Professors

Orange Coast College English and technical writing professor Don K. Pierstorff has won the Faculty Member of the Year Award for 1997-98. Pierstorff has been honored by the Society for Technical Communication, an organization of technical writers. In addition to technical writing, he teaches freshman composition and acts as advisor to the Muslim Student Assn. He has served on the Academic Senate and has been co-chairman of the English department.

Three UC Irvine professors have been selected among 100 nationwide to receive $35,000 Sloan Research Fellowships for 1998. Panagiota Daskalopoulos and Ludmil Katzarkov, both of the mathematics department, and Qun-Yong Zhou, a neuroscientist at UCI College of Medicine, won the prestigious awards. The New York-based Alfred P. Sloan Foundation selects 20 scientists in mathematics and 16 in neuroscience each year.

For decades, Orange County has enjoyed a reputation as a world center for medical device manufacturing. So, you'd think the big university here would be known for graduating young crackerjack biomedical engineers and biophysicists to meet industry demand for new ideas. Well, not yet. But UC Irvine figures it's time to change that. Last year, it plucked Nicolaos G. Alexopoulos out of UCLA's electrical engineering department to become UCI's new dean of engineering.

A college professor who says that he was unable to serve on an Orange County jury because parts of the courthouse were not wheelchair accessible filed a lawsuit against the county Monday, contending that his civil rights were violated.

Their large, expressive eyes, whiskered faces and comically oversized arms help make the pileated gibbon a popular pet in Thailand. But when they reach puberty, they often turn on their owners, snapping large, razor-sharp canines and powerfully kicking and swinging their arms as they attack. As a result, thousands of the creatures have been released onto the streets of Bangkok to fend for themselves, or they're chained to the front gate at the downtown zoo, said Lori K.

Elena Zagustin, involved in a decade-long feud over conditions of her Huntington Harbour home, lost another legal round this week when a Superior Court judge dismissed a lawsuit she filed against her neighbors. Zagustin, 61, a professor of civil engineering at Cal State Long Beach, had filed a $7-million lawsuit against 33 of her neighbors.

Elena Zagustin, the central figure in a decade-long neighborhood feud over the condition of her Huntington Harbour home, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to 92 misdemeanor counts of neglecting the property. At her arraignment in Municipal Court in Westminster, Zagustin, acting as her own attorney, also filed motions to dismiss the prosecutor and move the case to Los Angeles County.

Elena Zagustin, the central figure in a decade-long neighborhood feud over the condition of her Huntington Harbour home, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to 92 misdemeanor counts of neglecting the property. At her arraignment in Municipal Court, Zagustin, acting as her own attorney, also filed motions to dismiss the prosecutor and move the case to Los Angeles County.

Keith Woerpel, assistant professor of chemistry at UC Irvine, has been named one of three 1998 national Chemistry Scholars by the Glaxo-Wellcome pharmaceutical company. The award, accompanied by a two-year, $40,000 research grant, is for exceptional, young faculty in the fields of organic, bioorganic, medicinal or structural chemistry.

At the age of 87, Bill Shallenberger still loves to teach. So much so that he does it for free. His one bit of compensation: The adjunct professor of mechanical engineering at Cal State Northridge gets free parking, which usually costs $63 per semester. "The way I look at it, I've got this experience and it would be a waste if I didn't pass on this experience and knowledge to the students," said Shallenberger, who taught senior design on Tuesdays and Thursdays last semester.