News
Dr. Kathleen Morgan to Receive Evans Center Excellent Research Collaborator Award
From Sargent College News:
The Evans Center for Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research selected Kathleen Morgan, PhD, as a 2018 recipient of the Evans Center IBR Excellent Research Collaborator Award. Morgan is a professor in the Department of Health Sciences, programs in Human Physiology.
Read the full article: http://www.bu.edu/sargent/professor-kathleen-morgan-to-receive-evans-center-excellent-research-collaborator-award/
Dr. Allyson Sgro Receives Grant to Study One of the National Science Foundation’s Big 10 Ideas
Assistant Professor Allyson Sgro (BME) has been awarded a two-year $150,000 grant under the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) 10 Big Ideas program to elucidate how cells work together to form groups.
Read the full article in BME News.
MCBB Faculty in Engineering Awarded $1.5M DOE Grant
Three ENG researchers, Assistant Professor Mary Dunlop (BME), Assistant Professor Wilson Wong (BME), and Professor Ji-Xin Cheng (ECE, BME, Chemistry, Physics), were awarded a three-year, $1.5M Department of Energy (DOE) grant to develop technology to better understand and measure the synthesis of biofuels in living cells.
Read the full article in BME News
Dr. Christine Cheng Awarded National Institute On Drug Abuse Grant
Department of Biology Assistant Professor Christine Cheng and Assistant Dean of Boston University School of Medicine and Associate Professor (BUMC) Andrew Henderson received a three-year, $2.9 million R61 award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) at the National Institutes of Health to study the effect of opioid use disorder on HIV latent reservoirs and immune dysfunction.
Dr. Juan Fuxman Bass Receives Outstanding Investigator Award from NIH
Assistant Professor Juan Fuxman Bass has received a 5-year $2.1 million Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) from the National Institutes of Health to study the transcriptional regulation of immune genes and explore how this regulation is perturbed by viral agents.
“This grant provides the lab with a lot of freedom to explore novel research avenues,” said Dr. Fuxman Bass, Assistant Professor of Biology.
The MIRA is a grant that provides support for the research program in an early stage investigator’s laboratory. This grant aims to increase the stability of funding, which could enhance the investigator’s ability to take on ambitious scientific projects and approach problems more creatively.
Dr. Karen Allen Featured in C&EN
From BU Chemistry News:Professor Karen Allen‘s work with Dr. Barbara Imperiali of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and their research groups work on the 2.7-Å-resolution crystal structure of a phosphoglycosyl transferase called PglC were featured in C&EN Structural Biology on May 23rd, 2018.
As Co-PI on a National Institute of Health grant, Dr. Allen and Dr. Imperiali’s work on PglC has allowed them to uncover the enzyme’s unique mechanism, which permits hydrophilic and hydrophobic molecules to interact without ever having to leave their natural environments.
Sarah Yunes Receives Outstanding Teaching Fellow Award for Biology, 2017/2018
MCBB Ph.D. candidate, Sarah Yunes, of the Hansen lab was awarded the Outstanding Teaching Fellow of the Year for Biology, academic year 2017/2018. Sarah has served for eight semesters as a teaching fellow in Biology, including for BI 107 and 108 (Biology 1 and 2), two of the largest and broadest introductory courses on campus, and for BB 522 (Molecular Biology Laboratory), a highly interactive upper-level hands-on course.
Her evaluations from students emphasize the clarity of her explanations and offer feedback such as “passionate about teaching” and “supportive and engaging.” In sum, Sarah’s efforts over the last several years have contributed greatly to the success of the teaching mission of the Department of Biology. In the words of her teaching mentors Dr. Spilios and Dr. Gilmore, “her service to the department is unparalleled.”
Beyond her teaching accomplishments, Sarah’s own research, focused on the role of the transcription factor LSF and its role in cell cycle control and oncogene addiction in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), emphasizes novel and exciting approaches to precisely manipulate LSF activity at specific points during the cell cycle, and is oriented toward identifying the mechanism underlying HCC “addiction” to LSF, since blocking LSF function blocks the carcinoma progression. Ultimately, Sarah’s work will contribute to novel therapies to combat this type of cancer.
Dr. Catherine Klapperich’s Research Featured in BU Research
Read the full article in BU Research
Dr. Kathleen Morgan’s Collaborative Work Featured in BU Today
Dr. Kathy Morgan, a professor at Sargent College and Dr. Tyone Porter, pose for a photo on Wednesday, December 20, 2017.
The team are working at “the interface of the cardiovascular system and the brain.”
Photo by Jackie Ricciardi for Boston University Photography
Read the full article "Hearts, Minds, and Microbubbles" in BU Today: http://www.bu.edu/today/2018/hearts-minds-and-microbubbles/
Dr. Beeler Awarded a $975k Grant from DARPA
Assistant Professor Aaron Beeler was recently awarded a $975,000 grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) titled “High-Throughput Chemistry Platform (HTCP) for Reaction Screening.” The funding, which will last a year, will help Professor Beeler and his Co-PI’s, Professors Scott Schaus andJohn Porco of Chemistry and Professor Eric Kolaczyk of Mathematics, develop a proof-of-concept High-Throughput Chemistry Platform (HTCP) capable of interrogating unexplored chemical “reaction space”. The platform will be used to significantly expand the scope and knowledge around known reactions and to discover unknown transformations through reaction discovery.