The 1970s saw the first microprocessor, the first
floppy disk, the Apple II, the Tandy Radio Shack TSR-80, the evolution of the
CP-M operating system and Ethernet networking, the birth of the first software
worm and the first ATM.
Though many people remained merrily oblivious to
this information technology locomotive then gaining steam, Patrick Kerrigan
climbed aboard for the wild ride, then helped steer the course.
He began his journey
in 1973, shortly after graduating from the College of Arts and Sciences with a
double major in mathematics and physics. Initially, Kerrigan worked for First
Data Resources as a COBOL programmer. Then it was on to Burroughs Corporation
(now Unisys) as a technical representative. In 1977 he became the first
employee and software developer for Information Technology Inc. of Lincoln,
Neb.
"After I was in it
[information technology] for three years, which would be a year into my third
job, I began to appreciate the leveraging power of software and how much
control it could be used to exert over an enterprise," Kerrigan recalls.
Today, more than one-third of U.S.
banks depend on software systems developed by Information Technology. The
company has grown to 700 employees in Lincoln, 200 in Sioux Falls, S.D., and 30
in Birmingham, Ala. Though Kerrigan ended his formal career with Information
Technology in 1999 when he retired as chief operating officer, he stays
involved with the company.
"For six years now I have done
special projects at ITI on a 'less-official' basis," he says. "For about half
of the time this summer I have been teaching my self-styled 'Management Best
Practices' course to the company's top 70 managers."
Kerrigan continues to help shape
the future, only now through his philanthropic ventures.
That includes furthering teaching and research missions
through generous donations to the departments of mathematics and physics.
Through the University of Nebraska Foundation Kerrigan recently established the
Kerrigan Fund for Teaching Excellence in Mathematics to award exemplary
teaching. The inaugural award was presented to Dr. Valentin Matache, who also
coordinates Kerrigan's mini-grant research program that encourages (and pays)
students to pursue mathematical research projects with faculty members of the
mathematics department.
"I am honestly
tickled by the projects taken on by the students," Kerrigan wrote. "I think
good habits are contagious, but require exposure. And it is easier to enjoy
learning when everybody around you is positive about it. The math faculty I
have met seem very interactive with the students, which can only take the
students to the next level.
"It makes me want to go to school
again.
"When I went
through UNO, I was on a bit of a mission to simply graduate. By the time I was
graduating, I really felt maybe a little like I had shortchanged myself because
there was not time for more of all the courses. It would not have taken too
many more courses to minor in German, which Professors Thill and Jung made very
understandable and enjoyable. I included physics as the second half of a double
major quite simply because I came into contact with the enthusiasm of Dr. Jack
Kasher teaching an introductory (and required for math) physics course. I think
I can credit the required English courses (especially contemporary novel taught
by Harvey Leavitt) with my lifelong enjoyment of reading. I was never able to
squeeze in a history class (and had only one semester in high school), but I
credit a survey course in the history of journalism and the desire to read that
have made me so interested in biographies. I claim I have at least something
comparable to a master's degree in history with my biographical reading. Thirty
years ago, I got an excellent education at UNO. With the expanded and enhanced
facilities now available and the excellent quality of the faculty that I have
had the privilege to meet, I repeat that it would be great to go to school here
again. Looking at what I have written here, it seems that because UNO has even
its best faculty teaching some of the introductory courses, maybe that is the
spirit of UNO. You didn't have to wait years to be exposed to the best. I had
so many of my favorite instructors those first two years that I was apparently
compelled to add majors and consider additional minors."
The worn seats and tired carpet below testify to
the hundreds of thousands of visitors who have gazed into the Mallory Kountze
Planetarium heavens above. Eighteen years of dust dull its 33-foot dome, and
what once was cutting-edge multimedia technology now is tired and cantankerous.
Still, there
is magic in this place for the faculty and staff of UNO's physics department
who have managed and promoted the planetarium since it opened in 1987. So, too,
for the myriad elementary and secondary students who here have taken field
trips through time and space.
Beginning
this fall, though, this UNO star is being reborn.
The
planetarium is undergoing an extensive overhaul thanks to funding from the
Gilbert M. and Martha H. Hitchcock Foundation, Sarah
and Sean Suiter, Frank and Shirley Hartranft and other friends of UNO.
Assistance also is coming from the University of Nebraska Foundation.
