uicnews.uic.edu

Celebrating the Class of 2017/ pg. 5

May 17

2017Volume 36 / Number 32

uicnews.uic.edu

For the community of the University of Illinois at Chicago

Faculty groups foster ideas for discoveries

Legendary restaurant remembered in UIC archives

East Meets West highlights collaborations

3 8 6-7Facebook / uicnews Twitter / uicnews YouTube / uicmedia Flickr / uicnews Instagram / thisisuic & uicamiridis

Photo: UIC Creative & Digital Services

Softball team crowned league champs

12

2 UIC News | Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Speech team finds success in first year

Great collegiate programs aren’t built overnight. But the inaugural year for UIC’s Speech and Forensics team can be characterized as a step in the right direction.

With only 10 undergraduate students and limited funding, the team placed 22nd out of 80 universities at the National Fo-rensic Association’s National Tournament last month in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

It was a pleasant surprise, even for the club’s founders.

“When this first started, I had no idea what we were getting ourselves into,” said Michael Martinez, president of the team and a sophomore in finance and biological sciences. “I just wanted to compete. Now, this has turned into 10 individuals

that almost consider each other family.

“When we stepped on to that national stage, I never imagined that this could hap-pen.”

Although it may seem cut and dried, speech competitions are much more complex than standing up and talking in front of judges. There are three dif-ferent genres of speech: public address, interpretation and lim-ited preparation. Individuals must be ready to perform one of the forms on contemporary topics that affect society.

With all these nuances, UIC achieved its first-year success through intensive preparation.

For the entire school year, the team met weekly to draft new speeches, evaluate past

performances and discuss up-coming tournaments. Each op-portunity for competitive exposure was vital, given that the team consisted of individu-als ranging from zero to a lot of experience.

“I’ve never done speech be-fore,” said Sunil Dommaraju, a sophomore in bioengineering.

“It’s a learning process. Just by watching competitors and picking up the subtle tech-niques, you grow a lot.”

The team wouldn’t have formed if it wasn’t for Martinez taking to social media to question why there wasn’t al-ready the infrastructure to com-pete.

“I was upset and I tweeted at UIC asking, ‘Why are we the only college in Illinois pretty

much that doesn’t have a speech team?’” Martinez said. “They tweeted back at me, ‘Well, start one.’ My complaint ended up turning into something where UIC almost challenged us to start a team.”

Martinez and fellow under-grads answered the call in a clear way.

Now, they are looking to grow the program into one of the nation’s best. Team mem-bers are recruiting Chicago high school students using a pitch centered on leaving a leg-acy.

“If high school students come to our program, they will get the chance to shape this program into something that is going to be incredibly competi-tive on the national scale,” Marti-

nez said. “You’re not going to be able to have ownership of such success like that if you go to an already established program because all that infrastructure is already built out. We’re build-ing it as we go.”

Next season is dedicated to taking another competitive step.

“I feel like our team has a new sense of confidence be-cause of how we’ve done this season,” Dommaraju said.

“We entered not knowing what we were doing, and now that we’ve placed at this nation-al tournament, I feel like next year we just want to show up at tournaments and be known as a recognizable force.”

For more information, visit uicspeech.wixsite.com/home

Left to right: Brittany Neloms, Meghna Peesapati, Sunil Dommaraju, Jacob Krol, Damon Horn, Michael Martinez, Nidhi Khare and Kristen Trandai. UIC’s Speech and Forensics team is making a name for itself during its first year on campus. “I feel like our team has a new sense of confidence because of how we’ve done this season,” says Dommaraju.

By Tim Goldrick — tgoldr2@uic.edu

Want to contribute a story? E-mail Christy Levy at christyb@uic.edu

3UIC News | Wednesday, May 17, 2017uicnews.uic.edu

Faculty foster ideas for discoveries By Francisca Corona — fcoron3@uic.edu

More than 200 faculty mem-bers across campus are engag-ing in enthusiastic discussions about their research in the hopes of forming new collabo-rations and developing innova-tive ideas for discoveries.

Workshops hosted by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research (OVCR) began this spring, but all faculty members are invited to participate in the working groups, which will con-tinue this summer and fall.

The groups focus on areas related to UIC’s research strengths and priorities: social justice and community dispari-ties, urban infrastructure, func-tional and regenerative materials, the brain, personal-ized medicine/genomics and big data.

At the request of Chancellor Michael Amiridis, the research themes were identified by the OVCR, with help from the uni-versity’s Research Advisory Council, Dean’s Council, Senate Research Committee and facul-ty.

Working groups allow faculty to come together, share their

research, brainstorm and prob-lem-solve, which could poten-tially lead to cross-campus collaborations, said Mitra Dutta, vice chancellor for research.

“[Faculty] might not know about related work that’s going

on in another college or on an-other side of campus that may impact their own,” she said. “We are a full-service university. We have so many different disci-plines in our different colleges. It’s easy to put people of all dif-

Faculty members across campus are participating in workshops to talk about their research and form new collaborations, says Mitra Dutta, vice chancellor for research (Photo: Roberta Dupuis-Devlin)

ferent kinds of expertise to-gether. We need to take advantage of what we have.”

Dutta’s office helps partici-pants identify and pursue a va-riety of funding opportunities, too.

“We negotiate finding fund-ing and give [faculty] whatever support they need to develop large, multidisciplinary propos-als,” Dutta said.

In 2016, Dutta helped UIC researchers secure a two-year, $300,000 grant from the Na-tional Science Foundation to fund a STEM education pro-gram called INCLUDES, Inclu-sion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science.

“It’s small and it’s a pilot [pro-gram], but it allows us to apply for a $12.5 million award down the road,” Dutta said.

University leaders hope the groups will help shape the di-rection of UIC’s future research.

“We’re looking to help re-searchers get the car moving,” said Anthony Halford, director of sponsored projects in the Office of Research Services. “But ultimately, this has to be driven by them.”

