Victoria Zdanowicz Receives 2024 Denton Award
Victoria Zdanowicz of the Knott and Scmitt Labs was selected as the winner of the 2024 Denton Award for her master’s research thesis in Biology titled “Local ecology and dietary selectivity at indicators of differing orangutan habitat quality within Gunung Palung National Park, Borneo, Indonesia.” 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.
Victoria conducted a challenging field study of how anthropogenic disturbance impacts the trees and lianas utilized by wild orangutans in Gunung Palung National Park, West Kalimantan (Borneo), Indonesia. Her research focused on understanding why orangutans utilize degraded secondary forest habitats, analyzing relationships between forest structure data, plant phenology data (fruiting and flowering patterns), dietary selectivity records, and nest survey data. She discovered that orangutan nests vide higher densities of preferred fruits than primary (undisturbed) forests. Her thesis illustrates that degraded habitats can safeguard wild populations of threatened and endangered species, advancing our understanding of anthropogenically altered habitat suitability for wildlife. Victoria now conducts outreach work at the Stone Zoo.
Congratulations, Victoria!
2024 Master’s Research Award Recipient
Charley Mitchell of the Novak and Finnerty Labs is the inaugural recipient of the Master’s Research Award. This award provides a one-semester Research Assistantship to a continuing MS student who stands out in their field of research.
During Charley's undergraduate career at Boston University, he looked at the effect of fish grazing on seagrass beds and its potential impact on carbon sequestration. For his master’s research, he is examining the potential microbial shift in seagrass that contains seagrass wasting disease (SWD) vs. those that don’t, as well as analyzing whether SWD impacts the plant's ability to sequester carbon. In his free time, Charley likes to play with his cat and run along the Charles River.
Congratulations, Charley!
Anna Berenson Receives 2024 Belamarich Award
Dr. Anna Berenson of the Fuxman Bass Lab was selected as the winner of the 2024 Belamarich Award for her doctoral dissertation in Molecular Biology, Cell Biology & Biochemistry titled “Paired Yeast One-Hybrid Assays to Detect DNA-Binding Cooperativity and Antagonism Across Transcription Factors.” The selection committee was impressed by the quality of Anna’s work, its combination of methods development, observational studies, and computational analyses, and its potential for informing future research in the field of gene regulation. More information about her research is below.
For her dissertation, Anna developed paired yeast one-hybrid (pY1H) assays to study interactions between pairs of transcription factor (TF) proteins and DNA regions of interest. In addition to identifying cooperative DNA binding of TF pairs, pY1H assays also revealed extensive DNA-binding antagonism between TFs, constituting a previously underappreciated mechanism to regulate TF-DNA binding. Anna further applied pY1H assays to study the role of TF-TF relationships in cytokine gene regulation, the effect of alternative TF isoform usage on these relationships, and the effect of viral proteins on human TF-DNA binding. This work contributes to our understanding of how TF-DNA interactions are specified and provides a useful method that can be applied to further elucidate TF-TF relationships and their role in transcriptional regulation.
Anna will be continuing her academic career as a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Dr. Jef Boeke at the NYU Langone Health Institute for Systems Genetics.
Congratulations, Anna!
2024 Master’s Merit Scholarship Recipient
Ritika Sibal of the Knott Lab is this year’s recipient of the Master’s Merit Scholarship for continuing MS students. This scholarship is awarded to a current MS student who stands out in their studies.
Ritika is a second-year master’s student in the Knott Primate Ecology and Conservation Lab. During her undergraduate career at the University of Michigan, Ritika used machine learning to analyze and interpret bottlenose dolphin swimming patterns. For her Master’s research, she continues to study movement by using computer vision and thermal imaging to quantitatively characterize orangutan locomotion. This summer, she will be traveling to Indonesia to conduct her fieldwork. In her free time, Ritika enjoys taking long walks with her dog while sipping on Boba tea.
Congratulations, Ritika!
2024 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Recipients and Honorable Mentions
The awardees and honorable mentions for the 2024 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) competition were recently posted and several Biology students were recognized. MCBB PhD student Kristen Harder of the McCall Lab, Biology PhD student Dylan Mankel of the Marlow Lab, and Biology PhD student Elif Ozsen of the Chantranupong Lab were awarded with 3-year graduate research fellowships. Biology PhD students Catherine Gill of the Gilmore Lab and Victoria Guarino and Yu (Emily) Yang of the Wunderlich Lab received honorable mentions.
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![]() Now supported by the NSF GRFP, he will continue his work on chimneys collected from some of the deepest and hottest hydrothermal systems currently known. He will be utilizing modern sequencing and microscopy approaches in order to derive the fundamental rules governing microbial community structure, activity, and biogeochemical impacts within these unique rock substrates.
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![]() As a graduate student, Elif will build upon her interest in neuronal cell biology to study how signaling pathways and organelles are remodeled across the unique cellular architecture of neurons. She will focus on nutrient sensing, an evolutionarily conserved and lysosomal-dependent process that is poorly understood in the brain. She will develop high-resolution imaging methods to reveal the spatiotemporal dynamics of nutrient sensing and define how these dynamics are coupled to lysosomal state at a subcellular scale. Her work will advance our understanding of how neurons sense nutrients to maintain health and how this process goes awry in diseases such as neurodegeneration and epilepsy.
