Pharmacology In the News 

The University of Washington Pharmacology Department is inaugurating an annual lecture series in memory of Laura Sheard, a fifth year graduate student who lost her life in a tragic car accident in Seattle on November 13th, 2011. Laura Sheard was an exceptionally talented and highly accomplished graduate student, who has touched the lives of many colleagues across and beyond the department and the university campus. Her untimely passing is a tremendous loss to her family and friends, the department and the university, and the large scientific community in life sciences. To remember Laura and recognize her achievements, The Pharmacology Graduate Program and the UW Graduate School is awarding her a posthumous Ph.D. and the Pharmacology Department is launching the Laura Sheard Graduate Lecture annual seminar series in the same month of her birthday. Dr. Keiko Torii, Professor of the Department of Biology at the University of Washington and Investigator of Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Betty Moore Foundation, will be the first speaker of the lecture series.

12:30 PM May 17, 2012, Room S-060, Foege Building
Eric Fredrickson, Characterization of Ubiqiutin-mediated Protein Quality Control in the Nucleus

3:00 PM April 10, 2012, Room G-328, Health Sciences Center
Jinti Wang, Molecular Studies of Alpha-Scorpion Toxin Interactions with Voltage-gated Sodium Channels

11:00 AM March 16, 2012, D-209, Health Sciences Center
Lauren Richardson, Characterizing the Role of Protein Deubiquitination in Ribosome Biogenesis

Four students in Pharmacology Department laboratories, Alipi Naydenov, Michelle Oeser, Mario Rosasco, and Jenn Whiting, attended the Kobe University – University of Washington Joint Symposium on Integrative Membrane Biology and Signal Transduction Medicine, which was held December 13-14 in Kobe, Japan. In parallel to the sister city relationship Seattle has with the city of Kobe, UW and Kobe University have a sister school agreement. As part of Kobe University Global Center of Excellence Programs, 10 UW graduate students were invited to attend the two day meeting. The students attended talks, took part in a poster session, toured labs at Kobe University and traveled to Kyoto with students and faculty. Mario Rosasco received an award for his poster presentation.

Professor Neil Nathanson is one of nine UW-affiliated researchers that are among 539 new Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as a Fellow of AAAS is an honor bestowed upon members by their peers. Fellows are recognized for meritorious efforts to advance science or its applications.
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Professor Carla Grandori will be giving a talk titled Cures for Cancer – Hidden in Plain Sight? An Enterprise to Accelerate their Discovery, 8 AM, Tuesday, November 29, in the Walker-Ames Room of Kane Hall as part of the 2011 Presidential Entrepreneurial Faculty Fellows Lecture Series.
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Professor Sandra Bajjalieh is one of three recipients of the 2011 McKnight Technological Innovations in Neuroscience Awards, an award given to advance new and unusual approaches to understanding brain function. Her project, Developing Biosensors for Signaling Lipids, will generate sensors to track the generation of signaling lipids in cells in real time.
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Professor Randall Moon was elected to the Washington State Academy of Sciences in recognition of his distinguished and continuing scientific achievements.
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The department congratulates Dr. Travis Biechele for his being recognized as having given the top oral presentation at the WNT meeting held at UCLA. His talk, on the roles of beta catenin signaling in melanoma and on candidate combination therapies for treating this disease, was selected from nearly 100 presentations, which included established investigators as well as senior fellows and graduate students. Travis received his Ph.D. in 2010 from the Department of Pharmacology, working in the lab of Randall Moon. Since then, he has been a joint senior fellow with Dr. Moon and Dr. Andy Chien, Assistant Professor in the Division of Medicine, Department of Dermatology, supported by the Dermatology training grant.

UW Pharmacology now has a Facebook page here!
For graduate student alums, past postdoctoral fellows and staff that have been a part of the University of Washington Pharmacology Department, this will be a forum for connection, and also we, in the Department of Pharmacology, would like to know where you are and what you are doing!