For more information on the groups or to sign up, visit research.uic.edu/research_ workshops

A new campus initiative is improving the look and feel of all UIC websites.

The UIC Red multisite net-work, a WordPress resource, allows university departments to build and manage custom-ized websites that also meet standards set by the university’s ongoing branding efforts.

The goal is to “provide a con-sistent and recognizable brand to prospective students, faculty, staff and the public,” Provost and Vice Chancellor for Aca-demic Affairs Susan Poser wrote in a campus announce-ment.

Two presentations on UIC Red, led by the Office of Digital Communications, are sched-uled: 2 p.m. May 24 in the Mo-lecular Biology Research Building auditorium, and May 31 during the IT Pro Forum in Student Center East.

“Anybody can come in who has never worked on a website

and they can be trained in a couple of hours,” said Jodi White Jones, assistant dean for communications for the Col-lege of Urban Planning and Public Affairs (CUPPA). The college’s new website, avail-able at cuppa.uic.edu, is one example of how the platform can be used to create UIC-branded websites that are tailored to the needs of each unit.

“Within the structure of the website, there are different components that you can add or remove,” Jones said. “You’re able to use text, photos, graph-ics to communicate your mes-sage and there’s a wealth of components to choose from that can be structured to your audience.”

Technical support, provided by Digital Communications, is also readily available. Training sessions for individuals and units can be scheduled as

needed, and group training sessions are planned for the future.

“All those things have come

together to provide a really helpful, cost-effective process,” Jones said.

Units interested in schedul-

ing consultations should email digitalcomm@uic.edu

For more information, visit red.uic.edu

UIC Red aims to create consistent look for campus websitesBy Francisca Corona — fcoron3@uic.edu

The new website for the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs was created using the UIC Red multisite network. Two presentations are planned to provide an overview of the UIC-branded sites.

4 UIC News | Wednesday, May 17, 2017

The University of Illinois System will embark on a three-year, $60 million initiative to recruit world-class faculty to its universities in Chicago, Urbana- Champaign and Springfield.

The objective is to attract tenured, high-achieving faculty of national and international distinction in a broad range of academic and research disci-plines who can help transform the three universities because of their ex-ceptional scholarship and teaching.

“This investment in exceptional fac-ulty will, over time, pay dividends multi-fold by building up and reinforcing our ranks of world-class scholars and edu-cators,” University President Tim Killeen said. “We must — and shall — remain a magnet for stellar academic talent and this new effort reconfirms our long- standing commitment to continued ex-cellence for the University of Illinois System.”

The President’s Distinguished Facul-ty Recruitment Program will be funded by System Offices with matching funds from each of the universities. The offic-es of the president and the executive vice president will provide a total of

$10 million each year, and the three uni-versities will collectively match a total of $10 million per year for three years.

The funds are to be used for new fac-ulty start-up costs, such as purchase of equipment, renovation of space, gradu-ate student support, and other needs associated with supporting research and teaching of prominent faculty. Faculty salaries will not be covered. The goal is to recruit 10 to 15 “star faculty” each year, for a total of 45 system-wide in three years.

The program is contingent on full-year state funding of an appropriation for the U of I System for fiscal 2018 and subsequent years.

The universities may apply for match-ing funds to support the recruitment of rising star associate or full professors who are engaged in cutting-edge schol-arship or creative activities, who are working in areas of high or emerging student demand, and who are able to provide transformative excellence to uni-versity missions. Emphasis also will be placed on faculty who enhance the di-versity of departments and colleges at the three universities.

University President Tim Killeen (Photo: UIC Photo Services)

University initiative aims to recruit exceptional faculty By University Relations

Make insurance changes during Benefit Choice

UIC employees can change health and dental plans and enroll in flexible spending accounts through May 31 during the Benefit Choice period.

Employee and dependent health, dental and life insurance premiums remain the same as the current plan year, which ends June 30.

The carrier will change for the Quality Care Health Plan from Cigna to Aetna. The Aetna network includes 98 percent of the providers and facil-ities covered by the current Cigna network. The name of the Coventry HMO plan will change to Aetna be-

cause of the company’s acquisition. All changes during the Benefit

Choice period — the only time em-ployees can make adjustments with-out qualifying events such as childbirth or marriage — must be made on the CMS MyBenefits Mar-ketplace website, MyBenefits.illinois.gov

All changes will be effective July 1.Employees who want to enroll in a

flexible spending account must re-enroll each year.

For more information, call 312-996-6471. Emergency response vehicles and

personnel will be on campus May 19 for Operation Power Play, a statewide disas-ter preparedness drill.

Sponsoring agencies — including UIC, ComEd, Ameren Illinois, the DuPage County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, the Illinois Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Army Reserve — will work to-gether to manage disasters more effi-ciently. The exercise will simulate a large storm damage scenario, where response teams would be pre-positioned to re-store critical services. The event is scheduled to take place from 8 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

People on campus should expect to see first responders, restoration teams,

task forces, command posts, generators, trucks, an unmanned aerial system, a flying fixed-wing aircraft and other equipment near parking lot 1B, 1139 W. Harrison Street.

Two more exercises near UIC — close to the Chicago River and inside a ComEd substation — will simulate other catastrophic events.

The drill will test areas such as safety and health, emergency operations cen-ter management, critical logistics and resource management, interoperable communications and restoration of life-lines.

After the exercises, participants will identify areas for improvement.

For more information about Operation Power Play 2017, visit bit.ly/2qWpcJN

UIC to host disaster drill By Francisca Corona — fcoron3@uic.edu

5UIC News | Wednesday, May 17, 2017uicnews.uic.edu

CONGRATSCLASS OF 2017 More than 5,300

degrees were awarded to the Class of 2017 during commencement ceremonies May 3–7.

Photos: UIC Creative & Digital Services

WATCH THE VIDEOyoutube.com/uicmedia

6 UIC News | Wednesday, May 17, 2017

meets East Meets West is a collaboration of Provost Susan Poser and Vice Chancellor of Health Affairs Robert Barish

Are you involved in an east-west collaboration? Email christyb@uic.edu and we may feature your story!

