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Tuesday May 29th, 2012 Refreshments & Reception – 10:00 am Student Contact: Ken Lindsay 685-4961 To request disability accommodations, contact the Disability Services Office at least 10 days in advance at (206)543-5450 voice; 543-6452 TTY; 685-7264 FAX; dso@u.washington.edu Two members of the department recently won undergraduate mentoring awards. Hannele Ruohola-Baker was 1 of 5 UW faculty members honored as an undergraduate research mentor by the Annual UW Undergraduate Research Symposium (URP). Post-doc Justin Siegel was also selected as the non-faculty awardee. The URP facilitates research experiences for undergraduates with UW faculty members across the disciplines. URP maintains a listing of current UW research opportunities and national programs. Nearly 1000 projects were presented at this year’s May 18 event. Students were asked to nominate their mentors for recognition. Said the student who nominated Dr. Ruohola-Baker, “Hannele is incredibly brilliant; I learn from her every second I am with her, whether she intends it as a learning experience or not. When she deliberately teaches and supports, which is very, very often, the impact on her students, of all ages, is magnificent. I learn from Hannele all the time, and I think that is what being a good mentor is about, because the things I learn are not just about lab work, but how to balance a team, have a life, and preside over a roaring torrent of fascinating research.” And Justin’s nominator said, “”Justin truly devotes himself to making sure that his students learn and understand biochemistry. I met Justin when I was a student with no research experience, and despite being a busy post-doc, he took the time to personally teach me numerous research techniques. Whenever I am unsure how to proceed or just want general advice, Justin will go out of his way to help me and answer emails and phone calls immediately. Without the fabulous mentorship of Justin, I would never have been able to conduct my research over the past year at UW.” C O N G R A T U L A T I O N S H A N N E L E & J U S T I N ! If you are interested in the URP, more info can be found at: http://www.washington.edu/research/urp/index.html  Seth Cooper The Association for Computing Machinery has given recent UW doctoral graduate Seth Cooper its Doctoral Dissertation Award, recognizing the best thesis published in 2011 in the field of computer science. Cooper’s thesis, “A Framework for Scientific Discovery through Video Games,” explored how computer games could be used to solve difficult scientific problems. He was advised by Zoran Popović, professor of computer science and engineering. Cooper was chief architect of Foldit, a computer game in which players help to solve the structure of proteins that play a role in HIV and other diseases. He is now creative director at the UW’s Center for Game Science. The association will honor Cooper on June 16 in San Francisco.
Seattle Ubiquitin Research Group – Meeting #6 Thursday May 3, 2012 “mCry2 has an open FAD binding pocket which can be “Characterization of ubiquitin-mediated protein quality BEER and pizza will be served! First-year student Cassie Bryan and second-year students Katja Dove (Klevit Lab) and Joe Horsman (Miller Lab) were awarded Honorable Mentions by the NSF for their Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) applications. The GRFP is a competitive federal grant program that recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students studying basic science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The full list of awardees can be found here. A March 23, 2012 paper in EMBO, the European Molecular Biology Organization journal, from senior author, Hannele Ruohola-Baker, shows embryonic mouse stem cells undergo a metabolic shift as they are implanting in the uterus. That shift causes the cells to behave similarly to cancer cells and is the first time this metabolic slow-down has been shown to be associated with normal development rather than disease. These findings have implications for both stem cell research and cancer therapy. UW Today also reported on the findings. Collaborators on the work were Wenyu Zhou, of the UW Department of Biology; Michael Choi of the UW Department of Biochemistry; Daciana Margineantu of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center; Lilyana Margaretha of the UW Molecular and Cellular Biology Program; Jennifer Hesson, Christopher Cavanaugh and Carol Ware, all from the UW Department of Comparative Medicine; C. Anthony Blau of the UW Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology; Marshall S. Horwitz of the UW Department of Pathology; and David Hockenberry of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. All but two of the scientists on this study are members of the UW Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine.  Diagram illustrating circuitry that mediates loss of appetite after acute ablation of hypothalamic AgRP neurons Richard Palmiter and collaborators Qi Wu and Dr. Michael S. Clark have identified the parabrachial nucleus (PBN) as a hub that integrates signals from several brain regions to bidirectionally modulate feeding and body weight. Their experiments help define an important neural pathway that could be valuable for the development of new treatments of various eating disorders, including nausea and anorexia nervosa. More information on their work can be found in their March 14 2012 Nature paper or this UW Today article for general audiences. Dr. Palmiter’s collaborators are located at the Eagles Diabetes Research Center and Department of Pharmacology at Carver College of Medicine, University of Iowa (formerly UW) and the UW Department of Psychiatry and Behaviorial Sciences respectively.
UW iGEM team with their trophy, the "BioBrick". Photo credit David Appleyard The 2011 UW iGEM team was awarded the top prize at the iGEM (international Genetically Engineered Machines competition) World Championship Jamboree, held at on the MIT campus in Cambridge, MA on November 5-7. This follows their first place finish in the Americas Regional iGEM [...] Assistant Professor of Biochemistry Dana Miller has won an Ellison Medical Foundation New Scholar in Aging award for 2011. [...] BMSD Graduate student Justin Siegel, who works jointly with David Baker (Biochemistry) and Michael Gelb (Chemistry, adjunct in Biochemistry), has received the prestigious 2011 Weintraub Award for computational design of an enzyme catalyst for a stereoselective bimolecular Diels-Alder reaction [Siegel et al. (2010) Science 329, 309-313]. The award honors Harold Weintraub, a founding member of the [...] |
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