Posts tagged students
Boulder police investigating check fraud scam
May 20th
Detectives with the Boulder Police Department are looking for a suspect in connection with several cases of recent check fraud (see attached photo). There are three victims, and all are students at the University of Colorado.
In each case, the suspect approached the victim and asked for assistance in cashing a check. He claimed that he’s from Jamaica, spoke with an accent which may be fake, and said he was in town to promote a reggae concert. He said he didn’t have access to a local bank account and in return for the victim’s help, he promised to give them VIP tickets to a concert. The case numbers are 11-5243, 44-4908 and 11-4291.
The students have cashed the suspect’s checks against their own accounts, giving the suspect hundreds of dollars, which he promises will be reimbursed. None of the students has received money back. Checks have been cashed at Elevations Credit Union, First National Bank and US Bank.
The suspect drives a black 4-door sedan, and the license plate may resemble 087 WUU or a combination of these letters and numbers. He may be using multiple plates. It’s not known what state the license plate(s) is from.
The suspect is described as:
- Dark-skinned black male
- 5 feet, 10 inches tall
- 25 to 29 years old
- Dark dreadlocks
- Goes by the name “DJ Danny”
The suspect was last seen on May 17 around 2:00 p.m. at 29th Street and Arapahoe Avenue. He may be traveling with a companion who is described only as a light-skinned black male.
Anyone who has information about these crimes is asked to contact Detective Jeff Kithcart at 303-441-3376. Those who have information but wish to remain anonymous may contact the Northern Colorado Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477) or 1-800-444-3776. Tips can also be submitted via the Crime Stoppers website at www.crimeshurt.com. Those submitting tips through Crime Stoppers that lead to the arrest and filing of charges on a suspect(s) may be eligible for a cash reward of up to $1,000 from Crime Stoppers.
Volunteers needed for restorative justice program
May 17th
Boulder County, Colo. – Boulder County Community Justice Services is seeking volunteers for a restorative justice program designed to help offenders repair harm done to the community.
Volunteers will work with clients who have committed misdemeanor crimes and have been ordered by the court to do community service with government agencies and nonprofit organizations.
Volunteers may serve as Case Managers or Case Assistants in Boulder or Longmont. Both positions require a six-month commitment and 6-8 hours per week during regular business hours.
Case Managers assist in matching clients with suitable community service opportunities and monitor clients to ensure they are fulfilling their court-appointed responsibilities. Case Assistants help with administrative tasks such as tracking client hours and appointments.
Volunteers may also participate in the “Caring Crafts” program, which collects handmade items like furniture, quilts and art made by clients and donates them to nonprofits.
The program is open to volunteers and students looking to gain professional experience in case management, restorative justice and community service. Participants must be 21 years of age or older with good communication skills and an ability to work effectively with diverse populations.
The deadline to register is June 3. For details and registration information, please contact Janice Allan of the Community Justice Services volunteer program at 303-441-3718 or jallan@bouldercounty.org.
CU, MIT TOP UNIVERSITIES FOR DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY EARLY CAREER RESEARCH AWARDS
May 17th
Three University of Colorado Boulder professors will receive five-year, $750,000 grants as part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Early Career Research Program created in 2010 to bolster the nation’s scientific workforce with top young researchers
The three CU-Boulder winners — Alireza Doostan of the aerospace engineering sciences department, Minhyea Lee of the physics department and Alexis Templeton of the geological sciences department — were among 65 winners nationwide selected by the DOE in 2011. They join four other CU-Boulder faculty selected in the 2010 — the most of any university in the nation — making CU-Boulder and MIT tops in the country with seven faculty each in the DOE Early Career Research Program.
Trailing CU-Boulder and MIT in total awards for the program in 2010 and 2011 were such schools as Princeton University, Caltech, the University of California, San Diego and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“For CU-Boulder to be honored by the U.S. Department of Energy with seven of these coveted Early Career Research Program awards in the past two years is testimony to our excellence as a research university and our ability to recruit extremely talented young faculty,” said CU-Boulder Vice Chancellor for Research Stein Sture. “It also is great news for our students, who will be even more involved in critical energy research efforts that benefit Colorado, the nation and world,” said Sture, also dean of the graduate school.
Templeton will be exploring chemical reactions between water, carbon dioxide and several common minerals found beneath Earth’s surface, including olivine, which become unstable in water and will dissolve. Chemical reactions caused by dissolving olivine can react with and sequester CO2, essentially taking it out of the atmosphere and water and storing it in other rocks.
The twist, said Templeton, is that all of the experiments will be conducted in the presence and absence of bacteria that can survive extreme conditions. She and her team will be using high energy X-rays to study how “extremophiles” that can survive such high temperatures and pressures in the deep subsurface might change the reaction pathway involved in dissolving the rocks, producing new minerals, or creating other greenhouse gases like methane.
Lee’s research is focused on uncovering and identifying new states of matter resulting from strong interactions between electrons. The effort involves studying new materials with unusual properties, such as novel magnetism or unconventional superconductivity.
In addition to the fundamental interest in discovering new states, there is great potential for new technological applications in the future, according to Lee.
Doostan’s research centers on developing scalable computational techniques for uncertainty representation and propagation in complex engineering systems. To enhance the credibility of simulation tools and increase confidence in model predictions, Doostan and his group construct probabilistic approaches to characterize uncertainties and their impacts on model predictions.
One of Doostan’s research efforts will be to attempt to improve simulation-based prediction of failure mechanisms in lithium-ion batteries.
To be eligible for the DOE Early Career Research awards, researchers must have received their doctorates in the past 10 years and be untenured, tenure-track assistant or associate professors at U.S. academic institutions or full-time employees at DOE laboratories. The three CU-Boulder faculty winners in 2011 were selected from a pool of more than 1,000 applicants, as were CU-Boulder’s 2010 winners.
The four 2010 recipients from CU-Boulder were Michael Hermele, Alysia Marino and Tobin Munsat of the department of physics and Arthi Jayaraman of the department of chemical and biological engineering.
There was one other DOE Early Career Award winner from Colorado in 2011 — Zhigang Wu from the Colorado School of Mines, who will be studying quantum mechanical simulations of complex nanostructures for photovoltaic applications.
For more information on the DOE awards go to http://science.energy.gov/news/in-the-news/2011/05-06-11/.
