Faculty News
George Ellmore named as
Progam Director of the new Biology Open Choice MS. This program is
designed for students wishing to upgrade their expertise in the
biology professions, explore or expand their interest in research,
or broaden their base for making future career choices in the
Biological Sciences. The degree requires 8 courses (10 courses for
students matriculating in Fall 2017) at the 100 level or higher, and
can be done either full-time or part-time. Applications for the OC
MS program are accepted for fall or spring semester, and OC M S
students are eligible for tuition scholarships from the university.
A collaborative proposal of Ben Wolfe
and Jeff Guasto (Engineering) entitled "Symbiotic transport
mechanisms in microbial communities" has been selected for funding
in the 6th Round of the Tufts Collaborates Seed Grant Program. With
this award, Ben joins an impressive group of faculty who have built
new collaborative teams to investigate a diverse array of exciting
research areas to advance scientific inquiry at Tufts.
Susan Koegel, Senior
Lecturer of Biology, has been selected as the winner of 2016
Lerman-Neubauer Prize. This prize is awarded annually to one
full-time faculty member in Arts, Sciences, and Engineering judged
by graduating seniors as an individual who has had a profound impact
on them intellectually, both in and out of the classroom. Graduating
seniors were inspired to nominate Susan as most influential in
shaping their minds.
Sergei Mirkin, Professor and Chair of Biology,
organized and chaired Gordon Research Conference "DNA Damage,
Mutation & Cancer", which was held at Ventura Beach Marriott, March
13-18, 2016. The conference presented cutting-edge research on the
molecular mechanisms responsible for the recognition and processing
of environmental DNA damage as well as inherently unstable DNA
sequences.
Congratulations to Professor Michael
Levin, who is honored with the Paul G. Allen Foundation
Frontiers Center Award to lead the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts
University. Allen Discovery Centers are a new type of center for
leadership-driven, compass-guided research in partnership with major
research organizations and universities. The Frontiers Group will
typically provide $20 million over eight years with $10 million in
partner leverage, for a total scope of $30 million each.
"Reading and Writing the Morphogenetic Code"
Understanding how complex organ systems are created and repaired
requires investigating the algorithms and computations performed by
cell networks during pattern regulation. The Allen Discovery Center
at Tufts University will seek to read, interpret and manipulate the
biological code that determines anatomical structure and function
during embryogenesis, regeneration and tumor suppression. A unique
focus area is the processing of instructive patterning information
via bioelectric signaling among cells. This work holds the potential
to transform the fields of biology and medicine, as well as make
crucial links in evolutionary theory and cancer biology by bridging
the gap between molecular details and the larger-scale control of
biological systems. The team includes researchers at Tufts
University, Harvard University, Princeton University and others.
Read the story >
"Cooked", the popular
Netflix documentary exploring the history and science of cooking
features research and the laboratory (at 200 Boston Avenue) of our
own Ben Wolfe in its Episode 4, "Earth".
Enjoy watching full episodes here:
https://www.netflix.com/title/80022456
(need a Netflix account)
Trailer is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epMAq5WYJk4
Congratulation to Barry Trimmer whose
groundbreaking research was highlighted in the feature article on
soft robotics for
Nature magazine.
Mimi Kao, Assistant Professor
Mimi Kao earned her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of
California, San Francisco (UCSF) and her M.A. in Regional Studies –
East Asia from Harvard University. She graduated from Stanford
University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Human Biology and East
Asian Studies. She is a specialist in the field of Optogenetics and
has held research positions at the Center for Integrative
Neuroscience, Keck Center for Integrative Neuroscience, and Harvard
Medical School.
In 2013, Professor Kao received the Cozzarelli Prize – Biological
Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. She was
also awarded the Postdoctoral Scholar Research Award from UCSF in
2009 and 2010, the Capranica Foundation Prize in Neuroethology, and
the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Predoctoral Fellowship.
Professor Kao has been invited to speak at a variety of professional
conferences and educational institutions including the Society for
Neuroscience Annual Meeting, International Congress of
Neuroethology, and the Computational and Systems Neuroscience
meeting. Her most recent talk at Columbia University was titled,
"Changing Your Tune: Neural Circuits for Motor Exploration and
Plasticity."
She has worked as a teaching assistant and a mentor supervising
graduate students at the University of California, San Francisco,
and has co-authored articles in the Journal of Neurophysiology,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, Nature, and
Journal of Neuroscience. The Department of Biology welcomes Mimi
Kao as assistant professor.
Ekaterina Mirkin, Lecturer
Ekaterina Mirkin earned her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics at the
University of Illinois and her M.S. in Molecular Biology from Moscow State
University, Russia. From 2006-2013, she was a postdoctoral research associate in
the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University, where
she researched interactions in chromosomes of S. cerevisiae. Her research
as a graduate student focused on the attenuation of DNA replication in E.
coli.
Professor Mirkin has held positions as a guest lecturer, teaching assistant,
and head teaching assistant for life sciences at Harvard University. In 2012,
2013, and 2014, she was awarded the Harvard University Certificate of
Distinction in Teaching (for Life Sciences), and she received the National
Institutes of Health NRSA Postdoctoral Fellowship from 2008-2011.
Professor Mirkin's work has been published in select academic journals. Her most
recent article titled, "To Switch or Not to Switch: At the Origin of Repeat
Expansion Disease" was published in Molecular Cell. Other published
articles include "Replication Fork Stalling at Natural impediments" for
Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews and "Mechanisms of Transcription
– Replication Collisions in Bacteria" for Molecular and Cellular Biology.
The Department of Biology welcomes Ekaterina Mirkin as lecturer.
 L. Michael Romero published his first book with
his co-author John C. Wingfield of University of California - Davis.
The title is "Tempests, Poxes, Predators, and People: Stress in Wild
Animals and How They Cope". It summarizes, for the first time, the
broad international research area of understanding the physiological
responses to stress as important for survival in wild animals, not
just as a disease. The book covers decades of research in both
authors' labs, including substantial research from former Tufts
graduate and undergraduate students. The book took almost 10 years
to write.
Prof. Romero also presented a public lecture this
past fall at a local pub in Cambridge, MA. It was part of a group
called "Pint of Science" that brings together local scientists with
interested people from the community for an informal evening of beer
and science.
Professor Sara Lewis was invited to give a
24/7
Lecture on "Firefly Sex" at the 2015 IgNobel Prize Ceremony (you
can watch the video
here).
Prof. Colin Orians spent a week at Masaryk
University (Brno, Czech Republic) as a visiting scientist.
Associate Professor Kelly McLaughlin and her
graduate students, Emily Pitcairn, Kyle
Jewhurst and Kaylinnette Pinet, presented
their research at the Society for Developmental Biology (SDB) annual
conference hosted in Snowbird, Utah, July 2015. Emily, Kyle and
Kayli were all awarded SDB travel fellowships to attend this
meeting.
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