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Congratulations to the awardees and honorable mentions on your hard work and this well-deserved honor.
Abigail Robinson Receives BU Women’s Council Award
Abigail Robinson, a Biology PhD student in the Mullen Lab, received the BU Women’s Council Award.
The BU Women’s Council was founded and dedicated to helping the talented young women who have chosen to pursue graduate degrees at BU.
Abby studies how predator avoidance strategies, like mimicry, shape communities. Batesian mimicry occurs when palatable mimics gain protection from predators by evolving phenotypic resemblance to a chemically defended model species. Using a tri-trophic community ecology approach, her work aims to understand factors that maintain Batesian mimicry in native North American butterfly populations. Understanding how mimicry impacts community dynamics will give valuable insight into how mimetic species may respond to changing environments.
Congratulations Abby!
2024 Marion R. Kramer Scholarship Recipients
Jillian Ness, an MCBB PhD student in the Wunderlich Lab, and Kathryn Atherton, a PhD candidate in the Bioinformatics program and a BU URBAN program trainee working in the Bhatnagar Lab, received the 2024 Marion R. Kramer Scholarship.
In Jillian's research, she and her team studied how enhancers work in development, focusing on redundant enhancers, or "shadow enhancers," linked to developmental genes. These enhancers are remarkably abundant in animals and can compensate under conditions of stress to drive normal development.
She is exploring how these enhancers function, as well as how they are created and maintained in animal genomes. Her work involves creating simplified enhancer models in Drosophila and analyzing how they work. In parallel, she performs evolutionary studies on shadow enhancer sequences to understand genomic events from which the sequences originate. Ultimately, she aims to understand enhancer sequences to improve predictions of perturbations that lead to developmental disease in embryos.
Kathryn's research focuses on how urbanization impacts tree health via the microbes that live on tree leaves and roots and in soil. She aims to understand how these microbes interact with each other and trees by predicting their genetic functions and building networks of their interactions. This summer, she is working with Speak for the Trees Boston to identify places where their tree planting and giveaway initiatives on private land can intersect with the City of Boston’s aims to expand Boston’s tree canopy.
Congratulations Jillian and Kathryn!
Morgan Bennett-Smith Receives Dana Wright Fellowship
Morgan Bennett-Smith, a second year PhD student in the Buston Lab, received the Dana Wright Fellowship.
Morgan's research explores the ways that the clownfish - sea anemone mutualism changes during different conditions, in particular, climatic stress events. He works on two model systems: the Red Sea clownfish (Amphiprion bicinctus) at sites in Saudi Arabia, and the orange clownfish (Amphiprion percula) at sites in Kimbe Bay, Papua New Guinea. Specifically, Morgan is interested in the impacts of coral reef bleaching events on both mutualistic partners.
This fellowship was established in memory of Dana Wright (CAS ’00), an alum of the BU Marine Program. After completing her studies, Wright went on to work in research in right whale acoustics at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod.
Congratulations, Morgan!
Abigail Robinson Receives 2023 Thomas H. Kunz Award
Abigail Robinson, a Biology PhD student in the Mullen Lab, received the 2024 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.
In her research, Abby studies how predator avoidance strategies, like mimicry, shape communities. Batesian mimicry occurs when palatable mimics gain protection from predators by evolving phenotypic resemblance to a chemically defended model species.
Using a tri-trophic community ecology approach, her work aims to understand factors that maintain Batesian mimicry in native North American butterfly populations. Understanding how mimicry impacts community dynamics will give valuable insight into how mimetic species may respond to changing environments.
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, Abby!
Alejandro Rondon Ortiz Receives Brenton R. Lutz Award
Alejandro Rondon Ortiz, a Biology PhD student in the Wolozin Lab, received the 2024 Brenton R. Lutz Award.
In his study, Alejandro investigated the protein interaction networks (PINs) from the autophagy receptor SQSTM1/p62. SQSTM1/p62 regulates proteostasis by degrading cellular cargo, including protein aggregates. He employed proximity labeling and proteomics to dissect SQSTM1/p62 PINs under various conditions and revealed novel interacting proteins.
Using these approaches, he demonstrated that dysregulation of proteostasis, induced by small molecules or tau aggregates, shifts SQSTM1/p62 interactors towards stress-associated PINs. This shift is also observed in proteostasis-related diseases like neurodegeneration. These findings highlight the adaptive nature of SQSTM1 PINs and also offer PINs datasets, which can be potentially exploited to explore novel therapeutic targets.
This award provides support for PhD candidates conducting research in neurobiology or neuroscience and have made significant contributions to their field. Brenton R. Lutz was the first person to receive an MD/PhD at Boston University, receiving his PhD in 1916. He later became a Professor and Chairman of BU’s Department of Biology. Dr. Lutz also gave the first University Lecture at BU on December 11, 1950 “The Living Blood Vessels.”
Congratulations, Alejandro!