News

10/09 - David Goldhamer has been appointed the Director of the Center for Regenerative Biology (CRB).
10/25/09 - Gregory Marusov (Lynes lab) presented the invited student lecture ("Multiplexed microarray assessments of cellular and molecular toxicity biomarkers") at the Northeast Society of Toxicology meeting. Also, Douglas Donaldson (Lynes lab) won honorable mention for his poster entitled "Immunomodulation Mediated by the Stress Response Protein Metallothionein".
10/23/09 - Andrew Collins in the Nyholm lab has won the best student poster award at the American Society for Microbiology 44th Annual Regional I Meeting.
9/30/09 - Linda Strausbaugh has hit the news by showing that a skull fragment purported to belong to Hitler is actually from a female [more]
9/09 - Jennifer VanOudenhove, MCB ’09 is featured on the CLAS website for receiving the Todd Schuster Undergraduate Research Award. [more]
9/09 - New Grant NIH-NIAID - "Malaria Vaccine Based on Self-Assembling Polypeptide Nanoparticles (SAPN)" to Peter Burkhard
9/09 - Three new grants awarded via ARRA: Jim Cole "Mechanism for activation of the antiviral kinase PKR"; Michael O'Neill "Genomic conflict and placentation in Poeciliid fishes", and Thane Papke "Towards comprehending prokaryotic species"
9/09 - Catalina Arango, a post-doc in the Gage lab will be accepting an Assistant Professor position in the Biology Department at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia.
6-09 - New Grant - Thane Papke received a new NSF Grant entitled "Toward Comprehending Prokaryotic Species Using Halorubrum sp. as a Model" from the Systematic Biology and Biodiversity Inventories Program.
6-09 - New Grant - Nathan Alder received a new National Scientist Development Grant from the American Heart Association entitled ""Fluorescence-Based Study of the Mitochondrial ADP/ATP Carrier: a Key Cellular Component in Cardiac Disease"
6/11-6/13 - “Next Generation Genome Analysis in Non-Model Organisms” hosted at UConn. Register here.
5/09 - Graduate Fellowships Announced - Andrew Collins, A. H. and M. J. Romano Fellowship; Derek Bickhart, John Ngunjiri, Michael Wosczyna, Pfizer Summer Fellowship; Scott Corley and Margaret Suhanovsky, J. Lucas-Lenard Fellowship; Rory Coleman, Scott Corley, Igor Gurevich, Caroline Jakuba, E. A. Khairallah Fund; Yang-Hui Yeh, Richard Crain Memmorial; Gino Intrieri, Arthur Chovnick Fellowship; Laura Hall, Claire Berg Fellowship.
Congratulations to Andrew Mehta who was awarded an undergraduate summer fellowship by the Parkinson's Disease Foundation for work on "Effects of Membrane Mimetics on the Structure of the Parkinson's Disease Protein alpha-Synuclein" with the Alexandrescu lab.
5/9/09 - PhD Graduates 08/09 - Dominic Ambrosi (Rasmussen), Ben Carone (M. O'Neill), Dawn Carone (R. O'Neill), Tom Edrington (Yeagle), Greg Fournier (Gogarten), Preston Garcia (Gage), Juliana Mastronunzio (Benson), Adam Silver (Graf), Colleen Spurling (Giardina), Jessica Starkey (Goldhamer), Josh Suhl (Strausbaugh). Congratulations to all!
5/5/09 - Undergraduate awards announced Margaret F. Ertman Award, Krishna Patel (Lynes lab); Clair Berg Award, Kaitlin Vaughan (Graf Lab); Outstanding Senior in MCB Award, Kathryn Grive (Knecht lab); Excellence in Applied Genetics and Technology Award, Tamara Roman (Strausbaugh lab). Congratulations one and all!
4/15/09 - Professor Ken Noll has been selected to be an ASM Lecturer for the American Society for Microbiology. [more]
4/17/09 - Congratulations to Professor Linda Strausbaugh who has received the Alumni Association Faculty Excellence in Teaching Award for 09/10.
4/7/09 - Two MCB Students are among 278 students nationwide who have received Goldwater Scholarship recognition. Alex Meeske from Adam Zweifach's lab received an award and Rory Coleman from David Goldhamer's lab received honorable mention. [more]
Nature Reviews in Microbiology 7, p258-259 discusses Lapierre and Gogarten's analysis of the bacterial pan-genome (the original article was published in TIGs)
3/26/09 - A PNAS article by Olga Zhaxybayeva, Kristen S. Swithers, Pascal Lapierre, Gregory P. Fournier, Derek M. Bickhart, Robert T. DeBoy, Karen E. Nelson, Camilla L. Nesbø, W. Ford Doolittle, J. Peter Gogarten, and Kenneth M. Noll is featured on the CLAS website and in the UConn Advance. [more]
3/19/09 J. Peter Gogarten has been awarded a Fulbright program fellowship for lecture and research on Horizontal Gene Transfer at Tel Aviv University in the Fall of 2009.
