NEWS
July 2002
"News
from the College of Life Sciences
at the University of Maryland, College
Park"
ITEMS
- The
Dean's Message
- Upcoming
Events
- Faculty Recognition
- Alum Raymond Davis: National Medal of
Science Recipient
- Faculty/Staff
In the News
- Students
in the News
- Funding
Alerts
- How
to Post Your News Here
FROM
THE DEAN
Please
mark your calendars for Bioscience
Day on November 19th. This is a
major event for the College, and
we are hoping for very broad participation
from faculty, staff and students,
both undergraduate and graduate.
It will
be held in the newly renovated Stamp
Student Union, which will markedly
improve access to and from campus.
We will be continuing successful
programs
from previous years--the VIP breakfast,
poster sessions and Employment
Center, as well as introducing faculty-organized
minisymposia and prizes for
the best posters presented by graduate
students and postdoctoral fellows.
The minisymposia will be on biodiversity,
bioterrorism, molecular basis of
pathogenesis and neuroscience and
will be organized by Sara Via, Catherine
Fenselau, David Mosser and Cindy
Moss. The keynote speaker, Mark
D. Adams,
Vice President at Celera, will speak
on Comparative Genomics. Please
think
about how you might incorporate
this event into your classes. It's
not too
late to introduce new features into
the program, so if you have a good
idea,
please be sure to let Gene Ferrick,
the managing director of the program,
know about it.
This
is the season of arrivals and departures,
and we have several of each
to announce.
We
extend a warm welcome to Drs. Bill
Fagan, an incoming Associate Professor
in the Biology Department, and Sang
Bok Lee, a newly appointed Assistant
Professor in the Department of Chemistry
and Biochemistry. Bill is a
theoretical ecologist whose previous
position was at Arizona State
University. He has been a Guggenheim
Fellow for the past year. Sang Bok
is a
material scientist whose previous
position was in the laboratory of
Dr.
Charles R. Martin at the University
of Florida as a postdoctoral fellow.
We're
also pleased to welcome Meredith
Brittain, Acting Assistant to the
Dean for Public Relations, to the
Dean's Office. Meredith will be
working
throughout the year to upgrade our
publications and brochures. If you
direct
a program and have ideas about how
to better publicize it, I encourage
you
to consult with Meredith and Gene
Ferrick.
Nancy
Baugher will be joining the College
as Assistant Dean for Finance in
mid-July, subject to the approval
of the President's Office. Nancy
is
currently Director of Finance in
the Dean's Office at the University
of
Maryland Baltimore and previously
served as Supervisor of Finance/Purchasing
for the Alexandria City school system.
She brings strong credentials, a
wealth of relevant experience and
an abundance of energy and enthusiasm
to
the job.
Professors
Paul Mazzocchi and Howard DeVoe
have been named Professors
Emeriti in the Department of Chemistry
and Biochemistry, and Professor
Ron
Weiner has been named Emeritus in
the Department of Cell Biology and
Molecular Genetics. Paul was, of
course, the Founding Dean of the
College.
The Department of Chemistry and
Biochemistry and the College owe
a great
deal to Paul and his wife, Dr. Dorothy
Mazzocchi. Paul will be continuing
to
direct our Web-based Master's of
Life Science program and to act
as
Principal Investigator for the Joint
Institute for Food Safety and Applied
Nutrition.
Dr.
Douglas Julin, an assistant professor
in the Department of Chemistry and
Biochemistry, has taken a grants
administration position at NIH.
Doug has
been an excellent teacher and departmental
citizen, and we wish him the
best. Professor Jeff Davis, also
from the Department of Chemistry
and
Biochemistry, will be on sabbatical
this year. He will be missed!
Professor
Irv Forseth in the Department of
Biology, who has also served as
Director of the Biology graduate
program and Chair of the Graduate
Council,
will be a program director at NSF
next year.
