In Brief

• David B. Goldstein will head the Center for Population Genomics and Pharmacogenetics at Duke's Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy. Population genomics-- the study of the genomic makeup of populations--aims at understanding genome variation and evolution both within and across species. Pharmacogenetics is the study of how genetic and genomic variation affects people's responses to medicines. Combined, these areas yield information on genetic diversity and how it contributes to disease susceptibility and variability in response to drugs.
• A facility memorializing the 1921 Tulsa, Oklahoma, race riot will be named in honor of John Hope Franklin, James B. Duke Professor emeritus of history. The riot, one of the worst in U.S. history, broke out on May 31, 1921, when a mob attempted to lynch a black man accused of assaulting a white woman. Franklin lived in Tulsa as a boy, and his father's law office and the family's home were destroyed during the riot. The memorial will include a park and, eventually, a museum and library.
• Deborah Jakubs, director of collections services for the Perkins System Libraries at Duke, was named the Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway University Librarian and vice provost for library affairs. The combined book collections of Duke's library system, and the separately administered libraries serving the schools of business, divinity, law, and medicine, total more than five-million volumes, making it one of the largest academic library systems in the country. She succeeds David S. Ferriero, who left in September to direct the research-library system of the New York Public Library.
• Television personality Bob Barker, a longtime animal-rights advocate, has donated $1 million to Duke Law School to create the Bob Barker Endowment Fund for the Study of Animal Rights Law. The fund will support teaching in the growing field of animal-rights law, including opportunities for students to work for course credit on cases involving compliance with state animal-cruelty laws and other forms of animal-rights advocacy. Since 2001, Barker has established similar endowment funds in the law schools at Columbia, Harvard, and Stanford universities, and at the University of California at Los Angeles.
• Miguel Nicolelis, professor of neurobiology, medical engineering, and psychological and brain sciences, and co-director of the Center for Neuroengineering, was named one of the fifty top scientists in the world by Scientific American. The magazine cited him for his work to enable the brain waves of monkeys to control a robotic arm, research that may be a significant breakthrough in the search for better robotic devices to help people with paralyzed limbs.
• Benjamin D. Reese Jr., interim vice president for institutional equity, is to remain Duke's leader of the Office of Institutional Equity (OIE). He joined Duke in 1996 as an assistant vice president at the OIE, where he oversaw efforts to enhance cross-cultural relations throughout the university. He is a clinical psychologist who has worked for more than thirty years as a consultant to universities, hospitals, and other organizations in the areas of race relations, diversity, and conflict resolution.