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Bioscience Day Poster Winners

With another successful Bioscience Research and Technology Review Day came another group of great research posters.  Graduate students presented most of the posters.  Congratulations to the following students who won in the poster competition.

Bryan Arnold for “Individual Vocal Signatures in Pallid Bat (Antrozous pallidus) Social Calls”

Anubhiti Goel  for “Developmental Profile Of Homeostatic Synaptic Plasticity in the Visual Cortex by Brief Periods of Visual Deprivation”

Jeffrey Moore for “Free Radical Scavenging Properties of Conjugated Linolenic Acid Isomers”

Maria Murray for “Genomic Evidence for Divergent Selection in Eastern Oyster Populations Across an Ecotone”

Saranga Naganathan for “The Biotin Repressor: Complexity in the Function of a Flexibe Loop in an Allosteric Reponse”

Mandy Reading for “Regulation of the Arabidopsis Protein Kinase CTR1 in Ethylene Signaling”

Rui Xiao for “Synthesis of PEDOT Nanostructure and its Electrochromic Properties”

Diana Yoon for “Effects of Hydrogel Water Content on Chondrocyte Signaling Pathway Activation”

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Peer Mentors Lend a Helping Hand

Questions, Questions, Questions! What class should I take?  How do I make a 4-year plan?  Will this fit in my schedule?  Do you know an interesting teacher?  How do I get an internship?  Students ask many questions and the answers can be difficult to find.  Help can be found through their own classmates, the Peer Mentors.  In 2002, a group of interested upper class CLFS students were recruited and trained to be mentors.  These caring students have helped hundreds of CLFS majors through summer orientation, UNIV 100, semester advising, and internship exploration.  The mentors are dedicated students on their own science paths to graduate school, industry, and professional health fields.  They help answer the questions posed by students and parents.  To all those students who need a little advice from a fellow student, stop by room 1317 in Symons Hall.

 

Current Peer Mentors: 
Dustin Albert, Senior, Physiology and Neurobiology
Jen Bassler, Senior, Physiology and Neurobiology
Hava Bresler, Junior, Biology Individual Studies and Education
Sarah Bui, Senior, Physiology and Neurobiology
Laura Cataldi, Senior, Cell Biology and Genetics, English
Bryan Dickinson, Senior, Biochemistry
Jon Goldman, Senior, General Biology
Contstance Jin, Junior, Biochemistry
Mark Johnson, Senior, Cell Biology and Genetics
Belen Kenaa, Senior, Cell Biology and Genetics
Elizabeth Kenez, Junior, General Biology
Kendra Klein, Senior, Physiology and Neurobiology
Shruti Naik, Senior, Physiology and Neurobiology
Ellen Paulisick, Junior, Physiology and Neurobiology
Kim Pytel, Senior, Physiology and Neurobiology
Ryan Spangler, Junior, Physiology and Neurobiology
Tamar Sterling, Junior, Microbiology

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Alumni News

Larry Clark, Ph.D., BS’75 (Zoology) is Assistant Director at the USDA's National Wildlife Research Center in Fort Collins, CO. Larry has worked in the area of avian ecology since 1975. After attending Maryland he received a M.S. in ecology from Northern Arizona University, and a Ph.D. in population and evolutionary ecology from the University of Pennsylvania. He was a post-doctoral fellow and faculty member at the Monell Chemical Senses Center for 12 years before joining the USDA. Larry has served on the Board of the Wildlife Damage Management Working Group and has served as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Wildlife Management. He is the author on over 110 scientific publications in the areas of wildlife damage management, chemical ecology, and sensory physiology and behavior. Larry has four patents on animal repellents, two of which were licensed for commercial development.

A University of Maryland alumnus and brother of the president of Afghanistan is a featured faculty member in the Stony Brook paper. Dr. A. Wali Karzai (B.S. in Biochemistry, ’89) has a passion for Biochemistry and happens to be the brother of Hamid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan. At Stony Brook, he teaches Biochemistry to undergraduate students and Molecular Genetics to graduate students. Karzai has been a professor in the Biochemistry department since 2001. As an undergraduate at Maryland he was “inspired him to pursue a career in science…” Stony Brook Statesman, November 10
http://sbstatesman.org/news/2005/11/10/dr_a_wali_karzai

Owen Lee, MD’79, BS’75 (Biochemistry) of Newark, OH was recently promoted to the rank of colonel in the U.S. Army Medical Corps. Dr. Lee is the vice chief of radiology at Licking Memorial Hospital. Lee was named Physician of the Year by his peers at Licking Memorial Hospital in 2003. Lee arrived in America in 1969 from his native Burma. While at Maryland he enlisted in the Army Reserves and was sent to Louisiana for combat training. He trained as a combat medic in San Antonio and worked at Walter Reed Army Hospital for six years. After his first enlistment and earning his medical degree, Lee completed his residency in radiology and a fellowship in abdominal imaging at the Indiana University Medical Center in Indianapolis. A board-certified radiologist, Lee joined Licking Memorial Hospital in 1984 as an independent specialist. After the Gulf War in 1996, Lee was contacted by the Army Reserves and asked to come back to the Medical Corps due to the severe shortage of physicians. He consented and was assigned to Ft. Hood, Texas, the largest Army base in the world and home of Darnel Army Hospital. His latest deployment was for three months in 2003 at Fort Hood, during the war in Iraq.

Marcia Mellitz, MBA, BS’66 (Microbiology) is the founder and president of the Center for Emerging Technologies (CET) in St. Louis, Missouri (www.emergingtech.org). The Center focuses on start-up and early stage biomedical and other advanced technology companies in the St. Louis region, providing entrepreneurs access to business, technology and financial resources. Ms. Mellitz works on local, state and national levels to promote public/private/academic partnerships aimed at creating the infrastructure necessary to support the development of companies that are commercializing new biomedical and other advanced technologies. Ms. Mellitz is focused on the development of the Center of Research, Technology and Entrepreneur eXchang Board (CORTEX), a life science research and development district in the area of CET, between Washington University Medical Center and Saint Louis University. She has received numerous awards, extensive press coverage, and recognition for her contributions to the St. Louis community.

Please send alumni notes to gene@umd.edu.

List of Funding Alerts - The list of funding alerts is lengthy. You may find it on the Web at www.life.umd.edu/news-events/newsletter/fundinglist.html.   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 www.umresearch.umd.edu/ORAA/.