Student Accomplishments, Spring 2008

Deena Jacobs Wins Rowe Award

Deena Jacobs, a fifth year graduate student working with Dr. Jeffrey DeStefano in the department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics, is the first recipient of the Wallace Prescott Rowe Award. This $5000 award was established by an anonymous donor in memory of Dr. Wallace Prescott Rowe, an internationally known virologist and cancer researcher who was the chief of the laboratory of viral diseases at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Rowe died of cancer in 1983 at age 57. 

Deena's research looks at two aspects of HIV replication: priming and recombination. Jacobs is researching whether viral factors such as the nucleocapsid protein (viral chaperone) play any role in inhibiting the use of alternative primers during second strand synthesis. For recombination she works on detecting areas of higher recombination in the gag-pol region of the genome collaborating with Dr. Matteo Negroni.  Together they are determining whether the two systems can be correlated and what conditions used in vitro correspond to conditions in cells.

Chemistry and Biochemistry
Graduate Students Receive ARCS Scholarships

For the first time, two College of Chemical and Life Sciences' PhD candidates -- Merle Zimmerman (pictured at bottom) and Colin Wynne (pictured at top) from the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry -- received the prestigious Achievement Rewards for College Scientists (ARCS) Scholarship. The ARCS Foundation is a national all-volunteer, all-women organization dedicated to providing scholarships to academically outstanding students pursuing degrees in natural science, medicine, and engineering.  Zimmerman is working in Dr. John Tossell's lab on the geometric and electronic structure of various molecules and clusters occurring both in gas and condensed phases.  Wynne is studying the use of mass spectrometry-based methods for the rapid analysis (<5 min) of airborne microorganisms in Dr. Catherine Fenselau’s lab.  The 2007 awardee in the College was Rebecca Viera who is graduating in May.

CONS Student Awarded NOAA Fellowship
Raimundo Espinoza, a student in the Sustainable Development and Conservation Biology master’s program (CONS), has been awarded a two-year Fellowship from NOAA. This coral reef management fellowship will support him for two years.  Raimundo Espinoza will graduate this year, after having taken a leave last year to work on a sea turtle conservation program in Costa Rica.

Outstanding Graduate Students Highlighted on College Website

Akito Kawahara still uses the butterfly net that his father gave him when he was four years old, though his insect collection and classification techniques have undoubtedly advanced. Kawahara is a PhD candidate in the University of Maryland Department of Entomology, College of Chemical and Life Sciences. He is one of several outstanding College of Chemical and Life Sciences graduate students whose research is highlighted on the college website. More profiles will be added to represent the diversity of our graduate programs.
Read more about Akito Kawahara >>
Read more graduate student profiles >>

Faculty mentor Caren Chang (left), Associate Professor, Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics, with her student Maria Belén Pappa

Faculty mentor Sergei Sukharev, Associate Professor, Biology, with his student Michael Kiyatkin

Minal Mehta, student of Jonathan Dinman, Professor, Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics

Undergraduates Show Their Stuff at
9th Annual HHMI Research Symposium

On February 28, 17 undergraduate students in the HHMI Fellowship program presented their research results to the campus community at a symposium held in the Student Union. HHMI Undergraduate Research Fellows conduct independent research with a faculty mentor and receive support for their work through a grant to the University of Maryland from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Dr. Emily Severance, an alumna of the HHMI Undergraduate Research fellowship program (B.S., Zoology '83), gave the keynote speech. After obtaining a Ph.D. from the University of South Florida, she became a postdoctoral fellow in the Stanley Division of Developmental Neurovirology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Her research focuses on how disruptions in neuronal ion channel communication pathways act in neurological disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

For more information on the HHMI Fellowship Program, please visit the HHMI website.