Lars Hernquist and former UCSC postdoctoral researcher Chris Mihos, now at Johns Hopkins University, was nominated for a 1997 Computerworld Smithsonian Award in the science category. The awards recognize innovative uses of information technology. The galaxy collision, featured in the IMAX film Cosmic Voyage, is the largest such simulation to date, requiring 750 hours on a Cray supercomputer at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. For more information on the research, go to http://www.sdsc.edu/GatherScatter/GSfall95/4imax.html

María Catalina, a junior in community studies and a member of the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science, has received a summer undergraduate research fellowship from the NASA Specialized Center of Research and Training in Exobiology at the California Space Institute, UC San Diego. Catalina will work with Professor Gustaf Arrhenius in UCSD's Marine Research Division on the properties of a claylike mineral used by Native Americans for thousands of years to treat gastrointestinal problems. Similar clays, researchers speculate, may have played a role in the origin of life.

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