February 2006

From the Dean

The University of Maryland has a great deal to offer all of the members of its community—students, staff, faculty, alums, friends, and all of the citizens of Maryland.  And for those of us in the sciences, the advantages are increasing on campus and spreading beyond College Park. 

The University is recognized as one of the top research institutions and was ranked 18th by U.S. News and World Report.  Both the State and the University have put significant resources behind strengthening those research capabilities.  The Bioscience Research Building is just one example that will provide new, cutting-edge facilities for faculty and students, as well as a tremendous boon in bringing onboard several new top-level researchers.  At the same time we continue to pursue funding to upgrade our existing facilities.

The Maryland I-270 corridor is a hot spot of biotechnology.  It was recently ranked by e-mail newsletter FierceBiotech as one of five areas that are “going the extra mile for biotech.”  Our proximity to these Maryland biotech giants, world-class medical facilities and government agencies in the greater Washington DC area provides students with research collaborations, internships and ultimately job possibilities.

With Maryland Day coming up, I look forward to sharing the wonderful opportunities that exist and the exciting things to come.  Mark your calendars and please stop by on April 29!

Norma Allewell
Professor and Dean

Anniversary Celebrations

Anniversaries are meant to be celebrated.  And celebrated.  And celebrated!  This year marks a significant anniversary for the College of Chemical and Life Science and for the University of Maryland.  For the College, 2006 is the first full year under the new name.  The University turns 150!  During the year, we will have several events geared to bringing together alumni and friends of the College to help us celebrate these milestones.

The first such event was held on February 8 at the law offices of Wilmer Cutler Pickering and Dorr in Washington DC.  The event was hosted by Henry Wixon, JD (MS ’80, BS ’76) and Steven M. Rotter, MD (BS ’82).  With a stunning view of the National Mall and the Washington Monument, the venue was the perfect place to bring together alumni, friends and members of the College.

Next on the agenda is a Dean’s Guest Lecture on April 7 given by Dr. Walter R. Dowdle (PhD ’61, Microbiology).  Dr. Dowdle will be receiving the “Distinguished Alumnus of the Year Award” on April 8.  Click here to read more about Dr. Dowdle.

On April 19 we will be hosting an open house in the G. Forrest Woods Memorial Atrium in the Chemistry building.  More information about this event can be found at http://chemlife.umd.edu/news-events/150th/150announce.html

Mark your calendar for Maryland Day on April 29.

Evolution Debate

From the famous Scopes Monkey trial in 1925 that brought the subject to the limelight to a stage at the University of Maryland in 2006, the subject has generated interest, controversy and a lot of coverage! Evolution vs. creationism. You can almost hear the debates now, can’t you?

A panel led by Dr. Richard Payne, Professor and Interim Chair, Biology, tackled that sticky topic as the appetizer to the production of The Great Tennessee Monkey Trial performed by the acclaimed LA TheaterWorks. Research by faculty at the College exemplifies several themes in the modern study of evolution and a wide rangeof views was presented by panel members Dr. Michael Cummings, Associate Professor, Biology and the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Dr. Douglas Gill, Professor, Biology, and Dr. Katy Gonder, Faculty Research Associate, Biology.

More information and pictures of the event are posted on the website at http://chemlife.umd.edu/news-events/Scopes_Trial.html

The debate still rages.  In South Carolina for example, a state senator is looking to insert intelligent design in the state’s science classrooms.  Dr. Richard Payne, Biology, was quoted in a February 8 article in The State.

Bioscience Research Building Update

For faculty, staff, students, and regular visitors to the College Park campus, watching the Bioscience Research Building become a reality has been nothing short of extraordinary.  With the completion date of Fall 2006 now clearly in sight, the final preparations for labs are underway.

A mock-up lab is being established and tours of the facility are heating up.  “The response has been very positive,” said David Dalo, director of facilities for the College of Chemical and Life Sciences.  “The building is quite impressive and will have a significant impact on future research opportunities.”

Follow the progress of the Bioscience Research Building on the website at http://chemlife.umd.edu/biosciencebuilding/

Faculty News

Oh to be in love.  Or at least get noticed!  The male satin bowerbird might have a few things to teach unattached males when it comes to wooing a female.  Dr. Gerald Borgia, Biology, explains the elaborate rituals of the bowerbirds in what has become an annual Valentine’s appearance in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Cracking the Fibonacci code of plants.  Dr. Todd Cooke, Cell Biology & Molecular Genetics, has been studying the significance of the Fibonacci numbers in phyllotaxis, i.e., the patterned arrangements of plant organs in the form of spirals and whorls.  The research claims that botanists have misapplied the Fibonacci sequence to their description of phyllotactic patterns because they have focused on the numbers and assumed that the numbers have the same properties as the limit.  Or as Cooke explained it, “it appears as if the mathematicians have been doing bad botany and the botanists have been doing bad math.”

