Congratulations to Kelly Hogan and Viji Sathy for being special guests at the ELEVATE conference, hosted at Washington State University. The ELEVATE conference, meant to “engage learners, enhance voices, and advance teaching excellence,” will feature a special lunchtime workshop led by Hogan and Sathy and “will highlight the need for high structure in learning environments, and help teachers to model techniques designed to elicit equity in the classroom.” Read more about the conference here.

Happy 10th anniversary to the Galapagos Science Center! To celebrate this achievement, Todd Vision, Corbin Jones, and John Bruno all gave talks at the anniversary symposium last month. Some graduate students in John Bruno’s lab also presented posters. Be sure to check out the GSC on Twitter. Happy anniversary!

Congratulations to Eric Hastie and Laura Ott for being chosen as a recipient of the FY2023 Undergraduate Research Program Award, funded by the UNC System Undergraduate Research Program. Hastie and Ott were chosen for this award based on their proposal, “Student-Led CURE development and Biology Education Research with the Carolina Biology Education Research Lab.” Congrats, Eric and Laura!

UNC Biology’s assistant professor Sophie McCoy and Ph.D. candidate Ethan Cissell have been featured on the University’s website for their research published in Ecological Applications. From the article: “UNC-Chapel Hill biologists examine the links between microbial mats and a type of coral disease that has become an urgent conservation concern, and they suggest mitigation strategies to help reduce its spread. Coral reefs are valuable to marine ecosystems and the global economy. We talked with Sophie McCoy, assistant professor of biology in the College of Arts and Sciences, and Ph.D. candidate Ethan Cissell about their research published in the journal Ecological Applications.”

Use this link to read the feature and this link to access the article.

Congratulations to Kelly Hogan and her colleague Viji Sathy for their new book Inclusive Teaching: Strategies for Promoting Equity in the College Classroom. From the publisher’s website: “In a book written by and for college teachers, Kelly Hogan and Viji Sathy provide tips and advice on how to make all students feel welcome and included. They begin with a framework describing why explicit attention to structure enhances inclusiveness in both course design and interactions with and between students. Inclusive Teaching then provides practical ways to include more voices in a series of contexts: when giving instructions for group work and class activities, holding office hours, communicating with students, and more. The authors finish with an opportunity for the reader to reflect on what evidence to include in a teaching dossier that demonstrates inclusive practices.”

Check it out here! Also, be sure to take a look at their website here.

Congratulations to David Pfennig for his featured quotes in “Do we need a new theory of evolution?,” an article featured in The Guardian! From the article, “A new wave of scientists argues that mainstream evolutionary theory needs an urgent overhaul. Their opponents have dismissed them as misguided careerists – and the conflict may determine the future of biology.” Read the full article here.

After being named the Director of the Institute for Convergent Science just a few weeks ago, Dr. Gregory Copenhaver has been featured in an article for Innovate Carolina! In the article, Dr. Copenhaver explains how the ICS is “bringing multidisciplinary teams together to address society’s most intractable problems to benefit the citizens of North Carolina and beyond.” Check out the article here.

Congratulations to Dr. Bloom for his recent articles, both accepted and published. Dr. Bloom has two papers accepted for 2022, including “DNA damage reduces heterogeneity and coherence of chromatin motions” in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and “Polymer models reveal how chromatin modification can modulate force at the kinetochore” in Molecular Biology of the Cell.

Dr. Bloom also has four recently published articles available for viewing. “Simulating Dynamic Chromosome Compaction: Methods for Bridging in Silico to In Vivo” can be found in Methods in Molecular Biology. To read the abstract for free, check out this link. Also, be on the lookout for “Mechanisms of DNA Mobilization and Sequestration Genes 2022” in Mechanisms of DNA Damage, Repair and Mutagenesis. To learn more about this article, use this link. Bloom has another article in the Journal of Cell Science called, “Shaping centromeres to resist mitotic spindle forces” which you can learn more about here. Finally, you can find “Cdc7-mediated phosphorylation of Cse4 regulates high-fidelity chromosome segregation in budding yeast” in Molecular Biology of the Cell at this link.

Great job, Dr. Bloom!

Citations:

Locatelli, M., Lawrimore, J, Lin,H., Sanaullah, S., Seitz, C., Segall, D., Kefer, P., Moreno, NS., Lietz, B., Anderson, R., Holmes, J., Yuan, C., Holzwarth, G., Bloom, K.S., Liu, J., Bonin, K. Vidi, P.A., DNA damage reduces heterogeneity and coherence of chromatin motions (2022) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., USA (accepted)

Lawrimore, J., de Larminat, S. Cook, D., Friedman, B., Doshi, A., Yeh, E., and Bloom K. (2022) Polymer models reveal how chromatin modification can modulate force at the kinetochore. Molecular Biology of the Cell 2022 (accepted).

He Y, Adalsteinsson D, Walker B, Lawrimore J, Forest MG, Bloom, K. (2022) Simulating Dynamic Chromosome Compaction: Methods for Bridging In Silico to In Vivo. Methods Mol Biol. 2022;2415:211-220. doi: 10.1007/978-1-0716-1904-9_16.

Bloom, K., and Kolbin, D. (2022) Mechanisms of DNA Mobilization and Sequestration Genes 2022, 13, 352. https://doi.org/10.3390/genes13020352.

Lawrimore, J., and Bloom, K. (2022) Shaping centromeres to resist mitotic spindle forces J Cell Sci. 2022 135, jcs259532. doi:10.1242/jcs.259532.

Mishra PK, Wood H, Stanton J, Au WC, Eisenstatt JR, Boeckmann L, Sclafani RA, Weinreich M, Bloom KS, Thorpe PH, Basrai MA. Cdc7-mediated phosphorylation of Cse4 regulates high-fidelity chromosome segregation in budding yeast Mol Biol Cell. 2021 Nov 1;32(21):ar15.

UNC Biology’s Ken Lohmann was featured on an episode of Tai Asks Why, a CBC Podcast. In the episode, entitled “How do animals know where they are going,” Lohmann discusses how marine life navigate! Check out the podcast here.

Congratulations to Greg Copenhaver for being named both the Chancellor’s Eminent Professor of Convergent Science and the new director of the Institute for Convergent Science! According to this article, “As director of the Institute for Convergent Science, Copenhaver will bring multidisciplinary teams together to address society’s most intractable problems to benefit the citizens of North Carolina and beyond.” Congratulations, Greg!