Vicki
Levy, who has served ably as the
College's Director of Facilities,
will be leaving in early September
for personal reasons. Vicki is largely
responsible for the many improvements
in our physical plant over the past
eleven years. She will be particularly
missed by the new faculty members
whose labs she renovated. We wish
her the very best of luck in her
new
endeavors. The College will be searching
for a full-time Director of
Facilities, with Professor Bill
Jeffery chairing the search committee.
Several
members of the Dean's Office and
several faculty members
participated in a visit to campus
from Dr. Randolph Guschl, Chief
Technology
Officer, and Bill Mooney, University
Liaison, from DuPont. Bill will
be
DuPont's campus liaison. DuPont
is particularly interested in supporting
collaborative research and K-16
programs.
The
College is hosting several groups
of young scholars this summer. Dr.
Kaci Thompson is continuing her
very successful Jump Start program
for high
school students, sponsored by HHMI;
Justicia Opoku-Edusei is directing
the
BIOMAP program, sponsored by NIH,
for community college students;
and Amel
Anderson is hosting three students
from HBCUs who are participating
in the
College's Diversity Partners program.
Thanks to all who help to make these
programs a success.
A
happy and safe 4th to all!
Norma
Allewell
Dean
UPCOMING
EVENTS
Schedule
of Classes ---
July 15: First Day Summer
Session II
September 3: First Day of Fall 2002
September 16: Last Day Schedule
Adjustment for Fall
November 12: Last Day to Drop with
a W
Events
---
July
4: Campus closed
September 2: Campus closed
November 19: Bioscience Research
and Technology Review Day
May
2003: The College will be helping
to host the American Society for
Microbiology - Education Section
national meeting in May 2003. This
will be
the 10th anniversary meeting, linked
to the ASM National Meeting to be
held
in Washington, DC. We anticipate
that several high profile speakers
will be
part of the 10th Anniversary program.
Watch for details.
FACULTY
RECOGNITION
Dr.
James Dietz, Biology, received funding
from NSF for three additional
years of research on golden lion
tamarins. The amount of the award
is
dependent on final negotiations
but will be at least $325K.
Dr.
Jocelyne DiRuggiero, CBMG, was awarded
a three-year Human Frontier
Science Program grant for $1.5M
in collaboration with a French lab
and two
Japanese labs (Dr. Ishino from Japan
is the PI). The grant will be used
to
study DNA replication mechanisms
in hyperthermophilic Archaea. Dr.
DiRuggiero also obtained a Ralph
E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement
Award
from ORAU (Oak Ridge Associated
Universities) for $5,000 with matching
funds
from the university. The award is
to study lateral gene transfer and
transposon mobility in a population
of hyperthermophilic Archaea on
the
Island of Vulcano in Italy. She
was also named an invited professor
for four
weeks of sabbatical work at the
University of Orsay in Paris in
Dr.
Forterre's laboratory.
Dr.
Douglas Gill, Biology, received
a $40,000 grant from the USDA to
study
Native Grassland Restoration this
summer.
The
Office of Technology Commercialization
issued patents to Dr. Douglas
Julin, Chemistry and Biochemistry,
for ³Translationally coupled
reporter
gene² (Douglas Julin, Jindi
Wang and Ruiwu Chen) and to Dr.
Daniel Falvey,
Chemistry and Biochemistry, for
³Photoreleasable protecting
groups on
alcohols, phosphates and diacids
and the use thereof² (Daniel
Falvey,
Kwangjoo Lee and Anamitro Banerjee).
Dr.
Zhongchi Liu, CBMG, was awarded
a three-year, $369,000 NSF grant
for
³LARSON, An Homeobox Gene in
Arabidopsis Flower Development.²
Dr.
Paula Shrewsbury and Colin Stewart,
Entomology, and Stanton Gill, UM
Cooperative Extension Service, received
a five-year subcontract from the
University of Vermont to study "Enhancement,
Implementation, and Evaluation
of Biologically Based Pest Management
Tactics for Three Key Pests in
Production Nurseries - Moving Towards
Sustainability.² The subcontract
is
for $139,000.