Any woman – or spouse for that matter – who has gone through labor will agree that there are plenty of hormones to contend with.  It’s not all scary though.  In 1999, research led by Dr. Bruce S. Cushing, Biology, concluded that female prairie voles injected with oxytocin were more likely to have sex with males placed in their cages than a control group.  Prairie voles provide a unique opportunity to study the mechanisms involved in regulating monogamy.  New findings show that a hormone released during labor in humans also increases levels of trust in the mother.

Dr. Michael Doyle, Chemistry & Biochemistry, presented a lecture on “New advances in Catalysis Dirhodium(II) Compounds” during the Merck Symposium held February 10 at Stanford University.

A team of researchers, led by Dr. John Fourkas, Chemistry & Biochemistry, has developed a technique for creating microscopic structures from multiple materials, paving the way for the creation of entirely new types of micromachines.  In a paper appearing in the February 15 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Fourkas and fellow researchers describe their invention of a method that can incorporate a broad range of materials, including metal, into structures fabricated by multiphoton absorption polymerization (MAP), a technique being developed by a number of groups around the world.

A group of environmentalists in West Virginia are challenging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in court to try and halt the flattening of mountaintops in pursuit of coal.  In a declaration for the court, Dr. Margaret Palmer, Entomology and Director of the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, wrote, “The mining activities and valley fills will fundamentally and permanently alter the hydrological and sediment regimes which are master variables controlling ecological functioning in impacted streams.  Since watersheds act as a unit and a considerable amount of land in the watershed is to be cleared, the impacts are expected to extend far beyond the buried headwater streams.”

The X Games for DNA Decoding?  It may not become an Olympic sport but the X Prize Foundation is offering $5 million to $20 million to the first team that can completely decode the DNA of 100 or more people in a matter of weeks.  According to Dr. Steven Salzberg, Director of the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, to make gene sequencing cheap enough to become a routine part of everyday medicine will require “technology that doesn’t yet exist.”  While the cost of sequencing DNA has been dropping, it would cost around $20 million today and take about six months to decode an entire human genome according Francis Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health’s genome institute.  Executives of several biotechnology companies say they expect to push costs down to around $100,000 within a few years.

Dr. Arthur Popper, Biology, Co-Director of the Center for Comparative and Evolutionary Biology of Hearing, has two new books out: Kelley, M. W., Wu, D. K., Popper, A. N., and Fay, R. R. (eds.). (2005). Development of the Inner Ear. Springer, New York; and Eatock, R-A., Fay, R. R., and Popper, A. N. (eds.). (2006). Vertebrate Hair Cells. Springer, New York.

Grants awarded:

Dr. Amy E. Brown, Entomology, Improving access to pesticide safety education through a database of English and Spanish teaching tools. $75,000 from EPA Region III.

Dr. Catherine C. Fenselau, Chemistry & Biochemistry, $271,718 from DOD, DARPA.

Dr. Amy S. Mullin, Chemistry & Biochemistry, Dynamics of Activated Molecules, $293,228 from DOE.

Dr. William Jeffery, Biology, Evolution of Cavefish Eye Degeneration, $160,000 from NSF.

Dr. John M. Ondov, Chemistry & Biochemistry, Development of a set of inherent particulate and gas tracers for apportioning emissions of individual power plants and stationary sources using highly-time resolved measurements and Advanced Receptor Modeling, $49,999 from DOE.

Dr. Janice Reutt-Robey, Chemistry & Biochemistry, Manufacturability of donor-acceptor bulk heterojunctions for photovoltaic technologies , $85,000 from COMM - NIST

Dr. Sarah Tishkoff, Biology, Variation at malarial resistance genes in Africans, $1,448,650 over 5 years ($289,730/year) from NIH; Genetic History of East African Populations, $308,000 (direct and indirect) over 3 years ($102,500/year) from NSF; Genetic Analysis of Modern Human Origins in East Africa, $22,000 for one year from the Louis Leakey Foundation.

