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Obituary: Kenneth Cashin, professor emeritus of Chemical Engineering

Kenneth D. Cashin, 91, of Lexington, professor emeritus of Chemical Engineering, died April 6.
 
Born in Lowell, he attended Worchester Polytechnic Institute in 1940, but left to join the U.S Navy Radio and Radar Unit in 1944. He returned to WPI in 1946 to complete his bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
 
He joined the faculty in 1948 as an assistant professor and initiated what became the Department of Chemical Engineering. During a sabbatical year he completed his work for a doctorate at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

From 1968-70, he took a leave of absence to establish the chemical

Pianist Vonsattel debuts at London’s Wigmore Hall

Pianist Gilles Vonsattel, assistant professor of Music, made his debut recital at London’s Wigmore Hall on April 5, performing music by Holliger, Ravel, Honegger and Beethoven.
 
Reviewing the recital on the website Classical Source, Peter Reed wrote, “The Sonatine was remarkable for its poise and elusive lyricism, and Gaspard de la Nuit was hugely impressive.

Berger wins Microsoft award for tool that finds mistakes in spreadsheets

Associate professor Emery Berger of the School of Computer Science has won a Software Engineering Innovation Foundation (SEIF) award, which includes a $25,000 grant, for his work on a system to automatically find errors in spreadsheets.
 
Berger’s CheckCell program, one of only 16 projects selected worldwide for Microsoft’s SEIF award, makes it possible for users of Microsoft Excel to find mistakes in spreadsheet data.
 
Because spreadsheets are widely used in businesses, Berger says, the impact of errors can be dramatic.

Castañeda is featured speaker at Faculty Women of Color in the Academy conference

Mari Castañeda, associate professor of Communication, was a featured speaker at the inaugural Faculty Women of Color in the Academy (FWCA) conference held April 3-5 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
 
She spoke on a panel that discussed "The Economics of Being a Faculty Woman of Color: Being Prepared and Planning Ahead."
 

Byg, DEFA Foundation director speak at Chicago film series

Professor Barton Byg, founding director of the campus’s DEFA Film Library, and Ralf Schenk, director of the DEFA Foundation in Berlin, were featured “In Conversation” on March 7 at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago.
 
The event, “Flashbacks: East German Films on Cold War Screens,” culminated a three-month series of DEFA film screeningshosted by Spertus, the Goethe Institute Chicago and the Gene Siskel Film Center.
 
After his visit to Chicago, Schenk visited UMass Amherst, where he presented a talk on “Spies and Secret Agents in East German Film” on March 12.

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