Jared Tague Receives 2025 Master’s Research Award
Jared Tague of the Ho-Beffert Lab is this year's recipient of the Master’s Research Award. This award provides a one-semester Research Assistantship to a continuing Biology MS student who stands out in their field of research.
Jared studies the molecular mechanisms of reelin signaling and its implications in brain development and Alzheimer’s disease. His research focuses on creating a robust purification process for reelin and one of its receptors, APOER2. Once isolated, he will be able to better investigate their biochemical interactions and structural features using binding assays and cryo-electron microscopy. Jared received his BS from Umass Lowell and then worked at Biogen where he gathered experience in neurodegenerative disease therapeutics development and protein biochemistry. Outside of the lab, he enjoys swimming at Crystal Lake, bar trivia, book club, and spending time with his friends and his cat.
Congratulations, Jared!
Zoey Werbin Receives 2025 Belamarich Award
Dr. Zoey Werbin of the Bhatnagar and Dietze Labs was selected as the winner of the 2025 Belamarich Award for her doctoral dissertation in Biology titled “Forecasting the Soil Microbiome.” The selection committee was impressed by Zoey’s ability to quickly and effectively adapt bioinformatics tools to predict the distribution of microbial populations, and implement new methods for metagenomic analyses. The committee also appreciated the fact that Zoey’s tools and databases will be broadly useful to the wider research community, and her willingness to lend her skills to the projects of other lab members. More information about her research is below.
Zoey studied the ecology of the soil microbiome, using tools from bioinformatics, Bayesian statistics, and synthetic biology. She developed short-term microbial abundance forecasts at a continental scale, as well as fine-scale predictions of soil nutrient cycling. She's interested in using the power of microbial communities to solve the biggest problems facing humans and our planet. Her graduate work was funded by a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation, as well as a Microbiome Fellowship from the Boston University Microbiome Initiative.
Congratulations, Zoey!
Ritika Sibal Receives 2025 Denton Award
Ritika Sibal of the Knott Lab was selected as the winner of the 2025 Denton Award for her master’s research thesis in Biology titled “Investigating Positional Behavior and Locomotion of Wild Bornean Orangutans Using Behavioral Sampling and Computer Vision.” This award is given for excellence in scholarship and research accomplishment during a master’s thesis under the mentorship of a faculty member of the Department of Biology.
Ritika earned her B.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan in 2020. She is passionate about leveraging technology to advance animal behavior research. Prior to admission in the Master’s program, Ritika volunteered at Alma Bonita Animal Rescue, where she applied her engineering skills to design and build a custom 3D-printed wheelchair for a young goat. For her Master’s thesis, Ritika developed a novel computer vision model to non-invasively track joint positions in wild orangutans. She applied this model to investigate terrestrial gait in Bornean orangutans, analyzing differences across natural substrates and in comparison with chimpanzees. She also explored bipedalism and downclimbing in both species, offering insights into great ape locomotion in the wild. Her thesis provides a novel and robust methodology to non-invasively investigate animal behavior in situ.
Congratulations, Ritika!
JK Da-Anoy Receives 2025 Economakis Award
J
K Da-Anoy of the Davies Lab received the 2025 Alistair Economakis Award in Marine Science. This award provides support for graduate students conducting research in marine science with a focus on research related to ecology, evolution, or behavior.
JK is a Filipino PhD student fascinated by evolution of metazoan complexity. He received his Master’s degree at the University of the Philippines, exploring stress response and evolutionary neurobiology under Dr. Cecilia Conaco’s supervision.
Congratulations, JK!
Isabel Novick Receives 2025 Thomas H. Kunz Award
Isabel Novick, a Biology PhD student in the Mullen Lab, received the 2025 Thomas H. Kunz Award. The Kunz Award recognizes and celebrates exemplary contributions by an early or mid-career scientist to the study of bats, including measurable impacts on bat research and/or conservation, student mentoring, public education, and collaborations.
Isabel studies the phylogenetics, biogeography, and speciation of fungus moths (Tineidae family), specifically the widespread pest species, the webbing-clothes moth (Tineola bisselliella). She is most interested in the causes and consequences of synanthropic life-history evolution: how have these organisms colonized the anthropogenic environment?
This award provides support for Ecology, Behavior & Evolution (EBE) PhD candidates who have completed the qualifying exam, with a preference for those conducting field research in the award year. The award was established in 2015 in recognition and appreciation of Professor Thomas H. Kunz’s mentorship. His current and former graduate students established this award to serve as a lasting legacy of Tom’s contributions at BU and beyond. Learn more about Dr. Kunz and how you can support this award.
Congratulations, Isabel!
Corinne Vietorisz Receives 2025 AAUW American Dissertation Fellowship
Biology PhD candidate Corinne Vietorisz of the Bhatnagar Lab recently received a 2025 American Dissertation Fellowship from the American Association of University Women (AAUW). This Fellowship offsets scholars’ expenses during their final year of dissertation writing and is open to women in all fields of study, though those engaged in science, technology, engineering, and math fields, or those researching gender issues, are especially encouraged to apply.
The goal of Corinne's research is to understand the roles that different groups of fungi and bacteria play in soil nutrient cycling, and their contributions relative to plant and abiotic factors. Using high-throughput DNA sequencing, meta-transcriptomics, and biogeochemistry methods, she examines how microbial community composition and gene expression are linked to soil net ammonium, nitrate, and phosphate mineralization in forests. Her dissertation gives new insights into how microbial communities impact soil nitrogen and phosphorus cycling, which is necessary to understand how nutrient availability, plant growth, and carbon cycling will respond to our rapidly changing world.
