A Northridge resident, Shubin is set to leave for Kigali, Rwanda in January 2007 to teach and develop mathematic and science curriculum at the Kigali Institute of Science, Technology and Management (KIST).

“Both personally and professionally, it was a good time for me to do something different,” said Shubin, who hopes to fulfill the program’s principal purpose of increasing mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other participating Fulbright countries through international educational exchange.

Shubin became interested in Rwanda while browsing the Internet and coming across a message posted by University of Georgia math professor, Dino Lorenzini, who had visited the country in 1995. Lorenzini wrote that the University of Rwanda’s mathematic faculty had been decimated in the aftermath of the 1990s genocide tragedies. Two graduate students were left to teach the subject on their own. Rwanda had slowly begun to rebuild, but its continuing need for help was a challenge that Shubin could not ignore.

Selected this spring as a Fulbright scholar, Shubin will work in Kigali for six months in close association with Nelson Lugara, a KIST professor of engineering. She will teach two math classes and conduct lectures on her creation of NASA/PAIR, a CSUN project designed to strengthen students’ research, computer and analytic skills in order to understand NASA data sets.

“I hope that I will come back [to CSUN] having accomplished all that I have set out to do,” Shubin said. “It would be great to have an exchange with KIST, and maybe be collaborators on a National Science Foundation Global Scientist Award. I’d also like to connect with the Engineers Without Borders group, which has several interesting projects in Rwanda. I’m certainly excited about the whole experience.”

Shubin will be back at CSUN in the fall of 2007.

The Fulbright Program was introduced to Congress in 1945 by Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas. Approved by Congress and signed into law by President Truman in 1946, the program awards grants to U.S. citizens and nationals of other countries for a variety of educational activities, primarily university lecturing, advanced research, graduate study and teaching in elementary and secondary schools. Since the program’s inception, more than 250,000 participants have been chosen for their leadership potential.

The Fulbright program is sponsored by the United States Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. The primary source of funding for the program is through an annual appropriation made by the United States Congress to the Department of State.

For more information regarding the Fulbright Program, visit its Web site at www.fulbrightonline.org.