Congratulations
to Dr. Paula Shrewsbury, Dr. Michael
Raupp, Dr. Barbara
Thorne, and Colin Stewart, Entomology,
and Dr. Peter Dernoeden of Natural
Resource Sciences and Landscape
Architecture (NRSLA), who were awarded
a
$107,000 three-year grant. This
grant, sponsored by the USDA and
including a
coop agreement with Cornell, will
be used to study the ³Feasibility
of
Implementing Least Toxic Alternatives.²
ALUM
RAYMOND DAVIS: NATIONAL MEDAL OF
SCIENCE RECIPIENT
Last
month, alumnus Raymond Davis Jr.
was named by President George W.
Bush
as one of 15 recipients of the National
Medal of Science, the highest
national recognition for lifetime
achievement in scientific research.
Davis
was the first scientist to detect
solar neutrinos, the result of
nuclear fusion reactions happening
in the sun¹s core. In research
from 1967
to 1985 using underground chlorine
detectors in a South Dakota gold
mine,
Davis found only one-third of the
neutrinos that traditional theories
hypothesized. These results were
controversial at the time but were
confirmed in the 1990s and accepted
as the new norm by the scientific
community.
Davis,
who has won numerous other scientific
awards and who is a member of
the National Academy of Sciences,
earned a B.S. from the University
of
Maryland in 1937 and an M.S. from
UM in 1940. After receiving his
Ph.D. in
physical chemistry from Yale University,
serving in the Air Force, and
working for a chemical company,
he joined the U.S. Department of
Energy¹s
Brookhaven National Laboratory in
1948, where remained until 1984.
At that
time, he joined the University of
Pennsylvania, but he has remained
an
active research collaborator at
Brookhaven.
FACULTY/STAFF
IN THE NEWS
Dr.
Sang Bok Lee, a new assistant professor
in Chemistry and Biochemistry,
hit the headlines recently with
his design for a nano-filter, the
basis of a
paper being published in Science
(296, 2198 (2002)). He and his colleagues,
including Dr. Charles R. Martin
of the University of Florida, describe
a
smart membrane that can separate
two forms of a cancer-fighting drug
molecule. Industrial applications
of this chiral separation could
be
available in five years. For more
information, see coverage in the
following
June 21st articles: Chemical &
Engineering News online
(http://pubs.acs.org/cen/today/june21b.html)
and Scientific American.com
(http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000F1DCC-5639-1D12-8B07809EC588E
EDF&catID=1).
David
Lineback, Director of the Joint
Institute for Food Safety and Applied
Nutrition, was featured in the May
13th Chemical & Engineering
News online
(http://pubs.acs.org/isubscribe/journals/cen/80/i19/html/8019gov2.html)
in
an article about acrylamide. Now
that Swedish researchers have found
this
neurotoxin and probable carcinogen
in some baked starchy foods, such
as
potato chips and french fries (but
not in the raw forms of these foods),
other scientists, including Lineback,
have been studying this issue.
Lineback theorizes that acrylamide
might be formed when the oils in
such
foods break down during heating
and react with proteins in the foods.
STUDENTS
IN THE NEWS
Norman
Bourg, a graduate student in Biology,
is extensively quoted in a
National Geographic Web News article
on fire ecology and the flowering
response of his study plant, turkeybeard,
an uncommon species of lily that
rarely blooms. Go to http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/science.html
for the full story.
Congratulations
to Kristy Reynolds, Chemistry and
Biochemistry, who received
a $25,000 J. Edgar Hoover Foundation
Scientific Scholarship. Kristy was
cited in the Baltimore Sun for this
accomplishment. Her research involves
finding an alternative in forensic
screening of biological samples.
FUNDING ALERTS
List
of Funding Alerts - The list of
funding alerts is lengthy. You can
find it on the web version of the
Newsletter at
http://www.life.umd.edu/news-events/newsletter/.
Community
of Science Database of Funding -
If you want information
about the Community of Science database
of funding sources go to the
Office of Research Administration
and Advancement at
http://www.umresearch.umd.edu/ORAA/.