Congratulations, Corinne!
Pamela Templer and Jennifer Bhatnagar Featured in The Brink
Dr. Pamela Templer and Dr. Jennifer Bhatnagar, along with Dr. Lucy Hutyra of Earth & Environment, were recently featured in The Brink, which delivers the latest news about research and discoveries from faculties and students.
Led by Bhatnagar, their research focuses on the reasoning behind why city trees grow significantly faster than their rural counterparts. Their effort has won national recognition, and the W. M. Keck Foundation will provide them with $1 million to fund their research. The Keck Foundation's programs support outstanding science, engineering, and medical research, focusing on novel proposals that strive to break new ground.
The Brink spoke with Bhatnagar to learn more about the survival instincts of urban trees, the societal importance of preservation efforts, and why Keck’s recognition matters. Here's a look into their interview:
The Brink: What’s the goal of your project and how will you be conducting your study?
Bhatnagar: Recently, my colleagues, Lucy Hutyra and Pamela Templer, discovered that urban trees grow four times faster than rural trees, despite a multitude of environmental stressors in cities and the loss of typical belowground mechanisms for trees to acquire nutrients, tolerate stress, and gain protection from pathogens. The goal of our project is to understand exactly how it is that trees grow faster in cities. We will test the hypothesis that urban trees operate by a different “rule of life” than rural trees, shifting their survival strategies from belowground roots to aboveground canopies, taking advantage of aboveground atmospheric pollution as a source of nutrients, water, and stress protection to support faster tree growth...
Read more about their research and Bhatnagar's interview with The Brink here.
Emerson Conrad-Rooney Receives the AAAS 2025 Student E-Poster Competition in the Environment and Ecology Award
Biology PhD student Emerson Conrad-Rooney of the Templer Lab received the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2025 Student E-Poster Competition in the Environment and Ecology award. The AAAS showcases undergraduate and graduate students' innovative research and communication skills and highlights the importance of making science accessible and engaging for all.
Emerson attended the AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston this February. There, they won first place in the AAAS 2025 Student E-Poster Competition in the Environment and Ecology category. Their poster was titled, “Effects of Growing Season Warming and Winter Freeze/Thaw Cycles on Tree Growth.”
They shared results from the Templer Lab’s decade-long Climate Change Across Seasons Experiment (CCASE) at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire, an experiment that quantifies the combined effects of growing season warming and a smaller winter snowpack on temperate forest ecosystem processes. Emerson measured tree growth using tree cores and found that after a decade of treatments, growing season warming increases annual rates of tree growth for red maple (the most common species); however, winter soil freeze/thaw cycles counteract this effect.
Congratulations, Emerson!
2025 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Honorable Mentions
The awardees and honorable mentions for the 2025 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) competition were recently posted and several Biology students were recognized. Biology PhD student Alejandra Castillo Cieza of the Bhatnagar Lab, MCBB PhD student Anne Curtis of the Chantranupong Lab, Biology PhD student Emma Daily of the Templer Lab, GPGG PhD candidate Abigail Fowler of the Tay Lab, and Biology PhD student Sara Parker of the Strickland Lab all received honorable mentions.
 Alejandra studies the effects of fire and urbanization on the microbiome and regeneration of oak woodlands in California. |
 Anne characterizes neuromelanin, a pigment lost in dopamine neurons during Parkinson’s Disease. Building off her stem cell experience at UC Santa Barbara, she is establishing the lab’s first induced pluripotent stem cell bank and optimizing the directed differentiation of midbrain organoids. She plans to track neuromelanin granule formation and function in her midbrain organoid model to better understand the role of this poorly studied pigment in dopaminergic neurons. |
E mma is interested in the relationships between climate change and forest biogeochemical cycles. Her current work investigates the effects of urbanization and forest fragmentation on the leaf surface. Urbanization and forest fragmentation are associated with higher levels of ambient particulate matter (PM) pollution, but the combined effects of these land use changes on microbes and PM on the leaf surface are unknown. By analyzing scanning electron microscope photos of leaves across a gradient of urbanization and forest fragmentation, Emma’s dissertation investigates the combined effects of these land use changes on the leaf surface environment, known as the phyllosphere. |
A bigail studies microglia and their role in Alzheimer's Disease. Microglia are the brain’s resident immune cells, and are critical for maintaining brain homeostasis. Abigail’s work investigates how microglial phagocytosis — the process by which cells engulf and clear debris — is altered in models of Alzheimer’s Disease. By combining genetic, molecular, and behavioral approaches, her research aims to deepen our understanding of how microglia contribute to the progression of neurodegeneration. |
 Sara is a first-year PhD student in the Strickland lab, where she studies color polymorphism, a phenomenon where multiple genetically distinct color-pattern phenotypes persist within a species. Color polymorphisms are somewhat of an evolutionary paradox, as within-population variation is expected to either lead to speciation or dwindle in the face of genetic drift. Sara focuses on Neotropical tortoise beetles in the genus Chelymorpha, whose color-pattern phenotypes range from plain red forms to red and black-striped forms, to glittering metallic gold forms with black spots. By integrating complex life histories with genomic sequencing technologies, Sara hopes to uncover the ecological and molecular mechanisms underlying color-pattern adaptation and diversity, particularly in insects. |
Congratulations to the honorable mentions on your hard work and this well-deserved honor.
KathrynAnn Odamah Receives 2025 Charles Terner Award
