News

Faculty News

Warmest congratulations to our newest tenured Associate Professor, Dr. Philip Starks!

The three-year National Science Foundation grant "Neuromechanics of soft-bodied locomotion" awarded to Professor Barry Trimmer will examine the intricate interplay between neural processes and biomechanics in the control of complex three dimensional movements. These studies use the soft-bodied larval stage of an insect, Manduca sexta, as a model system and employ kinematics, dynamics and neurophysiological techniques. This work is directly related to an ongoing project to build soft-bodied robots at the Tufts Biomimetic Devices laboratory. The total grant award is for almost $475,000.

Mitch McVey was awarded a NSF CAREER grant which is funding research on alternative pathways of DNA double-strand break repair in Drosophila.

Graduate Student News

Shoni Caine received a Graduate Student Research Award of $700. Also she will be giving a talk titled: "Pronephric kidney regeneration in the amphibian Xenopus laevis" at the Northeast Society for Developmental Biology (NESDB) Regional Conference (April 2008), Marine Biological Laboratory, Wood's Hole, MA.

Sasha Keyel was selected to receive a 2008 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship (GRF) award.

Nealia House received a Graduate Student Research Award.

Brian Tavernia and Jenny Lenkowski each received a TIE Environmental Graduate Student Research Fellowship for 2008-2009.

Carolyn Gaydos received a GSAS travel award to attend NESDB meeting in April 2008.

Graduate Student Publications

Zhang H. and Freudenreich, C.H. (2007) An AT-rich sequence in human common fragile site FRA16D causes fork stalling and chromosome breakage in S. cerevisiae. Molecular Cell 27, 367-379. (profiled in /Science/ News Focus “DNAs Molecular Gymnastics”, June 9, 2006 312: 1467-68.)

Lenkowski, J., Reed, J.M., Deininger, L.*, and McLaughlin, K.A. (2008) Perturbation of Organogenesis by the Herbicide Atrazine in the Amphibian Xenopus laevis. Environmental Health Perspectives 116:223-230 (published online Nov. 22, 2007).

Bracken, C., Mizeracka, K.*, and McLaughlin, K.A. (2008) Patterning the embryonic kidney: BMP signaling mediates the differentiation of the pronephric tubules and duct. Developmental Dynamics 237:132¬144 (published online Dec. 10, 2007).

*former undergraduates

Undergraduate News

Jonathan Moy and Nicole Cherng are the recipients of the Russell L. Carpenter Fellowships for summer 2008. This is an opportunity for two undergraduates to be paid to carry out research with faculty members in biology.

Jonathan Moy received the Carmichael Award (for research) and Presidential Award (for citizenship and public service)