University of Arkansas

Research Frontiers

Fall 2009

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I was fortunate over the holidays to travel to India to meet with and address business, government, and higher education leaders.  It provided an opportunity for me to see personally the factors at work in the acclaimed best-selling book, "The World Is Flat," by Thomas Friedman.

Friedman writes that with the growing application of technology and the redoubled commitment to education by emerging powers like China and India, our world is growing more connected and more competitive than ever before. University of Arkansas graduates will be applying for many of the same jobs that graduates of the hundreds of universities in India will.  In order to compete with the best students from around the world, UA graduates must be prepared to travel internationally, act locally, and think globally.

As this issue of Research Frontiers illustrates, UA students have at least one competitive advantage. They are learning from world-class professors and researchers who are committed not only to thinking globally, but also to acting with the benefit of Arkansas and the world in mind.

In a meeting with India's president, Dr. Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen (APJ) Abdul Kalam, he discussed the challenges facing his country: illiteracy, the role of women, the caste system and infrastructure needs. Regarding the latter, he cited roads and airports, utilities, medical care, and water quality and distribution. (To gain further insight regarding his research vision, visit his web site at http://presidentofindia.nic.in/.)

At an international conference he keynoted, Dr. Kalam challenged the engineers and scientists present to perform research on issues of global significance, e.g., forecasting and designing for massive hurricanes and tsunamis; energy conservation and alternative forms of energy; predicting and designing for earthquakes; and managing the world's water supply.

Coincidentally, this issue of Research Frontiers is about water. It is simply remarkable to read of the ground-breaking work UA researchers are doing in this field not only in Arkansas and the surrounding regions but in locations around the globe. Among the stories you'll find inside:

• The unique collaboration between Community Design Center Director Stephen Luoni and Marty Matlock, associate professor of biological and agricultural engineering, and their colleagues. Their work is improving the health of local streams and leading to the development of Arkansas' first "green" neighborhood.
• The development of the Savoy Experimental Watershed. Savoy is a "premier water quality research collaborative" - a 3,000-acre outdoor laboratory consisting of meadows, forests, and rivers, which enables multidisciplinary teams of researchers to study groundwater behavior.
• The construction of a water filtration system at a church in Zaragoza, a small village in Colombia. Civil engineering associate professor Thomas Soerens is raising money to provide more filtration systems to Zaragoza and the surrounding areas.

Stories like these renew my pride in the University of Arkansas, its students, faculty and staff. Our researchers make a profound, positive difference in our world and they teach our students to do the same. Their work does more than make the University of Arkansas a nationally competitive, student-centered research university - their work serves Arkansas and the world.

Sincerely,

John A. White
Chancellor

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