Perhaps the
most impressive improvement will be the addition of the Spitz ATM 4 system,
which will bring the planetarium into the digital age both in terms of show
production and equipment control. The previous control console (pictured) had
its panels removed and sent for repair and upgrade. The new system and its
software package will improve show quality while also reducing the labor required
to produce the shows.
Previously,
images often were produced by superimposing multiple images with multiple
projectors. The new software automatically performs the superimposing and
allows for a single projection. This reduces the need for many of the
projectors formerly required (pictured).
Other significant changes include
repairs and updates to the Spitz
512 starfield projector, the heart of the planetarium. The projector includes
latitudinal, daily, annual and precessional motions for demonstration of
various celestial phenomena. It also projects more than 2,000 stars and
planets, and the entire instrument may be turned in azimuth rotation
(360-degree). The 8-foot tall projector is lowered and raised via a special
elevator to allow the planetarium to serve multiple purposes. New video
materials will be purchased and supplementary LCD projectors will replace many
of the dozens of slide and strip projectors.
Technology
costs during the update are estimated at $85,000, with an annual maintenance cost
of $5,000 to $10,000. Another $20,000 is estimated for cleaning of the dome and
replacement of the carpet and seating.
The work is
the first major update to the planetiarum since it opened. The planetarium
originally was funded by The Hitchcock Foundation in memory of foundation president
Mallory Kountze, who died in 1984. The tribute, designed to educate students
about our "last frontier," befits this descendent of one of Omaha's pioneering
families. For many years since, the planetarium's public shows have featured
prominently in regional travel guides and on many lists of important things to
see in Omaha.
The
planetarium's new and improved look should debut starting with spring semester
2006, when it hosts about 500 students enrolled in UNO astronomy classes. It
also will continue serving area elementary and secondary schools and the
general public.
Back to Top
"Writing is easy,"
journalist Gene Fowler once said. "All you do is stare at a blank sheet of
paper until drops of blood form on your forehead."
The anguish of the
blank page, or, these days, the blank screen, is familiar to many at UNO,
whether they be first-year college students or faculty with years of writing
assignments behind them.
Help now is at hand.
For the word-weary from all areas and stations of the UNO community the College
of Arts & Sciences offers the new Writing Center.
There, explains
Writing Center Director Connie Eberhart (pictured), "students and faculty alike
have the opportunity to develop an ongoing, one-to-one relationship with a
professional who can assist them through the term of a writing project,
throughout a course, or throughout the college experience.
"Our mission is to
help clients develop as writers, placing more focus on the writer than on any
single piece of writing, helping the writer develop writing processes that lead
to effective writing products."
The new facility is
housed in the comfortably and brightly decorated Room 150 of Arts and Sciences
Hall. It features wireless networking and comfortable spaces where consultants
and clients can collaborate. A fresh pot of coffee and a network printer stand
ready, side-by-side.
Graduate teaching
assistants and instructors from the English Department make up the center's
inaugural staff. Consultants from other disciplines could be added later.
For the formal or
impromptu workshop, the room is equipped with a computer, DVD/VCR and Elmo
presenter, all hooked to an LCD projector. All of the center's logistics are
handled by an online service called Writing Center Online. For helpful links on
writing or to sign up for a consultation, clients can visit the center's
website at www.unomaha.edu/writingcenter.
Writing Center
services might be made available to alumni in the future.
Bioinformatics major a window to understanding life
"The slippery gooiness of biology," says Dr.
Geoffrey Dixon of Brandeis University, "is a consequence of its incredible
complexity, consisting as it does of complex systems based upon chemistry.
"And chemistry obeys the rules of physics, which
exists because of, and is consequently best described by, mathematics.
Mathematics is the ur-fluid of reality (gad, how poetic), and our symbolic
attempts to represent mathematics have given us windows through which our mushy
grey-matter can peer, and with which this same mushy grey-matter becomes
altered, and we call this alteration understanding (a frequently generous
appellation)."
A critical tool for building these windows to
understanding, scientists have discovered, is information technology.
Toward that end, the College of Arts and Sciences
and the College of Information Science and Technology have teamed to create
bioinformatics, a new major born from the synergism of biology, mathematics,
chemistry and information technology. The program begins this fall with 30
students—a figure expected to grow quickly in the coming years. In addition to
receiving a liberal arts foundation, students completing a bioinformatics
degree will complete a minimum of 21 hours of information science and
technology, 20 hours of mathematics, 16 hours of biology, 20 hours of chemistry
and 13 hours of bioinformatics.