Biomaterials optimally suited as scaffolds for tissue regenera-tion and reconstructive surgery have remained an elusive goal for material scientists and bioen-gineers. A collaboration between researchers in the College of En-gineering and College of Dentist-ry has led to a breakthrough technique to improve the proper-ties of one of the oldest — and widely used — structural bioma-terials, collagen.

Collagen, the most abundant protein in mammals, has been employed as a biomaterial since sutures made from cat-gut were used to close the wounds of Roman gladiators. Strong, flexi-ble, and unlikely to provoke an immune response, collagen membranes are used today in many medical applications, including tissue engineering, and dental bone grafting.

Seven years ago, bioengineering and chemical engineering professor Chris-tos Takoudis met Cortino Sukotjo, an associate professor of restorative den-tistry, at a campus social function.

“We realized we had common inter-ests,” Takoudis said. “One from the clini-cal side, and one from the

material-science and engineering side.”Takoudis was working on atomic-lay-

er deposition, or ALD — a workhorse technique of nanotechnology in the semiconductor industry that allows nanometer-thin layers of a metal or metal oxide to be uniformly and confor-mally applied to a substrate’s surface with two or three dimensional complex topography. Sukotjo was interested in improving dental implants materials.

Engineering, dentistry collaboration leads to new biomaterials

Together, could they find a way to modify and enhance the sur-face properties of a bio-logical substrate? It would be Takoudis’s first foray into biomate-rials.

They imagined that the biocompatibility and bioactivity of commer-cially available collagen membranes could be improved by coating them with an ultrathin layer of titanium dioxide, a compound widely used in cosmetics, sun-screens, food additives and dental/orthopaedic implants. They envi-

sioned using the ALD process to apply a nanolayer of the metal oxide to these complex nanostructured membranes.

But the challenge is that biological materials like collagen cannot withstand the heat of industrial ALD treatment — often higher than 200 degrees Celsius, or nearly 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

“Seventy degrees ‘C’ is the lowest oth-ers had gotten, especially for the ALD process of Titanium dioxide on biologi-

cal fibrous substrate,” said Arghya Bishal, a doctoral student in the Richard and Loan Hill Department of Bioengineering, who is first author on a paper published earlier this year in the Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology A.

“We had to work at lower and lower temperatures — until we finally got to room temperature ALD of titanium diox-ide.”

The surprising achievement of room-temperature ALD was reached using a custom apparatus the research-ers devised, and a new bit of chemistry: tetrakis(dimethylamido)titanium as the titanium metal source, and ozone as the oxidizing agent, to generate titanium dioxide. The two components were intro-duced one after the other — with an argon purge in between — into a low-pressure chamber that held the col-lagen-membrane ALD substrate. The researchers repeated the ALD cycle 150, 300 and 600 times to grow titanium oxide films of increasing thicknesses that could each be compared to uncoat-ed collagen membranes.

The researchers now plan to begin pre-clinical in vivo experiments, Sukotjo said, and try to create or modify new materials using other metals and/or ALD metal oxides to cater to the specific needs of different clinical applications.

By Bill Burton — burton@uic.edu

UIC researchers Cortino Sukotjo and Christos Takoudis formed their collaboration after meeting at a campus social function. (Photo: Jenny Fontaine)

“We had to work at lower and lower temperatures — until we finally got to room temperature,” says graduate student Arghya Bishal (center). (Photo: Jenny Fontaine)

Micrographs of control collagen and cycles 150, 300 and 600. Cycles were repeated to grow titanium oxide films of increasing thickness.

7UIC News | Wednesday, May 17, 2017uicnews.uic.edu

East Meets West is a collaboration of Provost Susan Poser and Vice Chancellor of Health Affairs Robert Barish

Are you involved in an east-west collaboration? Email christyb@uic.edu and we may feature your story!

When Karina Reyes began her re-search on Latina breast cancer survivors’ adherence to anticancer medication, she thought about herself and her mom.

“I could relate,” said Reyes, a junior in LAS.

She looked over at her research part-ner, Jackelyn Cantoral, a kinesiology stu-dent, before adding that they are both Latinas. “It hit home for me,” she said.

Their research focuses on Hispanic women diagnosed with early stage breast cancer. Their research subjects, who had already undergone active treat-ments such as chemotherapy, surgery or radiation, were prescribed an oral anti- cancer medication known as endocrine

— or hormonal — therapy. “The medicine is supposed to prevent

the cancer from coming back and keep them from dying,” said Reyes, a neurosci-ence major.

Research has found that in patients diagnosed with early breast cancer, treatment reduced recurrence within a five-year timeframe by 40 percent and

mortality by one-third.But minority popula-

tions report poorer outcomes after being diagnosed, and even after being treated for breast cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, the disease is still the leading cause of cancer-related death among Latina women.

Reyes and Cantoral worked on two projects to improve Latina wom-en’s breast cancer out-comes.

Data suggests that low medication adher-ence among non-white minorities could be one reason for the poorer outcomes, so the pair

Undergrads focus work on Latina breast cancer survivors

started asking questions for an initial study.

“What are some of the bar-riers to adherence? Why ar-en’t they taking their medication? What things help them take their medica-tion?” Reyes said.

After screening study par-ticipants — recruited from the Robert H. Lurie Compre-hensive Cancer Center, the Latina Association of Breast Cancer in Chicago and Rush University Medical Center — the students asked women open-ended questions in separate hour-long inter-views and transcribed their answers.

The results were used to create questionnaires that were implemented in the second part of the study, which gathered quantitative information from more

women about themes of nonadher-ence.

The students found that Latina breast cancer survivors were unsure of the medication’s purpose and how it worked.

