Posted: 18 Feb 2010 11:03 AM PST

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The local Indian American community of about 1,000 families in Huntsville, Ala., is in a state of shock over the murder of 52-year-old University of Alabama biology department chairman Gopi Podila, one of six victims of an apparently disgruntled professor's shooting spree Feb. 12 on campus.

Three university professors were shot and killed and another three people were wounded – two of them still in critical condition at press deadline – when Professor Amy Bishop, 42, apparently upset about a denial of tenure, opened fire at about 4 p.m. with a 9mm handgun at a biology department meeting at the Shelby Center, before being pushed outside the room.

The Harvard-educated Ph.D., a wife and mother of four, was later arrested by police and charged with the shootings.

Podila's two daughters, Bindu, a junior in high school; and Anela, an eighth grader, are helping to console their mother, Vani, a researcher at CFD Research Corp. in Huntsville.

Family members are arriving from Canada and the U.S. and Podila's brother is coming from India to attend the funeral, which is scheduled Feb. 19 at Berry Hills Funeral Home in Huntsville.

Podila had been teaching at the University of Alabama at Huntsville for 10 years. He came from Michigan Technological University in 2000 to accept the post of biology department chair. He was a graduate of Acharya Nagarjuna University in Andhra Pradesh.

"Dr. Gopi Podila was one of the best professors I've ever come across in my life," Heggere Raganath, chairman of the computer science department at UAH, told India-West Feb. 15. "Highly accomplished and a great teacher, he was loved by his students and it's just a great loss to the society."

"Gopi and I were career scientists, so we used to meet at least once a month," said a devastated Raganath, adding that he and Podila are among several Indian American professors at the university.

Raganath said that he doesn't believe that the shooting was racially motivated. "One of the professors just went over the edge. The university is still a wonderful place to work. And one of the safest campuses in the country," he said.

UAH provost Dr. Lewis Radonovich told the Huntsville Times that Podila was a "highly principled, fine human being who tried very hard to support his young faculty" and who helped start the biology doctoral program at UAH.

Mital Modi, president of the Huntsville Indian Association, and a former student government president when she attended UAH, told India-West that, due to the criminal investigation, the bodies of the murdered victims have not been released to their families, who are not commenting publicly while funeral arrangements are pending.

"I'm pretty close to their daughters. I've met him (Podila) several times. He was such a very friendly guy, very active in the community, and he pretty much loved helping out organizational activities," said Modi, who has lived in Huntsville for 12 years.

Like many Indian American science and engineering students, she remained in Huntsville after graduation because NASA, Lockheed-Martin, Boeing and the U.S. Department of Defense have facilities in the area.

"They (Bindu and Anela) are just great kids. Both of them help out with the decorations at community events and they usually do Bollywood dance sequences in the cultural parts of our festivals," Modi said.

Huntsville pediatrician Dr. Rao Thotakura, a member along with Podila in the Telugu Association, told India-West that Podila "was a great person, a very humorous man and very helpful to students and friends. He had an excellent name in his department."

Thotakura added, "We did the Festival of India in August and his wife was chair for the decorations committee. He helped out with the location and they both worked for four months setting up the civic center for our exhibits."

The Podila family was involved in the local temple, the Hindu Cultural Center of North Alabama, and Podila annually performed in skits for the Telugu Association.

"The whole community already misses him. He went to work in the morning and when he didn't respond to Vani's cell call she was hoping he was okay," Thotakura said.

"She waited four hours at the hospital and when she found out he was among the dead, she was devastated. She told us that even without asking for anything he provided for her all her life. It will be difficult to fill in his shoes."

Podila's areas of research included bio-energy, plant-microbe interactions, plant genetics and biotechnology. Podila told one reporter in 2008 that his department was researching fungi and microbes that could help break down the cellulose from grass and trees to create the sugar necessary to produce alcohol for biofuel.

The university remained closed for one week and all athletic events were canceled. Among those killed with Podila were biology department faculty members Maria Ragland Davis and Adriel Johnson. Faculty member Luis Cruz-Vera was wounded and released, while microbiology Professor Joseph Leahy and administrator Stephanie Monticciolo remain in critical condition.

According to media reports, Bishop, who with her husband had designed an automated system for producing cell cultures, had successfully appealed her tenure denial. But the decision was overruled by university officials. She had continued to fight for tenure and had hired an attorney, but she could remain at the university only through the end of the current academic year.

Controversy has mounted in the shootings fueled by Bishop's past involvement in a 1986 "accidental" shooting death of her brother in Braintree, Mass., when she was 19. Documents on the case are now missing and some have criticized the scope of the investigation. She was never charged in the case.

She and her husband were also questioned in an attempted mail bombing of a Harvard colleague, along with other people who knew the intended victim.

Over the weekend several news sources and blogs reported police had found a draft on Bishop's computer about a female scientist who had killed her brother and was trying to make amends by becoming a great scientist.

Bishop's husband said in a recent interview his wife had visited a shooting range and wanted to keep a gun, which they disagreed about. Reports of Bishop's classroom abilities are mixed from students and faculty. Some claim she was friendly and accommodating. Others criticized her teaching ability and said she failed to adequately explain concepts to students.

Thotakura said he had been "unofficially" told by someone that the tragedy occurred during a faculty meeting and Bishop was sitting next to Podila.

"The meeting was about the next scheduled semester, and I think for Bishop this was her last semester because she was not being tenured, and I was told, as the discussion was going on, she probably was holding a lot of grudge on her part that she did not get her tenure, so she came prepared…and shot him," Thotakura told India-West.

"They were stunned. They were all looking at their papers. She shot six people and she was reloading the revolver and I guess a couple of professors pushed her out of the room, otherwise she would have shot everybody in the room."