Improving Life
Biology Professor Bruce Chase, who helped develop
the new major, explains how this exciting new area of study began to emerge:
"It grew initially from the needs of
molecular biologists to be able to analyze large data sets that describe
different types of biological molecules in distinct types of cells, in various
disease states, or as organisms change during their growth and maturation," he
says. "As molecular biologists became able to characterize an organism's tens
of thousands of genes and their products, they faced the daunting challenge of
being able to analyze enormous data sets.
"Bioinformatics was born as a
synergistic effort as computer scientists, mathematicians and statisticians
joined biologists to make sense of these data sets. It is now a field of its
own, with many different facets."
Chase's own research illustrates just
how bioinformatics may dramatically improve life.
"My work on biomarker development in
Parkinson's disease uses tools developed by bioinformaticians," he says. "A
biomarker for a disease is a measurement, based on some biological
characteristic, that has utility in diagnosing or determining the stage of the
disease. Parkinson's disease presents challenges for diagnosis and treatment
because it results from the death of a particular subset of brain cells that
cannot be directly assessed. As these cells die, individuals develop the
movement abnormalities associated with Parkinson's disease. Accurate diagnosis
of Parkinson's disease can be difficult, and a biomarker could aid in better
diagnosis and, if so, in earlier, more effective treatment."
With clinical collaborators at the
University of Thessaly in Greece, Chase et al can use gene chip technology to
assay the levels of the products of about 40,000 human genes in the blood of
Parkinsonian patients. He and others then can use bioinformatics methods to
identify the constellation of genes whose products together serve as a
biomarker for Parkinson's disease.
Classifying
Life
Professor Quiong Lu,
meanwhile, is employing bioinformatics to classify life.
Lu earned a doctorate in biology at
University Laval (Canada) then a master's degree in bioinformatics at Concordia
University in Montreal. He describes his particular interest as "exploring
existing molecular databases to discover knowledge of species phylogeny and
molecular evolution" and the "development and implementation of computer
applications to facilitate that research."
His favorite project to date is his
role in developing Deep Fin, a web-based information center (www.deepfin.org/PIs.php) and international
community of researchers interested in fish phylogeny (lines of descent or
evolutionary development).
"We are becoming a national center for
bioinformatics research," says Lu, who speaks enthusiastically about his work
for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the University of Nebraska Medical
Center and UNO.
He is particularly enthusiastic when
discussing his role in recruiting students for the bioinformatics program.
"It is an exciting field to be in, and
the students will be inspired whether they are coming from a biology background
or an information technology background."
Defining
Life
That certainly was the case with
Tom Helikar (pictured, right; Jim Rogers left), an undergraduate in the
bioinformatics program. Though he was hired for his programming skills to serve
as a research assistant to Dr. Jim Rogers, Helikar since has developed a
passion for biology and currently is planning to pursue a doctorate in that
field at UNMC. Since Rogers, a mathematical biologist at UNO, also is a
courtesy faculty at UNMC, Helikar can continue collaborating with Rogers while
working on his Ph.D.
Helikar's inspiration to dramatically alter his
life plan came through contact with Rogers' research hypothesis developed
several years earlier. Having earned his doctorate in biology, Rogers had been
working for several years in UNMC laboratories when he began to doubt that
laboratory work on individual cells would ever unlock the mysteries of how
cells—cancerous or healthy—processed signals.
He suspected there existed a much more complex
system of information processing than anyone else had ever proposed and began
to theorize that cells could not be understood when isolated from the whole. He
knew he would not be able to investigate that theory in a traditional lab but
would need to learn about mathematical modeling. He quit his job and went back
to school to get a master's degree in math.
While working on his math degree, Rogers teamed
with UNO Professor and Mathematics Chair Jack Hiedel to write a $450,000
National Institute of Health grant proposal to fund a three-year study in which
they would use mathematical analysis to understand the structure and function
of complex biochemical pathways.
The grant was approved, and Rogers was hired at UNO
as an assistant professor of math this year (ending two years of unemployment).
Math Professor John Konvalina since has joined the team of researchers, as has
Helikar.
Rogers is quick to point out that although Helikar
still is an undergraduate, the level of his work puts him on the same footing
as other members of the team. "He is an equal," says Rogers.
The team soon may be closing in on a critical point
in their research. Rogers' hopes are high not only for a clearer understanding
of the complex intelligence of cells, but also for a clearer understanding of
what life is.
In other words, he's hoping to open a window.