3/19/09 J. Peter Gogarten has been elected member of the Connecticut Academy of Science & Engineering.
3/9/09 - Two PSM students, Kali Bogaard (M.S. Applied Genomics, 2008) and Heather Nelson (M.S. Applied Genomics, 2004) have been featured in the Winter 2009 issue of Association for Women in Science magazine. [more]
2.9.09 Vicki Robinson has been awarded an NSF CAREER AWARD entitled "The Influence of ppGpp on the Cellular Actions of BipA". [more]
2/3 - Gregory Marusov (Lynes Laboratory) has won the first place student travel award for his poster entitled "Metallothionein expression affects the functional immune response of murine macrophages" from the Northeast Chapter of the Society of Toxicology.
1/16/09 - Emeritus Professor Judy Kelly has been elected Vice-president of the American Crystallographic Association [more]
1/12 - David Goldhamer has been appointed Associate Director of the University's Stem Cell Institute.
12/08 - Congratulations to Debra Kendall who has been elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) [more].
12/10/08 - New Grant, U.S. Israel Binational Science Foundation, to Thane Papke entitled "Mechanisms of gene exchange in halophilic Archaea.
12/3/08 - New Grant, NIH/NCI, to Charlie Giardina entitled "Targeting p53 for colon cancer treatment and prevention."
11/28 Andrei Alexandrescu has been inducted into society with the prestigious LFHCfS of follicular abundance, an exclusively non-alopecia areata fraternity of scientists [More].
11/17 - Spencer Nyholm has had his article on the squid-Vibrio symbiosis in Environmental Microbiology featured in the Dec. issue of Nature Reviews
11/08 - New Grant from Pfizer - David Benson and Michael Lynes received a new grant entitled "New technologies for extracting, amplifying and detecting low numbers of bacteria"
11/08 - Three MCB faculty members received UCHC/Storrs grants from the UCIG competition: Charlie Giardina, Rachel O'Neill and Craig Nelson. [more]
10/08 - Gregory Marusov, Ph.D. student in Cell Biology, was awarded third place for his poster "Metallothionein expression affects the functional immune response of murine macrophages" at the Northeast Society of Toxicology meeting.
Former MCB genetics graduate student Dr. Craig O'Conner is quoted in the Oct. 27Inside Higher Ed Newsarticle on minority PhDs. [more]
MCB undergrad Jennifer VanOudenhove (Cole lab) has been selected as a finalist in a research competition in Biophysics at UT Southwestern Medical Center; she travels to UT to present her poster on small angle scattering analysis of PKR conformation.
9/08 - New DPH-CT Innovations grant Dr. Charles Giardina "Targeting lineage committed stem cells to damaged intestinal mucosa"
9/19/08 New NSF-AToL grant awarded to J. Peter Gogarten (CoPIs: Ken Noll. Thane Papke, Jinling Huang and Ying Xu) to study Horizontal gene transfer and among phyla relationships
An article by Tom Edrington, Mike Bennett and Arlene Albert (see below) was selected as a featured article by Faculty of 1000 - Biology. [more info]
8/08 - New NASA Grant awarded to Dr. Ken Noll "Genome-based investigation into the nature of the common ancestor of the Thermotogales" [more information]
7/08 New NSF-BIO grant awarded - Rachel O'Neill- “The Impact of Retroelement Expression on Centromeres in Marsupials.”[more info]
08/08 - Joerg Graf in the news - Professor Graf was featured in the New Haven register article on students trained in his lab via the Mentor Connection. [more info].
6/08 New DOE-BER grant - Kenneth Noll & RM Kelly at NCSU & P Blum at U. Neb. Lincoln- "Biohydrogenogenesis in the Thermotogales"
6/08 New NSF-MRI grant awarded - Linda Strausbaugh & Rachel O'Neill- “MRI: Acquisition of a Genome Sequencer System for Research and Education.”
6/08 - Graduate Student FellowshipsKristen Swithers and Charito Romeo have received summer fellowships from the Fund for Innovative Science Education to serve as graduate student mentors for undergraduate students.
06/08 - Hou in the news - Jie Hou from Carol Teschke's lab was featured in a UConn Advance describing his path from China to UConn to the Air Force. Read about it HERE.
5/08 - Graduate Student Awards Announced - Claire M. Berg Graduate Fellowship in Genetics - Elizabeth Mlynarski; Dr. Arthur Chovnick Graduate Fellowship in Genetics - Adam Silver; Richard C. Crain, Jr. Memorial Fellowship - Robyn Croke; Pfizer Summer Fellowship in Molecular and Cell Biology - Juliana Mastronunzio and Adam Silver; Jean Lucas-Lenard Special Summer Fellowship in Biochemistry - Renee Gilberti
5/08 - Undergraduate fellowship awarded - Todd M. Schuster Award in Molecular and Cell Biology was awarded to Jennifer VanOudenhove
5/08 Hou in the news - Jie Hou from Carol Teschke's lab was featured in a Hartford Courant article describing his unusual path to UConn. Read about it HERE.
