Current Grantees

At the XIV International AIDS Conference in Barcelona in July 2002, César Abadía Barrero (COLCIENCIAS, Colombia) presented a poster and two abstracts. The first abstract and the poster were based on Abadía’s paper, “Notions and Practices of Care for Brazilian Children with HIV/AIDS: When Medications Replace AIDS.” The second abstract was based on his paper, “State and Non-Governmental Organizations’ (NGOs) Responses for Children with AIDS and for Street Children in Brazil: Adequate Assistance vs. Structural Abandonment.” Abadía is studying towards a doctoral degree in medical science at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine.

In October 2001, Astrid Baquero Bernal (COLCIENCIAS, Colombia) gave a talk entitled “Inter-Annual Variability in the Tropical Indian Ocean” at the Joint Assemblies of the International Association for Physical Sciences of the Oceans and the International Association for Biological Oceanography in Mar del Plata, Argentina. Baquero is pursuing a doctoral degree in meteorological technology from the Max-Planck-Institut für Meteorologie in Hamburg, Germany.

Clara Ocampo Durán (COLCIENCIAS, Colombia), a doctoral candidate in public health at Tulane Univ., was invited to give an oral presentation of the preliminary results of her thesis research at the 2001 South Central Regional Mosquito Control Conference in Westlake, Louisiana. The presentation, “Can Variation in Local Populations of Aedes aegypti affect Dengue Transmission in an Urban Area?” (with D. Wesson), took place in October. In November of 2001, Ocampo and Wesson gave a thesis-based poster presentation entitled “Understanding the Role of Aedes aegypti in Dengue Transmission in Cali (Colombia): Population Genetics, Insecticide Resistance, and Vector Competence” at the 50th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in Atlanta, Georgia. Aedes aegypti is a small black mosquito with white spots best known for being a transmitter of yellow fever and the deadly dengue fever.

In October 2002, Fitzgerald Yaw (OAS, Guyana) presented his paper, “Cleaner Technologies and Sustainable Tourism: Theoretical Caribbean Perspectives” at the 11th Annual Caribbean Water and Wastewater Conference in conjunction with the 1st Caribbean Environmental Forum & Exhibition in St. Lucia. Yaw’s paper and his dissertation address the integral role of tourism in the Caribbean economy. Yaw is a doctoral candidate in international development at the Univ. of Southern Mississippi.

Alumni

Franklin Altuna Marcano (FUNDAYACUCHO, M.S., 1999, music performance, Towson Univ.) and his colleagues in the Grupo de Camara Nacional F.A. team in Venezuela are working on a project in which they propose ways to enhance mental development in children, beginning at age 4, through the use of the arts, including sculpture, music, theater, and literature. The group hopes to apply the new techniques to the Venezuelan private school system first and then, if they are successful, to the public school system. Altuna has been working on this project since 1985 and has been a member of the Simón Bolivar Symphony Orchestra since 1981.

In March 2003, a documentary by Venezuelan Emperatriz Arreaza Camero (Fulbright, Ph.D., 1993, communications, Univ. of Iowa), “Zuliana Woman in 20th Century: María Boscán de Prado, A Life History” will be screened at the XXIV International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association in Dallas, Texas. In July 2002, Arreaza presented a paper entitled, “Women and Cinema: New Ways of Storytelling in Venezuelan Cinema,” at the Women and Media section of the XXIII Congress of the International Association for Media and Communication Research in Barcelona, Spain. Currently, Arreaza is conducting research on the topic of “Women and Memories in Contemporary Canadian Cinema,” through a grant she received from the Canadian Studies Faculty Research Program.

In June 2002, Ecuadorian Jacqueline Arroyo (Fulbright, M.S., 2001, environmental engineering, Michigan State Univ.) gave a poster presentation at the 39th Annual Meeting of the Clay Minerals Society (CMS) in Boulder, Colorado. Arroyo’s poster was based on her research project titled “Relative Roles and Mechanistic Function of Soil Clays and Organic Matter as Sorbent Phases for Pesticide Retention.” CMS also awarded Arroyo with one of five student research grants for the project.

Ecuadorian Pedro Rojas Cruz (Fulbright, M.S., 2002, civil engineering, Lehigh Univ.) presented his paper, “Reducing Seismic Damage in Steel Frames Using Post-Tensioning” (with M. Garlock, J. Ricles, and R. Sause), at the Seventh U.S. National Conference on Earthquake Engineering in Boston, Massachusetts, in July 2002. The theme of the conference was Urban Earthquake Risk. It brought together researchers and professionals to discuss reducing the impact of earthquakes on the manmade and natural environments.

Mexican Antonio Saldaña Salazar (Fulbright/PROMEP, M.S., 2002, linguistics, Ohio Univ.) gave a presentation entitled “Native Speakers/Nonnative Speakers of English as Teachers of English as a Foreign Language,” at TEOSL 2002 in Salt Lake City, Utah, in April. Saldaña discussed why English language students often prefer native English speakers as teachers over non-native speakers. Much of his research was based on a student survey conducted at his home university, Univ. Autónoma de Nayarit.

“Transition from Calc-Alkalic to Adakitic Magmatism at Cayambe Volcano, Ecuador: Insights into Slab Melts and Mantle Wedge Interactions,” a paper co-authored (with H. Martin, C. Robin, and M. Monzier) by Ecuadorian Pablo Samaniego Eguiguren (FUNDACYT, Ph.D., 2001, geology, Univ. Blaise Pascal) was published in Geology (Nov. 2002). The Cayambe Volcano, one of the highest volcanoes in the Northern Hemisphere, has not erupted in about 600 years. In his paper, Samaniego and his colleagues discuss the evolution of the magmatism process (the generation of hot molten rock) in the Cayambe volcanic complex.