Professor Emeritus Yin Yeh and Associate Professors Mark Mascal and Henry Spiller are going overseas in the 2012-13 academic year as Fulbright scholars.

Mascal, of the Department of Chemistry, is one of about 40 people selected for the Distinguished Chairs Program, considered among the most prestigious appointments in the U.S. State Department's Fulbright Scholar Program.

He will spend the entire academic year as the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Alternative Energy Technology at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden.

Mascal, whose research specialty is in biofuels, said he will teach classes on alternative energy from a research perspective and also expects to collaborate on research projects.

Chalmers, founded in 1829 and known for its energy research and engineering, is in Gothenburg, Sweden's second-largest city, home of the car manufacturer Volvo.

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Spiller, an ethnomusicologist, received a Fulbright award for more research in Indonesia, this time focusing on bamboo instruments. He plans to spend five months (starting around April) in and around Bandung, the capital city of the province of West Java and the cultural capital of Sundanese culture.

His previous research has focused on Sundanese dance and the music of gamelan — bronze percussion orchestras, like the ensemble he leads at UC Davis.

His inquiry into instruments made from bamboo “represents a new direction for me, albeit in a familiar place.”

Bamboo instruments appear in many social contexts in West Java: rural agricultural rituals, music education programs in schools and modern popular music.

Spiller noted bamboo’s prominence in Sundanese landscapes and culture, and said he will explore how this prominence relates to the enduring role of bamboo musical instruments in creating a sense of Sundanese identity within multicultural Indonesia.

He said he hopes to collaborate with Sundanese scholars at the Bandung branch of Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia who are doing similar work.

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Yeh, chair emeritus of the Department of Applied Science, will spend six months at Chang Gung University in Taiwan, starting in October.

He will be working with Professor Chien Chou in Taiwan and Atul Parikh, professor of chemical engineering and materials science at UC Davis, to initiate new studies on Alzheimer's disease.

Yeh said they hope to use optical methods to study how the amyloid protein interacts with cell membranes and damages nerve cells.

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