Best-selling author and religion scholar Reza Aslan will join Drexel University on Wednesday, May 7, as the fourth lecturer in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Distinguished Lecture Series. Previous lecturers in the series include neuroscientist David Eagleman, acclaimed author Sir Salman Rushdie and media maven Arianna Huffington.

College of Computing and Informatics Assistant Professor Michael Khoo, PhD, along with co-investigator Gary Rosenberg, PhD, Pilsbry Chair and Curator of Malacology at the Academy of Natural Sciences, was awarded a $13,000 grant from the Social Science Research fund (SSRF) for the project “From ‘Bug Data’ to Big Data: Communities of Practice, Networks of Practice, and Information Systems at the Academy of Natural Sciences.”

During World War II, more than a million African Americans fought in a segregated and discriminatory U.S. military. A landmark new documentary, “Choc'late Soldiers from the USA,” produced by Drexel University writing professor Gregory Cooke, tells the compelling, previously untold story of 140,000 of these African American men and women who were stationed in Great Britain, and how they crossed a racial divide to forge an unexpected bond.

The film will make its Philadelphia debut at Drexel on Tuesday, April 8 at 6:30 p.m. in the Mitchell Auditorium of the Bossone Research Center (3120 Market St.). A question-and-answer session and reception will follow the screening from 8 – 9 p.m.