Rosemary Blieszner, Virginia Tech alumni distinguished professor and associate dean of the graduate school, and Elsa Murano, professor and president emerita at Texas A&M University, will deliver the keynote addresses at Virginia Tech's 2009 fall commencement ceremonies on Dec. 18.

Blieszner will address undergraduate students at the university ceremony at 11 a.m. and Murano will speak at the graduate school ceremony at 3 p.m., both at Cassell Coliseum.

Approximately 2,500 students will receive academic degrees.

Radford receives money for projects

Radford University's College of Education and Human Development, the Appalachian Studies program and university police recently received grant awards, according to a news release from the university.

The College of Education and Human Development received $35,714 for funding of the Severe Disabilities Consortium Federal Funds Modification 5 from the U.S. Department of Education. The grant pays for continuing distance education courses and tuition assistance for students enrolled in the special education program.

Appalachian Studies received $4,000 for continuation of the Appalachian Teaching Project from the Appalachian Regional Commission. The grant pays for student travel for at least one course with an emphasis on shaping a positive future for Appalachia.

University police received $14,504 from the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles Highway Safety Grants for the Alcohol/Speed Zone Task Force. The money will allow officers to dedicate 288 hours of selective enforcement patrol activity.

VCOM honors Nobel laureate Murad

More than 400 people attended the sixth annual Via Research Recognition Day held last month at the Edward Via Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine in Blacksburg, according to a college news release.

The event featured speakers and more than 80 presentations featuring student and faculty research at VCOM and other Virginia universities.

Keynote speaker Ferid Murad, 1998 Nobel Laureate in physiology or medicine, was awarded the Rocovich Gold Medal at the event. The award is sponsored by the VCOM in honor of John Rocovich, founder and chairman of VCOM's board of directors.

The Rocovich Gold Medal award is presented annually to a distinguished scientist who has made a major impact on science or public policy toward the understanding of human disease.

Murad is director emeritus of the Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine for the Prevention of Human Diseases and director of the Univerity of Texas Health Science Center at Houston Program in Intracellular Signaling.

VBI, other partners reach out to Brazil

The Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech is among a group of researchers recently awarded a grant from the Fogarty International Center to support research training in low- and middle-income countries.

The institute's Cyberinfrastructure Group, led by professor Bruno Sobral and associate professor Joao Setubal, is working with the University of Georgia, as well as the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation and the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, both in Brazil, on a project to train researchers to develop information systems and apply computer-supported management and analysis to biomedical research projects.

The group received a $750,000 grant for the five-year project from Fogarty's Informatics Training for Global Health program to expand its existing training program in Brazil into new areas.

Fogarty is part of the National Institutes of Health.

Grant to support turkey gene research

Virginia Tech and the University of Minnesota have been awarded a two-year, $908,280 grant by the United States Department of Agriculture to complete the genome sequencing of the domesticated turkey.

The funding will be used by the Turkey Genome Sequencing Consortium to complete the genome sequencing, ultimately creating a bioinformatics and comparative genome resource for both chicken and turkey, according to a university news release.

The project is expected to help scientists discover ways to prevent disease in poultry and help breeders improve poultry production. Turkey is the fourth-most economically important meat source in the United States, the release stated.

RU library celebrates book collections

The Archives and Special Collections section of Radford University's McConnell Library is sponsoring the Winesett Book Collecting Contest.

The contest is open to all undergraduate or graduate students enrolled during the fall semester, and first prize is $200, according to a news release from the university.

Entrants must list books from their personnel collections and write an essay about why they collect such books.

Applications are due Dec. 11. An awards ceremony will be held during the first week of classes in January.

For information and to download an entry form, go to lib.radford.edu/archives/bookcontest.htm.

VT researchers study blood clotting

Virginia Tech researchers and students have discovered molecular interactions at the surface of the platelets that control blood clotting.

The discovery was described in the Nov. 24 online issue of the journal PLoS ONE (Public Library of Science) in the article "Sulfatides Partition Disabled-2 in Response to Platelet Activation," by Karen Drahos, a biological sciences master's degree student from Roanoke; John Welsh, a biological sciences undergraduate student from New Jersey; and Tech biological sciences professors Carla Finkielstein and Daniel Capelluto.

The research could help develop better ways to stop bleeding in some patients and dissolve life-threatening clots in others.