See photo for names. Initiates includes biology majors and biology minors. Congratulations on all of your hard work!!!

Dr. Allen Hurlbert has been featured in UNC’s The Well for his work on the Avian Diet Database, “the first comprehensive online database of North American bird diets to standardize data and streamline research.”

Read the full article here!

The 2021 Hettleman Talks will take place virtually on Tuesday, November 9th at 12pm as part of University Research week. Please register at https://researchweek.unc.edu/event/hettleman-talks/ to receive the zoom link.

Attend these TEDX-style presentations from the 2021 winners of the Phillip and Ruth Hettleman Prizes for Artistic and Scholarly Achievement – one of the most distinguished awards our early-career faculty can receive. The talks will provide an engaging look into these distinguished early career scholars’ work in the fields of astronomy, biology, communications, and public health equity.

This year’s Hettleman Prize awardees are:

Nicholas Law
Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy
“The Entire Sky Every Second: UNC’s New High-Speed Telescopes”

Alice Marwick
Associate Professor in the Department of Communication
“Morally-Motivated Networked Harassment as Normative Reinforcement”

Daniel Matute
Associate Professor in the Department of Biology
“The Origins of Biological Diversity”

Cleo Samuel-Ryals
Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management
“Getting into Good Trouble: Centering Racial Equity in Cancer Care Quality”

Dr. Frank Conlon‘s research has been featured in a post on UNC Health’s website! The article, titled “Male-Female Differences in Heart Disease Could Start Before Birth,” goes into Conlon’s research, in which Conlon and Dr. Wei Shi “conducted a first-of-its-kind analysis to discover differences in how particular proteins in heart cells are expressed in genetically diverse male and female mice during the earliest embryonic stage, well before sex hormones influence cells.”

Read the article here.

Check out Public Radio East’s post on UNC researchers studying why sea turtles die featuring Dr. Ken Lohmann! Read and listen here.

Congratulations to Sabrina Burmeister, who recently received a Mid-Career Award from the NSF IOS program! The award will support her research on functional genomics of spatial memory in poison frogs.

Learn more about Dr. Burmeister’s work here.

Special thanks to Tony Perdue, who is retiring after having run Biology’s Microscopy Core since 1992. Maintaining/acquiring cutting-edge microscopes, training/mentoring hundreds of postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduates, his legacy will live on in the cell biologists around the globe who trained in his facility.

Lewis Naisbett-Jones, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Biology, has been featured in an article for UNC’s Endeavors for his research on satellite telemetry to track the migrations of sheepshead fish near the North Carolina coast. Congratulations, Lewis!

From the article: “Commercial and recreational fishing are important contributors to the North Carolina economy, but there are still lots of unknowns about many fish species. UNC–Chapel Hill PhD student Lewis Naisbett-Jones is trying to unravel some of that mystery by tracking the migration of one popular species in the fishing community: sheepshead.”

Read the full article here.

UNC Biology Ph.D. students, Esteban Agudo and Savannah Ryburn have been featured on the website for the Center for Galapagos Studies. Congratulations, Esteban and Savannah!

The website post, called “UNC PhD students turn challenges of pandemic into opportunities in Galapagos,” gives detailed profiles of both Esteban and Savannah, as well as the work they have been doing with the UNC Center for Galapagos Studies. Read the full article here.

Congratulations to Dr. Daniel Matute, one of the winners of the 2021 Phillip and Ruth Hettleman Prizes for Artistic and Scholarly Achievement. According to the announcement, “The annual Phillip and Ruth Hettleman Prizes for Artistic and Scholarly Achievement have been awarded to four promising faculty members who exemplify groundbreaking and innovative research along with future career promise.” Along with Dr. Matute, Dr. Nicholas Law (Physics and Astronomy), Dr. Alice Marwick (Communication), and Dr. Cleo Samuel-Ryals (Health Policy and Management) also won the award. Congratulations, Dr. Matute!