“Negative side effects didn’t really encourage them to take the endo-crine therapy, either,” said Cantoral, a junior in the College of Applied

Health Sciences. “Women would be like, ‘It feels terrible,

so I’m just going to stop taking the medi-cine in general,’ not knowing that they were risking something much larger than just them feeling hot flashes or joint pain,” Reyes said.

There were many cultural factors, too. Faith and family motivated patients to follow through with medication regi-

mens. Ineffective communica-tion between doctors and patients, sometimes because of language barriers, presented a barrier. Other themes were costs of treatment, lack of insur-ance coverage and transporta-tion issues.

The results are informing a larger pilot study that’s using a mobile-based application as an interventional tool for breast cancer survivors. The app, called Mi Guía or My Guide, is linguistically and culturally tai-lored to serve Hispanic women completing active treatment for breast cancer by improving symptoms and quality of life. Research teams are about half-way done with the feasibility trial of the electronic tool. An improved version and larger

test run will follow. Contributions on all fronts have

been helpful for the app’s advance-ment.

“I think that team science is always important,” said Joanna Buscemi, an adjunct faculty member with the UIC Institute for Health Research and Policy.

As a clinical psychologist, she hopes to help women participating in the pilot project use the app regularly.

“I have the behavioral intervention or evidence-based intervention expertise,” she said, adding that students keep the lab running.

Collaborator Betina Yanez, an assis-tant professor from Northwestern Uni-versity, has extensive experience working with Latina women, and asso-ciate professor Alejandra Perez- Tamayo, who is also participating in the project, is a board-certified surgeon at the University of Illinois Hospital and Health Sciences System.

“If we were not all working together, there would be a really important piece missing,” Yanez said.

Research was funded in part by the American Cancer Society and the Chi-cago Cancer Equity Collaborative.

For more information about Mi Guía, visit chicagochec.org

By Francisca Corona — fcoron3@uic.edu

Karina Reyes presents her research on Latina breast cancer survirors’ adherence to anticancer medicine at the UIC Research Forum in April. (Photo: Vibhu S. Rangavasan)

Jackelyn Cantoral contributed to two projects to improve Latina women’s breast cancer outcomes. (Photo: Vibhu S. Rangavasan)

MINORITY POPULATIONS REPORT POORER OUT-COMES AFTER BEING DIAGNOSED, AND EVEN AFTER BEING TREATED FOR BREAST CANCER.

8 UIC News | Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Legendary Chicago restaurant remembered in UIC archivesBy Carlos Sadovi — csadovi@uic.edu

Before Chicago had the Frontera Grill, Lettuce Entertain You and Alinea restaurants, it had the Blackhawk Restaurant, which broadcast big band music live across the United States on WGN Radio.

When television moved into the homes of Americans in the early 1950s, restaurateur Don Roth decided to “make food the show” and used spinning salad bowls and rolling roast beef carts as a new way to provide tableside entertainment for his guests. He also arranged for the Blackhawk’s new signature style of dining, served to transconti-nental, first-class passengers on American Airlines.

From Dec. 27, 1920, when it first opened its doors at 129 N. Wabash Ave. in the Loop, until New Year’s Eve in 2009, when Roth’s wife, Ann, closed the last restaurant in Wheeling, the Roth Restaurants helped usher in many firsts for Chicago’s dining and entertainment scene.

The nine-decade history of the Roth family restaurant busi-ness and its visionary father and son owners, Otto and Don Roth, are the subject of an exhibit at the Richard J. Daley Library, which opened May 10 and con-tinues through 2017.

The family of Don Roth, who died in 2003, permanently do-nated 60 linear feet of memora-bilia, including signed contracts by big band leaders and other celebrities, photos, scrapbooks,

recipes and decades of menus to Special Collections and Uni-versity Archives.

The collection will be avail-able to historians and other members of the public who may want to view them as ex-amples of how the fami-ly-owned business not only adapted to but also helped in-fluence 20th-century dining trends and business practices, said Peggy Glowacki, Special Collections librarian and in-structor.

“It offers a great perspective on families, their social lives, how we entertain ourselves and what we expect from public en-tertainment and from the sim-ple act of eating dinner,” Glowacki said. “The Blackhawk always sought to provide more than a meal.”

Otto Roth, who had classical musicians play unobtrusively from a balcony as diners quietly ate below, opened the Black-hawk in 1920. However, having opened the same year prohibi-tion became law and it became illegal to sell and consume al-cohol, Roth knew he desperate-ly needed to attract patrons for his restaurant to survive.

In 1926, Roth discarded classical music, installed a stage and dance floor, and began nationally broadcasting “Live! From the Blackhawk!” over WGN Radio. The Black-hawk featured dance orchestras and stars including Kay Kyser,

Chico Marx, Louis Prima, Mel Tormé, Ozzie Nelson and Doris Day, who made her first appearance with Bob Crosby’s band in 1940. A tele-graph machine in the restaurant even took requests from listen-ers.

According to news-paper clippings from the era included in the collection, Otto Roth quickly developed into a media-savvy pro-moter and trendsetter, Glowacki said. He rec-ognized that the Loop was full of new poten-tial customers. Roth’s ads invited female shoppers to stop in for a “dainty lunch,” exec-utives to dine with clients, and sweltering Chicagoans to enjoy the Blackhawk’s “naturally cooled air.”

When Roth died suddenly in 1944, his son, Don, took over. The younger Roth had previous-ly served as a booking agent on the West Coast and had experi-ence supplying food to soldiers while in the military during World War II. After he took the reins of the restaurant, he de-cided it was time for a change and took down the stage, did away with live music and decid-ed to focus on the food.

He also was ready to learn from what others were doing.

He noticed that Lawry’s in Bev-erly Hills was serving green salads made tableside by waiters using a spinning salad bowl and serv-ing prime rib tableside from rolling grill carts. He followed by making them signatures of Don Roth’s Blackhawk Restaurant in Chicago.

