Emily Pitcairn, 1st year doctoral student in the
Trimmer lab, has been awarded a 2012 National Defense Science and
Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship. The NDSEG Fellowship is
sponsored and funded by the Department of Defense (DoD). Their
applications were selected by the DoD from over 3,000 applications
that were received this year. The NDSEG Fellowship covers tuition
and fees and offers a $31,000 stipend for three years. Congrats Emily!
Shoni Caine, 7th year doctoral candidate in the
McLaughlin lab, has been awarded the "Outstanding Graduate Student
Contribution to Undergraduate Research" at the Graduate
Student Awards Ceremony.
Brook Chernet, 4th year doctoral candidate in the Levin Lab,
presented a poster at Harvard Medical's New England Science
Symposium, which featured 170 poster presentations from all over
the US and Canada, including two dozen participants from
Harvard/Dana-Farber research labs. After intensive grilling by 5
judges, his work won the *top* prize of the Dana-Farber/Harvard
Cancer Center award for best cancer poster presentation! The
president of Dana-Farber awarded him with a certificate and
monetary prize in recognition of his work on bioelectricity and
cancer in Xenopus. Go Brook!!
Congratulations to Adam South, from the
Sara Lewis Lab, upon
successfully defending his Ph.D. thesis entitled "Seminal
Influences: The Role of Nuptial Gifts in Sequential Episodes of
Sexual Selection."
Congratulations to Linnea van
Griethuijsen, from the Barry Trimmer Lab, upon successfully defending
her Ph.D. thesis entitled "Behavioral responses to mechano-sensory information
in a soft-bodied terrestrial animal."
Congratulations to Tegan Morton, from the Colin Orians Lab,
upon successfully defending her
Masters. thesis entitled "Invassion consequences and ecology:
evaluation of community and environment sinteractions of an exotic,
invasive plant, garlic mustard (Alliaria
petiolata)."
Congratulations to Dan Kane, from the Mitch
McVey Lab, upon successfully defending his Ph.D. thesis entitled "Planes,
Trains and Polymerases: an analysis
of polymerase action during DNA double-strand break repair in
Drosophila."
Nicole Soltis, Thesis Masters student in the
Colin Orians Lab, has been awarded the TIE
graduate student fellowship for 2012-2013, for the project
"Sapped of energy: the role of invasive herbivores as a resource
drain on hemlock trees".
Selena Ahmed, NIH IRACDA Postdoctoral Fellow
in the Colin Orians lab, received two travel grants from the NSF IGERT Program
in Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Development in Southwest China to
present talks at the Association of American Geographers 2012 annual meeting in
a panel titled, "Landscapes, Livelihoods, and Environmental Change in Southwest
China" and at the Himalayan Studies meeting in a panel titled, "Biodiversity
Conservation and Sustainable Development in the Eastern Himalaya of Yunnan,
China". Selena also received a travel grant from Program 111 of the Chinese
Ministry of Education for field research in China on climate change and tea
production. This research and funding program was mentioned in a news story
titled "Tapping the Best Minds" in China’s Global Times, January 11, 2012.
Wendy Scott Beane, Postdoctoral Fellow
in the Levin Lab, attended the
Mechanisms of Organ Repair & Regeneration (MORR) conference in Sept
2011 at NIH, presenting a poster on her work "Membrane Voltage Regulates
Anterior Polarity During Planarian Regeneration." An image from her work
won First Place at the conference in the MORR Image Award Competition.
Christine Lattin, 4th year doctoral
candidate in the Romero laboratory, presented work at the January 2012
Society for Integrative and Comparative
Biology meeting in Charleston, SC: a poster, "Seasonal differences in the
functioning of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis and initial transference
to captivity in wild House Sparrows," and a presentation, "Effects of chronic
stress on brain and peripheral intracellular glucocorticoid receptors in wild
House Sparrows." Christine also
received a Graduate Student Research Award for my project, "How does chronic
stress change glucocorticoid receptor concentrations in different tissues?"
Casey Diederich, 3rd year graduate
student in the Pechenik Laboratory, presented a poster at the SICB conference in
January in Charleston, SC. The title
was "Intertidal and subtidal populations of Crepidula fornicata
experiencing drastically different thermal conditions have similar physiological
tolerance."
Ph.D. candidate Brook Chernet ,
Michael Levin lab, received a School of Arts and Sciences Grant-in Aid award
Ph.D. candidate Maria Lobikin , Michael Levin lab,
was invited to attend the "Cell & Developmental Biology of XENOPUS"
course at the Cold spring harbor laboratory.
Robert de Bruijn, 4th year doctoral
candidate in the Romero laboratory, gave a talk at Morgan State University as
part of their Interdisciplinary Seminar Series.
The title of the talk was: Is Weather Stressful? Robert’s current
research has focused on stress physiology, specifically on the behavioral and
physiological responses of wild-caught starlings to weather-related stimuli.
Anne A. Madden, fourth year doctoral candidate,
was awarded a 2012 Grant-in-aid of research from the Society for Integrative and
Comparative Biology, and a 2012 (Sprint) Graduate Student Research Award from
the Tufts University Graduate School to perform research on the gastrointestinal
bacteria of House Sparrows as part of a collaboration with the Romero Laboratory
of Tufts University.
Anne presented a poster and oral
presentation at the 6th Annual New England Biology Conference (BioNES), titled:
"Paper wasp bacterial associates display antimicrobial activity." She was
awarded the Graduate Student Award for best oral presentation.
Anne gave a presentation on her
research at the high school leadership school in Maine, Coastal Studies for
Girls, which was written up in NPR's Talking Science blog, a part of the
Science Friday aspect of NPR. Read
more >
Sasha Keyel, 5th year doctoral candidate in the Reed Laboratory,
was invited to present to the Nuttall Ornithological Club, Cambridge, MA. in March 2012.
Title: Habitat selection in grassland birds.
Sasha also presented at the American
Museum of Natural History, NY, NY in October 2011.
Title: Testing the role of patch openness as a causal mechanism for
apparent area sensitivity. Student
Conference on Conservation Science.
Other department members in attendance were:
Michael Romero, Michael Reed, Carolyn Bauer and Christine Lattin.
Carolyn Bauer, 3rd year graduate
student in the Romero laboratory, received a Sigma Xi grant-in-aid of research
this Fall.