A special congratulations goes to Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics professors Caren Chang and Heven Sze for getting funding from the USDA for the "Graduate Training Program in Plant Functional Genomics."  The award for $138,000 will provide two National Needs Fellowships to eligible graduate students for a period of 3 years each.   To our knowledge, this is the first Plant Biology training grant received by the University.

Student News

Katrina MacLeod, Faculty Research Associate, Biology, was awarded an R03 research grant from NIDCD/NIH, for work entitled "Short-term Synaptic Plasticity and Intensity Coding in the Auditory Brainstem,” for $222,750 over three years.

Two graduate students, John Hall and Mandy Reading, Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics were awarded the first USDA National Needs Fellowships.  The awards were presented by Dean Norma Allewell.  The fellowship offers a stipend of $22,000/year plus health benefits and tuition. Eligible students are those who work in the area of Plant Functional Genomics, have passed their candidacy examinations, and are U.S. citizens or U.S. nationals.

For the Entrepreneur in You

For those who have sat in their labs or in their kitchens and wondered what to do with that wonderful invention, the College of Chemical and Life Sciences is offering “Entrepreneur Office Hours:  Resources for Research.”  These informal sessions bring together knowledgeable professionals, business resources and anyone interested in taking their dream to the next level.

The first session, held on February 9th in Symons Hall, was facilitated by Terry Chase (BS ’93 Biology), President, Chesapeake PERL, Inc., and Karen Thornton, Program Director, Hinman CEOs and Associate Director, Business Development, MTECH Ventures.  The session was attended by both faculty and students looking for advice and resources.

Mark your calendar – the next session is scheduled for February 23, 2006.  Session participants and future dates will be announced on the website at http://chemlife.umd.edu/news-events/calendar/

Technology in the Classroom – Facilitating in-class discussions with WebQuest

All freshmen entering the College of Chemical and Life Sciences are required to take UNIV 100 (The Student in the University).  The course introduces students to campus resources and strategies for academic success.  Though centered around in-class discussions and workshops, some sensitive topics require a slightly different approach.

To facilitate class discussion about diversity and ethics in a class consisting primarily of pre-med students, Dr. Kaci Thompson, director, Undergraduate Research and Internship Programs, developed a WebQuest around the topic “Medical Atrocities of the 20th Century.” 

WebQuests are structured, inquiry-based projects.  In this case, students were asked to consider the biomedical implications of prejudice in a variety of contexts and from different viewpoints.  Students were charged with examining documents, interview transcripts and news articles relating to experiments conducted on poor African Americans in Tuskegee, Alabama from 1932-1972 and Nazi concentration camp prisoners during World War II. 

“The benefit to the WebQuest format is that it allows students to explore primary sources available on the internet and helps them gain depth of understanding before engaging in group discussion,” explains Thompson.

WebQuests have been developed for a wide variety of topics and are freely available on the web.  Tools are available to help faculty create their own or modify existing WebQuests to best meet the needs of their students. 

For more information:
The WebQuest Page at San Diego State University

Best WebQuests

Alumni Spotlight

On April 8 the College of Chemical and Life Sciences will be honoring a prominent alum during the University of Maryland Alumni Association’s “Distinguished Alumnus of the Year Awards.”  Walter R. Dowdle (PhD ’61, Microbiology), has distinguished himself nationally and internationally over the course of his career.

Currently, Dr. Dowdle serves as director of the Malarone Donation Program, whose purpose is to help combat the problem of drug resistant malaria in endemic countries where cost often limits access to new medicines.  He is also a consultant to the World Health Organization (WHO) on the Global Poliomyelitis Eradication Initiative.  Prior to joining The Task Force, Dr. Dowdle served in various high-ranking capacities at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and as director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Influenza.

In a 1997 Pulitzer Prize-winning article in The Wall Street Journal, Dr. Dowdle was called a “key player in the CDC’s earliest AIDS-prevention efforts.”  In the article, Dr. Dowdle is described as a “virologist who was a veteran of the war on herpes and helped create the CDC’s anti-AIDS office in the early 1980s.”

Please join the College in congratulating Dr. Dowdle and welcoming him back to campus.  In addition to receiving the award, Dr. Dowdle will be the Dean’s Guest Lecturer on April 7.  More information on the seminar is available at [new page on site to be created]. 

Visit our website at http://www.chemlife.umd.edu/alumni-friends/ for more Alumni Notes!

Giving to the College

A special thank you to all who supported the College of Chemical and Life Sciences.  Through your generosity we can help open doors for students for generations to come!

Please visit the College Honor Roll to view the list of donors.