“Don Roth’s slogan be-comes, ‘The Food’s the

Show,’ and the focus turns to food as entertainment,” Glowac-ki said. “He has a keen eye for new ideas and is skilled at adapting them for his custom-ers.”

In 1969, Roth followed peo-ple escaping the social unrest of urban areas to the suburbs, opening Don Roth’s Blackhawk in Wheeling. After opening sev-eral shorter-lived spots along Michigan Avenue, the original Wabash Avenue restaurant closed in 1984, while the Wheeling restaurant stayed open for six years after Roth’s death in 2003.

Ann Roth, who is 94, said her husband, Don, and his father, Otto, were truly trendsetters and recalled hearing WGN’s broad-cast from the Blackhawk Restaurant when she was grow-ing up in the southern United States.

Roth was the first to have art exhibits in a restaurant, the first to offer a salad bar in Chicago, and one of the first to have black and white wait staff work-ing side by side, his wife said. Her husband kept his business “to a high standard,” she said, and was known as a strict — but fair — boss who was among the first to hire young people as waiters to tap into their “young-er” ideas.

After the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy in 1968, the vitality of Chicago’s Loop was in doubt because fewer people

were willing to stay downtown after work.

It was then the Blackhawk became the first restaurant to offer complimentary shuttle service from the restaurant to the Lyric Opera House and Chi-cago Symphony Center for din-ers in the city.

Because the Blackhawk’s regular menu offered traditional fare, Roth also invited famous chefs from other countries as guests to work in his kitchen and come up with unique menus.

He wrote travel stories cen-tered on food for the Chicago Tribune, she said. In 1980, her husband was one of the origi-nators of the Taste of Chicago food festival, which was set up along North Michigan Avenue during its first year.

“He was a very imaginative person, he was extremely cre-ative,” Ann Roth said. “My hus-band loved the business and he was a very, very charismatic person.”

Roth said she chose UIC for the archives because she knew the library had the space for “this volume of work” and would provide a place for scholars and others to study them. She said her husband, who was a gradu-ate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, loved his alma mater.

“I knew that Don would have loved having the University of Illinois be the recipient,” she said. “He loved Illinois.”

The menu from the Blackhawk Restaurant is among items on display in the UIC Special Collections and University Archives.

Don Roth prepares the “spinning salad bowl” in a promotional photograph. Actor Buster Keaton is seated on the right.

9UIC News | Wednesday, May 17, 2017uicnews.uic.edu

Report provides roadmap for serving entrepreneursBy Francisca Corona — fcoron3@uic.edu

UIC kicked off the 54th Annual Na-tional Small Business Week May 1 with the release of a 21st-century roadmap for Small Business Development Centers across the state.

Authored by Denise Franta, director of the Illinois Small Business Development Center (SBDC) at UIC, the report is de-signed to revamp the Small Business Development Center network across the state to better serve minority entrepre-neurs who are starting, growing and sus-taining ventures in the digital age.

The report, “Reimagine: The Future of Illinois’ Small Business Development Centers,” includes actionable recommen-dations. A Maximum Impact Value Indica-tor will measure the economic value of businesses and determine how the cen-ters are serving entrepreneurs. The re-port is online at reimaginesbdc.com

“Implementation will take place over the next year,” said Franta, who has worked with the SBDC since 2009. The Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity and the U.S. Small Business Administration selected SBDC at UIC to write Reimagine.

“It’s a great honor to be able to com-plete this project,” she said.

Illinois Deputy Governor Leslie Geissler Munger shared remarks about the economic impact of small business owners and the importance of the SBDC

and programs — like Reimagine — that support them.

“We understand how important small businesses are,” said Munger, who deliv-ered a proclamation, signed by Gov. Bruce Rauner, that designated April 30 through May 6 as Small Business Week in Illinois.

During her remarks, she highlighted that 1.2 million small businesses exist in the state, employing 2.4 million people.

“Thank you for your time,” she told SBDC administrators, Chancellor Michael Amiridis, university staff, and other leaders in attendance, “for helping us invest in small businesses and help-ing communities all throughout Illinois.”

Chancellor Amiridis said he is proud of SBDC at UIC staff and the groups that fund and support the center — the Col-lege of Business Administration, the In-stitute for Entrepreneurial Studies and the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.

He also recognized four successful local entrepreneurs who have worked closely with Franta and other staff from the UIC SBDC program, which provides advice and a variety of entrepreneurship education opportunities to small busi-ness owners.

Those recognized included Laura Martinez, a chef from the North Side restaurant La Diosa who is blind; Narciso

Albarracin, an architect of digital health systems who began ONTO Adaptive LLC; Christopher Valdez with Ther-matome Corporation, which uses a heat treatment to kill cancer cells in patients; and Tom Ruginis, founder of a lab product-managing business called HappiLabs.

“We have to keep this in mind: our job is to be facilitators, our job is to be able

Chef Laura Martinez, pictured with Illinois Deputy Governor Leslie Geissler Munger and Chancellor Michael Amiridis, was among entrepreneurs recognized on campus during Small Business Week. (Photo: Jenny Fontaine)

to provide these services and then let people really achieve their potential that they have,” Amiridis said.

“UIC, our Small Business Develop-ment Center do exactly this. We have always been and will be the support center and economic incubator that promotes innovation and leads entrepreneurs to drive the quality of life for all of us.”

Medicine auditorium named for alumnus, wife By Sharon Parmet — sparmet@uic.edu

The College of Medicine on May 1 dedicated the G. Stephen and Kath-leen Irwin Learning Center Auditori-um, named for an alumnus and his wife.

Dr. Irwin, an orthopaedic surgeon, and Kathleen Irwin, a registered nurse, have made numerous gifts and be-quests to the College of Medicine over the years, directing their gifts in support of student scholarship, the department of orthopaedic surgery and endowed professorships.

“The training I received as a medi-cal student and as an orthopaedic resi-dent at the College of Medicine has had a lasting influence on my career for nearly 35 years,” Irwin said. “I always felt like the university was my partner in the practice of medicine. They made the ed-ucation possible, in part due to the af-fordability at the time.”

