October faculty and staff features

Sonali Gulati, assistant professor of filmmaking, School of the Arts
Gulati’s films have been selected for a number of screenings this fall. Her latest film, “24 Frames per Day,” was shown at the Asian Pacific American Film Festival in Washington, D.C., in September, and her film “Nalini by Day, Nancy by Night,” was accepted to appear the same month at the National Museum of Women in the Arts’ Festival of Film & Media Arts. Upcoming screenings include: “Sum Total,” at the Tampa International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival on Oct. 13; “Barefeet” at the Paris Lesbian Film Festival on Oct. 30; “Sum Total” at the DIVERSA Festival de Cine Gay Lesbico Trans de Argentina in October; and “Where is there room?” at the Virginia Film Festival in Charlottesville on Nov. 2.

Nancy Langston, R.N., Ph.D., VCU School of Nursing
Langston, dean of the VCU School of Nursing, recently was recognized at the National League for Nursing education summit in Phoenix for her visionary leadership in founding the NLN Foundation for Nursing Education. She first began this activity in 2002, served as the foundation's first president, and has just completed her term on the foundation's board of directors. The NLN Foundation has funded efforts to transform nursing education, including research grants, dissertation support and fellowships for minority nurse educators.

Vladimir Sidorov, Ph.D., Department of Chemistry
Sidorov, a professor of organic chemistry, published a research paper in the September issue of Bioconjugate Chemistry, a journal of the American Chemical Society. Sidorov and his team have developed a noninvasive method for monitoring the activity of lipid-flipping enzymes.

According to Sidorov, methods currently available for monitoring lipids, or fatty materials, have some drawbacks, however, the new laboratory method overcomes those problems. Additionally, the new method allows researchers to monitor a key biochemical process known as a "lipid flip" in real time, as the process unfolds. Understanding the movement of lipids in and out of cells may help researchers improve gene therapy and develop new medications that may prevent some of the complications associated with Alzheimer’s disease. This work was funded by VCU, the National Science Foundation and the Jeffress Memorial Trust. The article is co-authored by Christine A. Winschel, Vivek Kaushik, Galya Abdrakhmanova and Sheena M. Aris.

Karen Videtic, chair, Department of Fashion Design and Merchandising, School of the Arts
Videtic served as a juror for the Vietnam Grand Prix Collection 2007 on Sept. 23 at Quan Hall in Hanoi. Videtic was on a panel of domestic and foreign fashion professionals that included Francine Pairon (France), Junko Koshino (Japan), Celia Loe (Singapore), Ji Wenbo (China) and Minh Hanh (Vietnam). The panel selected Nguyen Tron Hoang as the grand prize winner for best young designer of the year. The fashion contest is the largest of its kind in Vietnam with more than 1,100 candidates. The top 25 collections appear before the international jury.