2007-2008 MLK Visiting Scholars Melissa Blanco Borelli, Music & Theater Arts Brenda Dixon-Gottschild, Women's and Gender Studies Frank Espinosa, Media Arts and Science and Writing Program Eugene "Gus" Newport, Urban Studies and Planning Wilton Virgo, Chemistry Melissa Blanco Borelli (2007-2008) Music & Theater Arts 
Dr. Melissa Blanco Borelli will spend this academic year at MIT in the Department of Music and Theater Arts as an MLK Visiting Scholar. She will also work with the MIT Women's Studies Program.
Dr. Blanco Borelli graduated from Brown University in 1994 with a double major in Music and International Relations. After receiving an M.A. in Communication Management from the University of Southern California in 1997, she attended the University of California, Riverside where she received her Ph.D. in Dance History and Theory in December 2006. She served an Adjunct Professor in UCLA's Department of World Arts and Cultures from April through June of this year. She has also been adjunct faculty in the dance department at Citrus College. Prior to that she was a Foreign Language Instructor in Spanish, French, and Italian at the New Roads School in Santa Monica, California. Her scholarship "endeavors to demonstrate how dance and theories of the body provide new methodologies for inquiries into ... issues of identity SUCH as nation, gender, and racialization". Frank Espinosa (2006-2008) Since 2005, Espinosa has been producing the comic book Rocketo, currently published by Image Comics. Frank Espinosa was nominated for three 2006 Eisner Awards for Best New Series Rocketo, Best Continuing Series Rocketo, and Best Cover Artist. Frank received his BFA in Film and Animation at the School of Visual Arts in New York in 1985. Eugene "Gus" Newport (2006-2008) Gus was the first “Fellow” of the Mabel Louise Riley Foundation, and he served as a consultant to East Bay Funders (a foundation partnership), the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, the Jacobs Family Foundation, Ford and the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Gus is the former Executive Director of the Institute of Community Economics and the former General Manager of radio station KPFA in Berkeley, the oldest listener sponsored radio station in the country. He directed the Community Building Support Center for the Urban Strategies Council. Gus also served as the first Senior Fellow of the William Monroe Trotter Institute, University of Massachusetts at Boston, and as a lecturer in residence at the University of California. In addition Gus served as a member of the faculty at Portland State University to the HUD Senior Managers Seminars and a member of the Yale Community Fellows program faculty. Gus is the former Executive Director of the Partnership for Neighborhood Initiative (PNI) Palm Beach County, FL and the former Executive Director of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI), Boston, MA. He is the former Mayor of Berkeley, CA (1979-1986). During his tenure he served on the advisory board of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and chaired the sub-committees on Education and Employment. Gus has worked in several capacities for federal, state, county and municipal governments, nonprofit agencies and the private sector. His areas of work are neighborhood planning and development and economic development. He has lectured at numerous colleges and universities and served on several national policy boards and United Nation committees. He is a member of the Board of Overseers of the Graduate Program in Community Economic Development at Southern New Hampshire University, a member of the board of the Project Against Violence and the board of the Algebra Project. Gus served as the Vice-President from the U.S. to the World peace Council 1980-1986. Wilton Virgo (2006-2008) |
Dr. Wilton L. Virgo earned his first degree in chemistry in 2000, completing the rigorous science curriculum at Princeton University. As a Princeton undergraduate, he was accepted into the Summer Scholars Institute, was chosen by the Chemistry Department to be a tutor for the general chemistry course, selected for the Leadership Alliance Early Identification Program, and received a certificate for the Chemistry Outreach Program. For his senior thesis research with Professor Kevin Lehmann, he constructed an infrared spectrometer designed for measurement of trace gases and detection of peptic ulcers. As a Professional Associate at Brookhaven National Laboratory, working with Dr. Trevor Sears, Dr. Virgo built a tunable diode laser spectrometer for production and analysis of transient molecules important in combustion reactions. He then spent an exciting four years at Arizona State University in Professor Timothy Steimle’s lab. His graduate research at ASU involved investigating the response of diatomic chemical intermediates to electric and magnetic fields. His collaboration with Professor John Brown of Oxford University on the theory of molecules in external fields was in the best tradition of scientific teamwork. At ASU, Dr. Virgo was the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including being a More Graduate Education at Mountain States Alliance Scholar from 2002-2005, the Rao Prize for the most outstanding student talk at the 2002 Ohio State University International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy, the 2003 ASU Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Outstanding Graduate Research Assistant Award and the 2005 Eastman Kodak - Dr. Theophilus Sorrell Graduate Fellowship Award. His research at ASU resulted in ten publications, two as first author, leading to the doctorate in chemistry. Dr. Virgo arrived at MIT in January 2006 as a Postdoctoral Associate in Professor Robert Field's group in the Chemistry Department. Later, he was honored to become a Postdoctoral Fellow and MLK Scholar. Dr. Virgo has been leading a team of two graduate students and two undergraduate researchers in the Field group. Dr. Virgo’s research at MIT has established a new class of molecular beam spectroscopy. The goal of his research is to characterize well-known unsaturated small organic molecules in profoundly distorted and highly excited forms using sophisticated laser techniques and detection on metal surfaces. The results of Dr. Virgo’s research with the Field group have been published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry.