“Steve and Kathy continue to show their support for the most promising and talented physicians of tomorrow,” said Dr. Dimitri Azar, dean of the College of Med-icine. “We are pleased to announce the dedication of our second-floor auditori-um in our updated learning center in

honor of their generosity and commit-ment.”

The 200-seat auditorium, which was completed in 2015 and is located in the historic College of Medicine West Tower, provides three floors of updated class-rooms and educational spaces.

“The only way the university can con-tinue to offer a high-quality education, especially with a tightening state budget, is for alumni and community partners to step forward and bring money to the table in support of Illinois’ premier public research university and medical school,” Irwin said.

G. Stephen and Kathleen Irwin

10 UIC News | Wednesday, May 17, 2017

UIC News StaffPublished on Wednesdays during the academic year (monthly during summer) by:

Office of Public and Government Affairs University of Illinois at Chicago 601 S. Morgan St., 1320 UH (MC 288) Chicago, IL 60607-7113

Editorial: . . . . . . . . . . . . (312) 996-0662 Advertising: . . . . . . . . (312) 996-3456 Fax: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (312) 996-3754

Associate Editor Christy Levy — christyb@uic.edu

Senior Executive Director, Public Affairs Sherri McGinnis González — smcginn@uic.edu

Senior Director, Public Affairs Bill Burton — burton@uic.edu

Advertising Coordinator Samella Wright — uicnewsads@uic.edu

Visual Communication & Design Anna Dworzecka — adworz1@uic.edu

Associate Graphic Designer Megan Strand — mstran2@uic.edu

Editorial Associates Francisca Corona — fcoron3@uic.edu

Photography Jenny Fontaine — loerzel@uic.edu

uicnews.uic.edu

Junior wins national honor for civic engagementBy Brian Flood — bflood@uic.edu

A UIC junior has been selected to receive a 2017 Newman Civic Fellow-ship by Campus Compact, a national nonprofit coalition of more than 1,000 colleges and universities.

Alexis Smyser, a communication major in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, is among 273 students hon-ored for their efforts to find solutions for challenges facing communities through-out the country and abroad.

UIC Chancellor Michael Amiridis, who nominated Smyser for the award, de-scribes her as a “strong, vocal communi-ty activist.”

“She eagerly engages in community meetings with elected officials and con-tributes to dialogue regarding issues affecting Latinos in Chicago and nation-wide,” Amiridis said.

“Alexis is an outstanding active citizen who we are proud to have as a member of our community.”

Having grown up in Chicago’s Hum-boldt Park neighborhood, Smyser aims to replicate the hands-on model of ser-

vice and community engagement she saw practiced by her parents and neigh-bors, whom she observed as they tack-led issues ranging from school closures to gun violence.

“My personal, academic and career plans each revolve around the passion I have for improving my city,” said Smyser, a member of the UIC Honors College.

After high school, she completed one year of service through the AmeriCorps Public Allies program. Working on behalf of the Goldin Institute, she produced a video project featuring interviews with grassroots leaders from different coun-tries discussing leadership and creating change.

During her first semester at UIC, she completed the video project, which is now part of the institute’s leadership curriculum on grassroots activism for positive community and social change.

On campus she has worked as a do-cent at the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, where she guided tours and helped facilitate civic dialogues. As a

member of the LAS Dean’s Student Advi-sory Board, she provides input on the student experience in the College of Lib-eral Arts and Sciences.

Smyser, who is minoring in interna-tional studies and urban studies, is a founding member of LPODER, a Latino student urban planning organization.

“One of our main objectives is to work with high school students in the city to raise awareness about urban planning and the impact it can have on cities,” she said. “We want to help bring more diver-sity to the field.”

As a Newman Civic Fellow, she will have learning and networking opportu-nities during a one-year experience that emphasizes personal, professional and civic growth, including a national confer-ence hosted by Campus Compact in partnership with the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the U.S. Senate. The fellow-ship also offers access to exclusive scholarship and post-graduate opportu-nities.

Smyser will represent UIC in a nation-al group of student leaders as part of the Newman Civic Fellows online network and will also participate in regional activ-ities.

The Newman Civic Fellows Awards, which are named in tribute to Campus Compact co-founder Frank Newman, are made possible through support from the KPMG Foundation and the Newman’s Own Foundation.

Alexis Smyser

Seidel to lead university’s innovation economic developmentBy University Relations

H. Edward Seidel was named vice president for economic development and innovation for the University of Illi-nois System.

Seidel has served since August as interim vice president for research, a po-sition that has been restructured and retitled to reflect the U of I System’s focus on fostering innovation to help drive the state’s economy through re-search and discovery.

University President Tim Killeen said Seidel’s leadership over the last eight months has helped advance several new initiatives, such as working with execu-tives of Illinois companies to develop collaborative research projects that will serve their businesses and lift the state’s economy.

“Ed’s personal experience with leading-edge research and with federal and international agencies — combined with his deep understanding of the U of I System’s capabilities and aspirations — has given him a rock-solid foundation for success,” Killeen said.

“He’s off to a flying start.”He succeeds Lawrence B. Schook,

who stepped down after five years to return to his research and faculty work at the System’s universities in Urbana-Champaign and Chicago.

A longtime administrator and award-winning researcher, Seidel will lead an office that works with the Sys-

tem’s three universities to help manage their nearly $1 billion per year sponsored-research portfolio and over-see technology commercialization and economic development activities.

Before his appointment as interim vice president, Seidel served since 2013 as director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physics at the College of William and Mary in 1981, a master’s degree in physics at the University of Pennsylvania in 1983 and a doctorate in relativistic astrophysics at Yale University in 1988.

