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Dale Hatfield, director of the Interdisciplinary Telecommunications Program at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has been appointed a member of the Technological Advisory Council to the Federal Communications Commission. The federal advisory committee, which is comprised of 33 leading technologists, helps provide technological insights that the FCC needs to stay abreast of innovations in communications and related industries.

Fiske Planetarium at the University of Colorado at Boulder will explore the dynamics of the solar system and the way it was shaped by millions of collisions in "Cosmic Collisions and Our Solar System," on Friday, June 29, at 8 p.m. at the planetarium. The pre-recorded show takes viewers back in time to the beginning of the solar system when the devastating impact of asteroids, comets and millions of chunks of floating debris reworked the surfaces of the planets.

The Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder has been named a "Program of Excellence" by the Colorado Commission on Higher Education and awarded $1.37 million in funding over the next five years.

NEWS TIP SHEET Famed Colorado High School Inventor to Present Research at CU-Boulder June 14 Grand Junction, Colo., teenager Ryan Patterson, who made national news this spring for inventing a glove that translates American Sign Language into written words on a computer screen, will talk about his research at CU-Boulder June 14.

Students from the University of Colorado at Boulder, Arizona State University and New Mexico State University are teaming up in a unique space project to design, build and fly three identical satellites in formation.

For centuries people have attempted to prove the existence of planets circling distant stars. On Friday, June 22, at 8 p.m. the Fiske Planetarium at the University of Colorado at Boulder will explore the topic. "Searching for Distant Worlds," a pre-recorded program, will examine recent discoveries of unknown planets around far away stars, and explain why it is so difficult to find these distant objects. Sommers-Bausch Observatory will be open for telescope viewing immediately following the show at Fiske.

Twenty-one undergraduate students in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder have received the prestigious Jacob Van Ek Award for outstanding academic achievement and contributions to the university and Boulder communities. The award includes a $400 prize. The recipients were honored May 10 along with faculty members they named as mentors. The award was established in 1973 to honor Jacob Van Ek, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at CU-Boulder from 1929 to 1959. Van Ek died in 1994 at the age of 97.

Â鶹ÊÓƵ 50 underrepresented students primarily from Montbello High School in Denver and Hinkley High School in Aurora will attend a four-day College Summit program at the University of Colorado at Boulder June 21-24 to help them apply for college admission during the next school year. The program is aimed at helping students who might not otherwise have the confidence to apply, even though they have the interest and the ability to attend and succeed in college. Students in the program are usually first-generation college students from low-income families.

University of Colorado at Boulder Associate Professor Fred Anderson recently received two prestigious awards for his book "Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766." In early May Anderson received both the 2001 Francis Parkman Prize of the Society of American Historians and the Mark Lynton History Prize, which is part of the Lukas Prize Project established in 1998 to honor the best in American nonfiction writing.

The University of Colorado at Boulder received a large boost from NASA last week, including $9.5 million to design and build an instrument for a mission to Mercury and $450,000 to refine a proposal to head up an unmanned Pluto mission. Daniel Baker, director of CU's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, was named a science team member for NASA's MESSENGER mission to Mercury, slated for launch in March 2004. Expected to arrive at Mercury in 2009, the $256 million Messenger mission was given the green light by NASA on June 7 to fly.