Campus briefs

advocacy

Va. senator comes to Virginia Tech's defense

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is not the onlypolitician asking the U.S. Department of Education to reconsiderits Clery Act fines against Virginia Tech.

In a letter dated April 27, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, askedfederal financial aid chief operating officer William Taggart to"comply with Virginia Tech's FOIA request" and "meet with theappropriate Virginia Tech officials to discuss the issues."

The Education Department has so far issued no response toWarner's letter, according to spokeswoman Jane Glickman.

Cuccinelli held a press conference last month blasting theEducation Department's investigation, calling it "shoddy." Warner'soffice made no public announcement about the issue.

The attorney general said his office will assist Tech inappealing $55,000 in fines levied against the university forfailing to immediately warn the campus community of a fatal earlymorning shooting on April 16, 2007.

About two hours later, the same shooter opened fire in NorrisHall classrooms. In all, 33 people died and about 20 were injured.

An Education Department ruling last year found that Tech shouldhave immediately warned the campus of a shooter at large, andfailing to do so violated the Clery Act, a federal campus securitylaw.

reunion

Picnic to celebrate Upward Bound alums and staff

Virginia Tech is looking for alumni and former staff of itsUpward Bound and Talent Search programs to participate in a reuniongathering this summer, the university announced.

The Aug. 13 reunion picnic will be held at Blacksburg's CaboosePark. For more information, send an email to UB.TS@vt.edu or call231-6911.

Upward Bound and Talent Search at Virginia Tech are federallyfunded programs designed to assist high school students moving fromhigh school to college. Thousands of students in Southwest Virginiahave benefited from Upward Bound since 1967. The Talent Searchprogram began in 1973, the release stated.

survey

Beginning farmers asked to share their opinions

Virginia Tech, Virginia Cooperative Extension and the VirginiaBeginning Farmer and Rancher Coalition are seeking farmers andranchers to fill out a survey about their educational and resourceneeds, the university announced.

The survey is being offered online at http://goo.gl/XHiNa throughMay 20.

The results will be incorporated into the Virginia BeginningFarmer and Rancher Coalition's development plan, which will be usedto offer targeted training and education programs across the state,a university news release stated.

Cybersecurity

VT team places third in U.S. cybersecurity contest

A team from the Virginia Tech Information Technology SecurityLaboratory and Tech's department of electrical and computerengineering won third place in the 2011 National SecurityInnovation Competition sponsored by the National Homeland DefenseFoundation, the university announced.

Tech's "Moving Target IPv6 Defense (MT6D)," is a network securityand privacy tool for the new Internet Protocol version 6, anInternet address system that will replace the 20-year-old InternetProtocol version 4, a university news release stated.

Tech runs one of the few production scale IPv6 networks in thecountry, supporting the campus network of more than 30,000computing and communication systems, according to the release.

The University of Ottowa and the University of Notre Dame tookfirst and second place, respectively.

grant

VT researchers to develop new biology research tools

The National Institutes of Health has awarded Virginia Techresearchers a $2.13 million grant to develop new systems biologyapproaches to study cells, one of the most basic units of life, theuniversity announced.

Systems biology aims to study complex organisms by stimulatingthem and monitoring the responses, then developing new mathematicalformulas and computer systems to analyze the data collected,according to a news release.

Three Tech researchers will collaborate on the grant, which seeksto analyze and refine two current approaches to systems biology anduse the new approach to study cell division in yeast, the releasestated.

Tech computer science professor T.M. Murali, Tech biologyprofessor John Tyson and Jean Peccoud of the VirginiaBioinformatics Institute will collaborate on the project.

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