Dennis Terpin (center), an industrial hygienist in UIC’s Environmental Health and Safety Office, meets with UIC Chancellor Michael Amiridis and Mark Donovan, retired vice chancellor for administrative services, after receiving his Gold Level Indirect Authorized Trainer Award from the FEMA/Department of Homeland Security Center for Domestic Preparedness. Over the past seven years, Terpin has trained 1,000 first responders. He is a master-level instructor at the Center for Domestic Preparedness and has 48 years of experience in emergency response and management. (Photo: Jenny Fontaine)

PEOPLE

11UIC News | Wednesday, May 17, 2017uicnews.uic.edu

Medical education leader receives Ellis Island AwardBy Sharon Parmet — sparmet@uic.edu

Ara Tekian, professor and associate dean of international education at the College of Medicine, is among recipients of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor. The award is given to those who “have made it their mission to share with those less fortunate their knowledge, courage and compassion, while maintaining the tradi-tions of their ethnic heritage as they up-hold the ideals and spirit of America,” according to the National Ethnic Coali-tion of Organizations, the group that gives the award.

Past recipients include six U.S. presi-dents, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Frank Sinatra, Elie Wiesel and Rosa Parks.

The 2017 awardees, who were hon-ored May 13 in New York City, include astronaut Buzz Aldrin, cardiologist An-napoorna Kini and CNN anchor Fareed Zakaria.

Tekian was born in Beirut, Lebanon. He received his doctorate in neurosci-ence from the American University in Beirut in 1981 and earned a master’s in health professions education at UIC in 1983.

“This was a very unique degree at the time, and UIC was one of the only univer-sities in the world to offer it,” Tekian said.

He returned to the Middle East that year and became the founding director of the medical education department at King Saud University College of Medi-cine in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He later

consulted for the World Health Organi-zation and the Ministries of Health and Education to ensure that medical schools in the Middle East were ade-quately preparing their students to pro-vide care in their respective countries.

In 1990, with the civil war still ongo-ing in his native Lebanon, Tekian left the Middle East and moved to the U.S.

Tekian joined UIC in 1992 as a visiting assistant professor of medi-cal education and was instrumental in building UIC’s international pro-grams. Since then, he has consult-ed in more than 45 countries and helped establish more than a dozen medical education departments or centers.

“When I moved to the U.S., I knew that I wanted to do everything I could to help the Lebanese and Armenian communities that I joined here in America,” he said. “When you have a shared history with people, and when you are an immigrant yourself, you have a very strong de-sire to help your people.”

For Tekian, that desire took the form of assisting Armenian and Lebanese students seeking to fur-ther their medical education in this country. To them and their families, he became known as “the Contact Person.” His extensive contacts at universities in the U.S., the Middle East and Europe helped him direct

students to educational opportunities in graduate and post-graduate work. He established the UIC College of Medi-cine’s International Medical Education Program in 2009.

“Dr. Tekian put UIC on the map in terms of medical education,” said Robert Barish, vice chancellor for health affairs. “He is one of the main reasons why we

Ara Tekian (Photo: Jenny Fontaine)

are known as innovators in medical edu-cation around the world.”

Tekian has been widely involved in the Armenian and Lebanese communi-ties in Chicago and throughout the U.S. and holds many leadership roles. He has been active in the Armenian General Be-nevolent Union Chicago Chapter for the past two decades and served as chair of its Saturday School from 1994 to 2005. He has also served as president of the regional chapter of the alumni associa-tion of the American University of Beirut from 1997 to 2001, and president of its North American chapter from 2002 to 2004. Tekian served as president of the division of education in the professions of the American Educational Research Association from 2009 to 2012.

He is currently one of the 100 Pillars of the American University of Armenia, having donated generously to fund stu-dent scholarships. He has raised hun-dreds of thousands of dollars to support Armenian and Lebanese communities recovering from disasters, including the 1988 earthquake in Armenia.

Other awards include the 2012 Asso-ciation for the Study of Medical Educa-tion Gold Medal Award, one of the most prestigious awards in medical education. In 2014, he received a lifetime achieve-ment award from the Armenian Ameri-can Medical Society, and in 2015 he was named Faculty of the Year by the UIC department of medical education.

Computer scientist honored with NSF CAREER awardBy Bill Burton — burton @uic.edu

Brian Ziebart, assistant professor of computer science, has received a $500,000 National Science Foundation CAREER award, the NSF’s top award for young researchers, to develop better structured prediction methods that could make autonomous vehicles safer and improve other applications in health care, financial market stability and safety.

Ziebart works in the field of adversar-ial machine learning and is using it to improve structured prediction tasks — tasks that require the joint prediction of many related variables, rather than inde-pendent predictions for separate vari-ables. For example, an autonomous vehicle’s lane-change decision may de-pend on its estimates for position and velocity of nearby vehicles, its assess-ment of road conditions and other po-tential obstacles, and so on.

Such a vehicle, Ziebart said, is trying to generalize from limited previous ex-perience for machine learning, similar to the way Amazon’s “Alexa” seeks to quickly learn its users’ intentions and preferences.

“One way to do it is to make worst-case assumptions about what you don’t know,” he said — a task for which generative adversarial net-works are becoming popular.

“We use a lot of optimiza-tion methodology, including convex optimization,” he said. “And we use game theory to construct these prediction paths to make it efficient for real-time applications.”

In the case of computer vision for a self-driving vehi-cle, the machine learning uti-lizes context.

“If you have pixels, and you want to assign which ones are car-pixels, rather than looking at each one, you look at a wider area that defines what car-pixels should be,” he said. “The car-pixels will be near road-pixels, and this idea of leveraging structure happens at multiple levels.”

Ziebart received his undergraduate degree in computer engineering with

highest honors from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He earned a master’s degree in machine learning and his doctorate in knowledge discov-ery and data mining from Carnegie Mel-

lon University. He did postdoctoral research in Carnegie Mellon’s Human- Computer Interaction Institute and Ro-botics Institute before joining the UIC computer science faculty in 2012.

