2005 President's Report | University of North Dakota

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Summer 2006

Greetings from UND

Geospatial Technologies

Photographs by Chuck Kimmerle, Office of University Relations. Published in March 2006 by the Office of University Relations. The University of North Dakota is and equal opportunity/affirmative action institution.

Nanomaterials
Julia Xiaojun Zhao, assistant professor of chemistry, is working on luminescent nanomaterials and their applications in biomedical and environmental studies. Zhao recently traveled to China with Mark Hoffmann, chair of UND’s Department of Chemistry, to establish connections with researchers and prospective graduate students there.
	Joseph Hartman, a professor of paleontology in the Department of Geology and Geological Engineering, was in India earlier this year to dig up rare specimens of tiny nonmarine mollusks. This research in India’s so-called Deccan Traps carries forward the nearly forgotten work of British missionary-turned-naturalist Stephen Hislop in the mid-19th century. Hartman’s studies also involved a follow-up trip to London, where he sifted through (and organized) numerous Deccan specimens in the [British] Museum of Natural History. “My research projects have primarily spanned the Late Cretaceous, Paleocene, and early Eocene [80 to 50 million years ago], which means an ongoing interest in the pattern of nonmarine molluscan extinction and recovery across the K/T boundary [the interval of abrupt change in Earth’s history that closed the Cretaceous (K) Period and opened the Tertiary (T) Period],” said Hartman, who has conducted extensive paleontological investigations in western North Dakota, Montana, and elsewhere. LEFT: Joseph Hartman* takes a GPS reading at a research site in India.*

Sharon and Richard Wilsnack, faculty members in the UND School of Medicine and Health Sciences, have built a well-earned global reputation for their painstaking and sustained UND-based research activity that began in 1980. Their work — which has attracted funding that now totals $10.5 million — is the world’s longest-running longitudinal study in the area of women and problem drinking. Besides writing and editing numerous scholarly and popular articles, books, and texts, the Wilsnacks have provided review and editorial services to major journals and federal publications and consultation to other professional groups and federal agencies.
	French Connections
	Virgil Benoit, associate professor of languages, has several ongoing projects in Francophone studies, Canadian studies, and French language and literature. Benoit, who specializes in links between people and communities in the Midwest with Francophone cultures around the world, reaches out by way of his bilingual web site, www.ifmidwest.org. Benoit co-chairs an emerging Canadian Studies program and maintains working ties with faculty from more than seven departments and centers on campus. He also has written and presented extensively on his research about the experiences of North Dakotan Jim Tronson (above), a belly gunner in a B-17 that was downed in France during World War II.

Accomplishments
Spring 2006

Research
Summer 2006

Service
Fall 2006

Students

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