University Times

The University of Pittsburgh Center for Public Health Preparedness (UPCPHP) has appointed Gail S. Cairns to serve as interim executive director while UPCPHP undergoes a national search to fill the vacancy.

Cairns, who holds a faculty appointment in the Department of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences at the Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH), joined the Center for Public Health Practice in 2001 as a public health consultant and writer. When UPCPHP was formed, Cairns was appointed co-director for academic programs. In this role, she created and taught one of the center’s and GSPH’s first courses in emergency preparedness.

Cairns also led the effort to design and launch the Public Health Preparedness and Disaster Response graduate certificate program.

As a former employee of the New York City Health Department, Cairns has worked on a range of public issues from HIV/AIDS to the resurgence of tuberculosis. In addition to her 20-plus years as a public health practitioner, Cairns has taught at the City University of New York Hunter College of Health Sciences. She received her M.P.H. in 1983 from Columbia University and her M.A. in 1972 in political science at the New School University.

When the executive director position is filled, Cairns will continue at UPCPHP as deputy director.

Launched in July 2002, the center is part of the national network of Centers for Public Health Preparedness funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to train the public health workforce to respond to threats to our nation’s health from bioterrorism, infectious disease outbreaks and other public health emergencies.

Bruce Hapke, professor emeritus in Pitt’s Department of Geology and Planetary Science, has been honored by a research team that discovered a previously unknown mineral made up of iron and silicon in a lunar meteorite.

Lawrence A. Taylor of the University of Tennessee, a member of the research team that reported the find last spring, named the new mineral “hapkeite” in honor of the Pitt professor who three decades earlier had predicted the process that forms the iron-silicon mineral.

Hapke had theorized that micrometeriorites no bigger than grains of sand were striking the moon’s rocky surface at tremendous speeds, producing an iron- and silicon-rich vapor that condensed as a glassy coating on nearby soil.

“Back then,” Hapke recalled, “people told me, ‘You must be crazy. There’s nothing like that in lunar soil.'”

He developed the theory to explain why moon soil and rocks brought back to Earth by Apollo astronauts reflected light strangely and exhibited peculiar magnetic properties. Hapke recognized that “space weathering” must differ from weathering on Earth, which involves water and oxygen, two things missing from airless places like the moon. Simulating the space weathering process in his Pitt lab, Hapke found it produced metallic particles that would account for the odd spectral and magnetic properties of lunar soil samples.

In 2000, a chunk of the moon – broken off thousands of years ago when some other space object slammed into the lunar surface – crash-landed in the Dhofar region of Oman.

Scientists who examined the lunar meteorite found that bits of it appeared to be tarnished. But a closer look revealed that those bits actually were a previously unknown mineral made up of iron and silicon in a 2:1 ratio.

“I must admit, I felt a certain sense of vindication,” said Hapke, who gained emeritus status in 2001. “There are probably thousands of tons of hapkeite on the moon’s surface,” Hapke estimated.

Pat Frantz Cercone has been promoted to director of communications and marketing at the Bradford campus.

Cercone, who had previously served as the director of communications, will now oversee and coordinate all of the university’s marketing efforts, develop and implement integrated marketing plans for the institution, and draft and recommend integrated marketing policies and procedures for the campus.

In addition to her new marketing responsibilities, she was also named to the President’s cabinet.

Besides her new marketing duties, Cercone will continue to handle all media relations for UPB, serve as editor of the campus’s web site and of the alumni/outreach magazine Portraits, which, under her editorship, captured a Silver Award in 2003 from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education.

Cercone began working at Pitt-Bradford in September 2000 as the assistant director for public relations. In October 2001, she was promoted to director of communications. She also has served as an adjunct faculty member at Pitt-Bradford, teaching courses in news writing and news editing.

Prior to coming to UPB, she worked at The Bradford Era newspaper for 15 years, the last four years serving as city editor. During her time at The Era, she won several statewide writing awards from the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association for news series, investigative series and feature writing.

Cercone earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism in 1985 from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where she is currently a member of the journalism department’s advisory board.

Alexander J. Graziani, executive director of the Smart Growth Partnership of Westmoreland County, which is based at Pit’s Greensburg campus, has been named to the State Planning Board by Gov. Edward G. Rendell.

The board will advise the governor on ways to resolve conflicts among development, municipal and conservation groups; achieve smart-growth goals for cities, towns and rural communities, and propose ways for the state to compete for economic growth.

Rendell has asked the board to focus its work on specific development and conservation issues that are vital to the welfare of the state.

First established in 1929, the board has been inactive since the late 1980s. Working with the governor’s Center for Local Government Services and the governor’s Policy Office, the board will provide annual updates to the governor, the president pro tempore of the Senate and the speaker of the House of Representatives on its progress. Also, the board will work with and provide guidance to the Interagency Land Use Team, which has developed goals for sustainable development in the state.

The Smart Growth Partnership of Westmoreland County’s mission is to work with cities, townships and boroughs to address the challenges associated with economic growth and revitalization. The partnership is designed to promote cooperative land-use strategies that will improve the quality of growth in Southwestern Pennsylvania.