Brian Ziebart, assistant professor of computer science. (Photo: Jenny Fontaine)

PEOPLE

12 UIC News | Wednesday, May 17, 2017

SPORTS

MORE SPORTS AT uicflames.com

Longtime athletic director to retire By Dan Yopchick — yopchick@uic.edu

Jim Schmidt, director of athletics at UIC for the past 22 years, will retire Aug. 1.

Schmidt, who has worked at UIC for the past 36 years, is the longest-serving athletic director in the Horizon League.

“On behalf of the entire UIC commu-nity, we are incredibly thankful for the service that Jim Schmidt has provided to this university for more than three decades,” Chancellor Michael Amiridis said. “He fostered the growth of our athletic teams through the Division I era, while guiding a department that has prospered in three critical areas: the classroom, the community, and competi-tion.

“Jim has been an invaluable resource to me since I arrived on campus two years ago,” Amiridis said. “His loyalty and passion for the Flames is unmatched and his talent and leadership as a respected adminis-trator will be missed by all of us. We are grateful for the commitment he has made as the Director of Athletics for 22 years, and wish him a wonderful retire-ment as he starts a new chapter in his life.”

Schmidt has constructed a depart-ment that has exceled on a champion-ship level, not only within the conference, but also on the regional and national scenes. Under his direction, UIC has ad-vanced to NCAA postseason competition 49 times, while amassing a total of 80

conference championships. In the 15 years before Schmidt’s tenure that UIC was an NCAA Division I school, the Flames had just nine NCAA postseasons and 11 conference titles.

“I owe everything I have to the Univer-sity of Illinois at Chicago,” Schmidt said.

“Being here since the infancy of the Division I era and working to build a quality organi-zation has been an honor. I have been blessed to work with so many talented and successful student-athletes, coaches and ad-ministrators. To be able to go out on my own terms

is not easy in these changing times of Division I athletics.”

Under Schmidt’s leadership, UIC was twice awarded the Horizon League’s James J. McCafferty Trophy — in 2000 and 2007. The honor is given to the most successful all-around athletic program in the Horizon League each season. In ad-dition, the first NCAA postseason bids for the men’s basketball (1998), women’s tennis (1999), men’s soccer (1999) and baseball (2003) programs all occurred under his supervision. The women’s ten-nis program established itself as a dy-nasty by winning an unprecedented 16 consecutive conference championships

and making 14-straight NCAA Tourna-ment appearances through 2013.

In 2015, Schmidt was selected as the 2014–15 Under Armour Athletic Direc-tor of the Year by the National Associa-tion of Collegiate Directors of Athletics. He was one of only 28 leaders from across the country to be recognized, and one of four from Division I-AAA.

“UIC is a unique and special place,” Schmidt said. “The future for athletics is incredibly bright and I cannot wait to be the Flames’ biggest fan moving forward. The growth and struggles in the early years of Division I have only made the last 15 years even more memorable. Chancellor Amiridis has a strong vision for the future and I’m looking forward to the success of the Flames and the uni-versity.”

Schmidt has been instrumental in ex-panding UIC’s athletic offerings, adding two programs in the last seven years: women’s golf in 2010 and women’s soc-cer in 2012.

Not only has UIC raised its sights in competition across all 20 athletic pro-grams, but the Flames also have accom-plished tremendous feats in the classroom and community. During the 2016 fall semester, UIC’s 349 student-athletes posted a collective grade-point average for the term of 3.12 — the highest ever.

The Flames’ fundraising efforts under Schmidt have resulted in new and im-proved facilities, including new team rooms for all sports, Curtis Granderson Stadium for baseball, and tennis courts

and soccer fields. He also spearheaded $7 million in improvements and up-grades to the UIC Pavilion, home of the men’s and women’s basketball teams. In addition, UIC opened the Flames Athletic Center, the day-to-day hub of the depart-ment, in 1997.

Schmidt instituted the Champions Club fundraising arm in 2005. The Champions Club energized and bol-stered UIC’s scholarships fund that sup-ports all 20 of the department’s athletic programs.

Schmidt first arrived at UIC in 1982, when he was the baseball pitching coach. From 1983–86, Schmidt was an assistant athletic director and he han-dled all sports information duties, as well as marketing, promotions and daily oper-ations for the department. He assumed the role of an associate athletic director in 1987 and he served in that post until 1995, when he was named interim ath-letic director following the retirement of friend and mentor Tom Russo.

“Having the opportunity to work at one institution my entire career is dis-tinctive,” Schmidt said. “I was able to see our programs grow throughout the Divi-sion I years and build meaningful rela-tionships with so many people that I will hold onto forever.”

A national search beings immediately to identify Schmidt’s successor.

Schmidt graduated from Western Illi-nois University in 1981 with a degree in sports management. He and his wife, Mary, live in Naperville. They have a son, Bill, and daughter, Eva.

Softball crowned league champsBy Laura White — lwhite88@uic.edu

For the ninth time in pro-gram history, the UIC Flames are Horizon League Tourna-ment champions as they de-feated Youngstown State, 6-3, in the title game Saturday at Flames Field.

The UIC softball team will begin its run in the 2017 NCAA Tournament at the Eu-gene Regional. Competition begins Friday versus host No. 3 Oregon at Jane Sanders Stadium.

During the Horizon League Tournament, the top-seeded Flames went undefeated as they took down No. 4 Wright State, 2-0, and No. 2 Youngstown State twice with

a pair of 6-3 wins.Tiana Mack-Miller took the

top honor of Horizon League Tournament MVP after going 5-for-8 with one double and one home run and added four RBI. Lexi Watts, Elaine Heflin and Kayla Wedl earned a spot on the All-Tournament Team.

In other postseason honors, Heflin was named the Horizon League Pitcher of the Year for the third-consecutive season and first-year head coach Lynn Curylo has garnered the distinc-tion of Coach of the Year.

The Flames also earned three First Team All-League honors for Heflin, Watts and Ka-rissa Frazier.