News
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!
Dr. Segrè Research Featured on Cover of Cell
In a study published on March 9 in the journal Cell, researchers used systems biology approaches to study the emergence of primordial metabolic networks, showing that early biochemistry could have arisen prior to the introduction of phosphate.
The featured article can be viewed here for a short time and the full article can be found here.
Albert Mondragon Awarded the DeLill Nasser Award
MCBB PhD student, Albert Mondragon, of the McCall Lab recently received the DeLill Nasser Award for Professional Development in Genetics for the Spring 2017 for his research characterizing the molecular machinery controlling acidification during cell death and clearance in fruit flies. These awards are given to outstanding graduate student and postdocs to support travel to meetings and laboratory courses. Congrats Albert!
Dr. Khalil Receives Presidential Early Career Award
Assistant Professor Ahmad Khalil (BME) is among 102 scientists and researchers honored as recipients of the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). The PECASE award is the highest honor bestowed by the United States Government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers.
“BME is proud to now have two PECASE recipients among our assistant professors, which reflects the extraordinary quality of our young faculty as researchers,” says Professor John White, chair of BME. “It is worth noting that Professor Khalil is also a superb teacher. In his brief career, BME undergraduates have chosen him multiple times as the best professor in the department, and last year he won the award as the best professor in the entire College. We are very lucky to have him among our faculty.”
PECASE selection is highly competitive. Awardees must first receive an early career award from one of the research-funding government agencies. Awardees are then selected by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy based on a nomination process. Nominated by the National Science Foundation, Khalil was recipient of an NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award for a project that aims to use synthetic biology to study and control prions. Most famously known for their role in transmitting neurodegenerative diseases, Khalil is exploring the potential for prions to produce positive and adaptive functions in organisms, such as yeast cells.
According to the announcement by the White House, PECASE recipients are selected “for their pursuit of innovative research at the frontiers of science and technology and their commitment to community service as demonstrated through scientific leadership, public education, or community outreach.” Khalil joins fellow PECASE recipient Assistant Professor Xue Han (BME,) who won the award in 2014.
“I’m honored and thrilled to have won this award and be recognized at this level,” says Khalil. “The award is really a reflection of our wonderful collaborations, including with the late Susan Lindquist, the support we receive here at BU, and of course the hard work of the students and postdocs I have working alongside me.”
Dr. Zaman Profiled in Wall Street Journal
BME Professor Muhammad Zaman was recently profiled in the Wall Street Journal. In the article, he talks about the device he has developed to detect counterfeit drugs.
Read the full article.