Faculty News
Dr. Celenza Appointed Director of UROP
BU Biology Professor John Celenza has been appointed as the Director of the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) at Boston University. UROP was started in 1997, and since it began, it has connected more than 4,000 BU undergraduates to a range of extraordinary research experiences across the natural sciences, medicine, the arts, humanities, and social sciences, both here in Boston and abroad.
As a Professor of Biology and Directory of the Program in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Professor Celenza has long been involved in UROP as a mentor as well as a member of the award review committee. Professor Celenza's goals as Director of the UROP program include further developing the program's multidisciplinary reach and impact, as well as creating and supporting opportunities that align with the BU Hub curriculum.
Congratulations to Professor Celenza!
Dr. Karen Allen Awarded 3 Grants in the 2016/2017 Academic Year
Professor Allen was awarded 3 grants in the 2016/2017 academic year. One was awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), while two were awarded through the National Institute of Health (NIH), one directly and the other via a subaward agreement with the Scripps Research Institute. The Scripps subaward will study diverse approaches to treating botulism and is titled “Trehalose-6-phosphate phosphatase inhibitors as anti-helminthics” and is a yearlong award. Her NIH Award is a 2 Year Award for that will study phosphatase inhibitors is titled: “Trehalose-6-phosphate phosphatase inhibitors as anti-helminthics.” The NSF Award is a Collaborative Award with Professor Barbara Imperiali of MIT and is titled “Collaborative research: Development of a platform enabling analysis of membrane protein interactions” and also includes 2 Years of research support.
Congratulations to Professors Allen and on her productive year!
Dr. Adrian Whitty Awarded 4 Years of Funding from the NIH
Professor Whitty was awarded a 4 Year grant by the National Institute of Health (NIH) to further his studies of NF-kB Modulators. The title of the Research Project is: Structure and Mechanism of NF-kB Essential Modulator (NEMO).
This funding will allow Professor Whitty and his Co-PIs Professors Karen Allen of Chemistry and Thomas Gilmore of Biology to advance our understanding of the signaling scaffold protein NF-κB essential modulator (NEMO), a component of the inhibitor of κB kinase (IKK) complex, which is a key regulatory node for NF-κB signaling. In addition to NEMO playing a role in the chronic hyperactivity of NF-κB in human diseases, mutations in NEMO are found in several human immunodeficiency diseases. The long-term goals of the project are to understand how scaffolding proteins such as NEMO use conformational change to regulate the functional interactions between the signaling proteins that are bound to them, to elucidate the structural basis for disease-causing mutations in key regions of NEMO, and to identify new target sites for small molecule drugs that modulate NEMO activity.
Congratulations to Professors Whitty, Allen and Gilmore and their research team!
Dr. Naya to serve on NIH Study Section
BU Biology Associate Professor Francisco Naya has been invited to serve as a permanent member on the Cardiovascular Differentiation and Development (CDD) study section at the NIH. Members are selected on the basis of their demonstrated competence and achievement in their scientific discipline as evidenced by the quality of research accomplishments, publications in scientific journals, and other significant scientific activities, achievements and honors. Study sections review grant applications submitted to the NIH, make recommendations on these applications to the appropriate NIH national advisory council or board, and survey the status of research in their fields of science. These functions are of great value to medical and allied research in this country.
Dr. Joyce Wong Presents De Lisi Distinguished Lecture
Read the full article in ENG News.
Deborah Perlstein’s group, has received the 2017 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship
Dr. Bansil Featured in BU Research
Physics professor Rama Bansil and graduate student Maira Constantino (GRS ’17) have been featured in BU Research for their work on Helicobacter pylori, a corkscrew-shaped bacterium that can cause ulcers and stomach cancer. Along with collaborators, they have shown that H. pylori is able to traverse the gel-like mucin lining of the stomach using a combination of enzymatic secretions and a spiral swimming motion. Their work has implications for drug delivery and cancer treatment. Read the full story in BU Research.
Dr. Bradham Awarded New NSF Grant
Biology Department Professor Cynthia Bradham has been awarded a three year National Science Foundation grant from the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems. The title of the research abstract is “The Molecular Basis of Skeletal Patterning” and Professor Bradham is the sole P.I. on the grant.
Dr. Gilmore Gives Plenary Lecture at BCI Symposium
Tom Gilmore, Professor and Associate Chair of Biology, gave a plenary lecture at the 19th Annual
Biomedical & Comparative Immunology Symposium in Miami, FL, on March 31, 2017. His talk, "A Billion Years of NF-kappaB," described his lab's work on a key protein involved in immune diseases from marine invertebrates to humans.
Dr. Segrè Awarded Hariri Institute Research Award
With BU Physics Professor Kirill Korolev, BU Biology Professor Daniel Segrè has been granted a $20,000 research award from the Hariri Institute. The funded project aims to develop a computational tool that can use microbial genomes to predict microbial interactions and ultimately ecosystem dynamics. Beyond prediction, this computational tool will be used to develop design principles for artificial communities and infer microbial interactions in medical and environmental microbiomes. The latter constitutes a major challenge faced by the microbiome research today as interactions are inferred from patterns of co-occurrence in cross-sectional data or temporal correlations in longitudinal data. The computational tool will constrain interaction types using genome-scale metabolic models and remove network motifs inconsistent with the need to co-localize in space. As a result, it will considerably improve the power of sequencing surveys to identify interactions. Congratulations to Professors Segrè and Korolev!