4/08 - Interview on WILI - Ken Noll held forth concerning Alternate Sources of Energy to the local radio audience.
4/08 - Teaching Award - Juliet Lee honored for receiving the Teachers for a New Era Fellowship.
4/08 33 MCB students join Phi Beta Kappa - Epsilon Heather Dancer, Cailin Deal, Vinita Dora, Heather Dowling, Linda Drozdowicz, Kirsten Frostad, Rickinder Grewal, Daniel Kim, Pratistha Koirala, Jacquelin Kubinski, Rebecca LaFleur, Allison Lemkin, James Mangan, Alexander Meeske, Kelly Miller, Catherine O'Neill, Aniello Picone, Gregory Pivarnik, Chad Sagnella, Christopher Soares, Rinku Sureja, Long Hoang Tu, Caitlin Alex, Julia Auer, John Eicher, Seth Hosmer, Amy Jancewicz, Rinu Joseph, Aaron Lee, Michael Levinson, Paula Lucuara, Kellyn Misset, Holly Vinal
4/08 New NASA grant - Kenneth Noll & Peter Gogarten- "Genome-based investigations into the nature of he common ancestor of the Thermotogales"
4/08 New DOE grant - Wolf Dieter Reiter "Genetic Analysis of Nucleotide Sugar Interconversions in Arabidopsis" - 3 yrs.
4/08 - Goldwater Scholar Honorable Mention - Sonali Shah, a junior with a double major in MCB and Nutrition was named Honorable Mention in the Barry Goldwater scholarship competition.
4/08 - Student fellowship award - Dawn Carone, a Ph.D. student in Rachel O'Neill's lab, was awarded an NSF East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute in Australia fellowship for the summer of 2008 - the only one in molecular biology this year.
3/08 New NIH-GM grant Redesign of structural regions of alkaline phosphatase. D. A. Kendall
3/08 - 2008 Summer Undergraduate Research Fund (SURF) Awards - Six awards were made to MCB students Long Tu (Teschke), Kaitlin Vaughan (Graf), Harris Sultan (Zweifach), Steven Treaster (Tian), Hareen Makanji (Robinson), and Pratistha Koirala (Goldhamer)!. Congratulations to the students and their advisors for receiving these highly competitive awards. [MORE INFORMATION].
9/07 New NIH/NIDA grant Determinants of the Cannabinoid Receptor Life Cycle. D. A. Kendall
2/08 - Legacy Leaders - Four out of 12 Legacy Leaders are MCB and SB&B majors! These students are selected from a highly competitive pool of applicants across campus Congratulations to Linda Drozdowicz, Pratistha Koirala, Heeren Makanji and Robert Slattery.
3/08 - University Scholars - Three MCB majors out of 14 juniors have been named University Scholars: Heeren Makanji ‐( Robins on, Kendall, Knecht); Anu Nellissery - (Birge, Albert, Papadimitrakopoulos); Robert Slattery - (Langlois, Gogarten, Knoblauch).[info]
2/08 New Grant - NIH/NIND - "Locus specific imprinting on the mammalian X-chromosome" - Michael O'Neill
2/08 New Grant - OxyHeal Health Group "OxyHeal/UConn Project on Stress Conditioning Cultured Cells using Hyperbaric Oxygen" L. E. Hightower & C. A. Giardina.
Rachel O'Neill's freshman honors course "Genetics Legacies: A Connecticut Slave's Story" was featured in the Dec. 10 issue of the Hartford Courant.
Greg Fournier (Gogarten Lab) won the 2008 Sherwood Chang Award for a poster on "Evolutionary Chronology of Ribosomal Subunits Contains Evidence of Genetic Code Evolution" that he presented at the 2008 Origin of Life Gordon Research Conference.
1/15/08 - The J. Virology article Ngunjiri, J. M., M. J. Sekellick and P. I. Marcus. 2008. Clonogenic Assay of Type A Influenza Viruses Reveals Noninfectious Cell-Killing (Apoptosis-Inducing) Particles has been selected for inclusion in "Spotlight" that highlights articles of high interest.
5/07 New Grant NASA Exploration of Sequence Space and the Evolution of the Genetic Code. J. P. Gogarten
9/07 New Grant NSF-MCB Mechano-Sensing and the Integration of Cytoskeletal Function in Moving Cells Juliet Lee
Schwenk Graduate Fellowships. Adam Silver from the Graf lab, and Colleen Spurling from the Giardina lab, have been named Schwenk graduate student mentors. The fellowships are funded by CLAS and the Schwenk Fund for Innovative Science Education.
J. Peter Gogarten was selected as one of BioMed Central's Hot 100 authors.
11/07 New Grant NSF-DUE Integration and Dissemination of Inquiry Based Video Microscopy and Image Processing Labs into the Undergraduate Curriculum. D. Knecht & L. McCollam-Guilani
10/07New Grant - NSF MRI: "Acquisition of a Confocal Live Cell Imaging System" PI- Knecht, co-PI Zweifach, Lee, Grant, Gaxiola