UAH biology faculty describes scene in meeting, tries to come to grips ... - Everything Alabama Blog

Posted: 16 Feb 2010 10:36 AM PST

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By Steve Doyle

February 16, 2010, 7:22AM

Dave Dieter / The Huntsville TimesStudents wrote words of encourgement in chalk on UAH's sidewalks over the weekend.

HUNTSVILLE, AL -- One of the survivors of Friday's deadly shooting said he is confident the University of Alabama in Huntsville's decimated biology faculty will get past the tragedy and get on with the business of educating students.

But it's going to take time, Dr. Joseph Ng said Monday.

"It's quite devastating," said Ng, who was inside the third-floor conference room at UAH's Shelby Center when three of his colleagues were shot and killed with a 9 mm handgun. Police arrested Dr. Amy Bishop, another member of the UAH biology faculty who had failed to earn tenure several months ago.

"One day, you have all these great people working with you," Ng said. "Next day, they're gone."

Ng sent an e-mail to a friend in California on Sunday describing the chaotic scene inside the conference room. According to his e-mail, Bishop stood up about 30 minutes into the meeting and pulled out a gun.

"She started with the one closest to her and went down the row shooting her targets in the head," Ng wrote. "Six people sitting in the rows perpendicular were all shot fatally or seriously wounded. The remaining 5 including myself were on the other side of the table (and) immediately dropped to the floor.

"During a reload, the shooter was rushed, and we pushed her out the hall way and closed the door. Thereafter we barricaded the door and called 911."

Ng told the Associated Press the charge was led by Debra Moriarity, a professor of biochemistry, after Bishop aimed the gun at her and attempted to fire but it didn't shoot. He said Moriarity pushed her way to Bishop, urged her to stop, and then helped force her out the door.

"Moriarity was probably the one that saved our lives. She was the one that initiated the rush," he told the AP. "It took a lot of guts to just go up to her."

Ng said the survivors worried she would shoot her way through the door, and frantically worked up backup plan in case she burst through. But she never did.

"There was a time when I didn't think I'd come out of the room alive," he said. "I don't think any of us thought we'd come out alive."

Ng said he never intended his e-mail to be made public. But it wound up on the Orange County Register's Web site on Monday, when Ng's friend forwarded it to the California newspaper without asking his permission.

He declined Monday to talk about his thoughts about Bishop.

"We're key witnesses," Ng said. "I don't want to say anything that might compromise the investigation or the whole process that's to come."

Dr. Robert Lawton, another professor who survived the shooting, also declined to talk about the incident when reached at home Monday.

"I just don't want to go into what happened in that room," Lawton said. "Why would you want to describe a car wreck?"

Ng, an associate professor who coordinates UAH's biotechnology doctorate program, said the shooting happened during an otherwise "mundane" faculty meeting about budgets and schedules.

UAH's 13 full-time faculty members are a tight bunch, Ng said, that often has dinner together in each others' homes. He said it's more like a family than the "all business" biology departments where he has worked in the past.

"There's Southern hospitality here, I've got to admit," said Ng, who grew up in Los Angeles.

In the aftermath of the deadliest shooting episode on an Alabama college campus, Ng said the uninjured members of the biology faculty are trying to be strong for the families that are preparing to bury their loved ones. The first funeral, for Dr. Adriel Johnson, is Friday.

Department assistant Stephanie Monticciolo, who suffered a gunshot wound to the face, is listed in serious condition in Huntsville Hospital's surgical intensive care unit. Microbiology professor Dr. Joseph Leahy remains in critical condition in the neuro ICU.

"Right now," Ng said, "we're just trying to find out how we can work best with the families and the ones still in the hospital."

When classes at UAH resume Monday, Ng said he expects biology professors to come from as far as Birmingham and Tuscaloosa to help out. HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology may also play a role in getting the department back on its feet, he said.

Ng, who came to the Rocket City 11 years ago, said he hopes the deadly school shootings on back-to-back Fridays haven't shaken people's confidence in Huntsville. There's a reason this area scores high in just about every national survey of the best places to live, he said.

The UAH shooting "is an outlier," Ng said. "It has nothing to do with the degradation of society here in Huntsville.

"It was just an event that was completely unpredictable."

Read all our coverage of the UAH shooting.

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University shooter fired methodically, without warning: Survivor - Metronews.ca

Posted: 17 Feb 2010 01:24 AM PST

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BELLEVILLE, Ont. - Col. Russell Williams, once a well-respected commander in the Canadian air force, appeared in court via video to face first-degree murder charges Thursday looking a shadow of his former self.

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Eight collared moose recaptured in NE Minn. - La Crosse Tribune

Posted: 16 Feb 2010 09:35 PM PST

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The Associated Press | Posted: Tuesday, February 16, 2010 11:56 pm | Loading…

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DULUTH, Minn. - Some moose that had been recently collared had to be recaptured on the Grand Portage Indian Reservation in northeastern Minnesota because their satellite collars had malfunctioned.

Helicopter crews recaptured the eight moose last week. The moose were among nine that had been collared 11 days earlier.

The collars were not transmitting data properly, so biologists on the ground were not receiving the information.

Biology director Seth Moore of the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa said scientists involved in the project had been rushed in programming the collars before the first capture.

Moore said the recapture effort was "beautifully executed."

Posted in Mn on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 11:56 pm

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Biology

Friday, February 19, 2010

“Murder of Alabama Biology Dept. Chairman Shocks Community - Indiawest.com” plus 3 more

“Murder of Alabama Biology Dept. Chairman Shocks Community - Indiawest.com” plus 3 more

By Steve Doyle

February 16, 2010, 7:22AM

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