Congratulations to the Nimchuk Lab for their Nature Genetics paper titled, “Evolution of buffering in a genetic circuit controlling plant stem cell proliferation,” part of a NSF-funded multi-species genome collaboration!
Kale Hartmann, a PhD student in Jeff Sekelsky’s lab, has accepted a position as a “Curriculum Fellow” in Genetics and Genomics at Harvard Medical School (HMS). The Curriculum Fellows Program consists of PhD-level scientists that work to improve and bring innovation to graduate education at HMS.
Professor Ken Lohmann completed his term as President of the International Sea Turtle Society by presiding over the 2019 International Sea Turtle Symposium in Charleston, South Carolina. The symposium is the premier annual event in global sea turtle biology and conservation and attracted more than 850 participants from 52 countries. The theme of the symposium was Navigating the Future. The symposium featured more than 400 oral and poster presentations and 25 workshops, as well as special sessions on Genetics and Genomics, Navigation and Natal Homing, The Future of Sea Turtle Conservation, and Using Science to Inform Conservation.
Kayla Goforth, a Biology graduate student (Lohmann Lab), was runner-up for the Archie Carr Award at the 2019 International Sea Turtle Symposium in Charleston, South Carolina. The Carr Award is given for the best oral presentation on sea turtle biology. Kayla’s talk, titled “Formation of Foraging Site Attachment in Migratory Sea Turtles”, described experiments revealing that captive loggerhead turtles that are fed in a magnetic field characteristic of a specific coastal location can learn to recognize that field and associate it with food. The results provide insight into how turtles learn the locations of particular foraging sites and can navigate to them across hundreds of miles of open sea.
The lab of Gregory Copenhaver, together with his collaborator Ian Henderson from Cambridge University, has been awarded a joint National Science Foundation
(US), Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (UK) funding initiative called “BTT EAGER.” The project will transfer and extend genomic technology developed in the model plant species Arabidopsis thaliana into crop species with more complex genomes and will support postdoctoral associates in both the Copenhaver and Henderson labs.
Congratulations to these UNC-CH students, enrolled as Biology majors and/or double majors, for their induction into Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest academic honor society. At the induction ceremony, new members receive certificates and Phi Beta Kappa keys, the organization’s symbol. The new inductees are: Kate E. Aberman, Jamie Christine Antinori, Noah Clark Berens, Joshua Stewart Boone, Phoi Bui, Samantha Nicole Catalano, Michelle Renee Cooley, Nicole Grace DeBruyne, Julia Goncalves, Andrew Brantley Harvey, Jinglin Ji, Royce Thinh Le, Jintong Liu, Kaylene Jiayi Lu, Matthew Addison Moravec, Ashton Brooke O’Hara, Natalie Christine Piehl, Kelly A. Pring, Emily Nicole Reichert, Jared Cliff Richards, Dylan Thomas Schuler, Shreya Ashish Shah, Sania Larab Siddiqui, Claire Thefaine, Matthew Franklin Washko, Elizabeth Deane Wilson, Madison Oihua Woo, and Sarah Yueshan Wu.
This year the Native Plant Conference offers a special tribute to Alan Weakley, who for many years has made significant contributions to the study, understanding, appreciation, and conservation of the Southeast’s distinctive native flora and its habitats.
“What do you say about the contributions of one of the most gifted botanists of our time, someone who knows and continues to refine the taxonomic tapestry of thousands of vascular (and non-vascular) plants of the Southeast, who through his work has helped protect thousands of acres of critically important lands, and who has unhesitatingly shared his deep passion and insights into our remarkable flora with so many? One thing you can call him is one in a million and a godsend to those who share his passion and even perhaps more importantly to those that don’t. It is through his work and the others he inspires that we may hope to ultimately decipher the complexities of our regional flora and conserve it for future generations. We all look forward to Alan continuing this incredibly important work for many years and to see what he does next.”—Latimore Smith of Southern Wild, formerly of The Nature Conservancy in Louisiana
Megan Justice, a Curriculum in Genetics and Molecular Biology student in Jill Dowen’s lab, was accepted into the Yale University Ciencia Initiative program. Throughout 2019, Megan will participate in a program designed “to expand access to scientific knowledge, experiences, and careers among communities or populations traditionally underrepresented in, or underserved by, the scientific enterprise.
Congratulations to Biology Teaching Associate Professor/Faculty Advisor Gidi Shemer, who was honored with a 2019 UNC-CH Chapman Family Teaching Award. The Chapman Family Teaching Award honors a distinguished record of teaching undergraduates at UNC over an extended period of time. The Chapman Teaching Awards were created in 1993 during the Bicentennial Campaign through a generous gift by Max Carrol Chapman, Jr. ’66 on behalf of the Chapman family and honor distinguished teaching of undergraduate students.
The Board of Directors of the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) has announced that Dr. Steven W. Matson, dean of The Graduate School and Professor of Biology at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is the 2018 recipient of the Debra W. Stewart Award for Outstanding Leadership in Graduate Education. Matson received the honor at an awards ceremony held during the CGS 58th Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.
Congratulations to Aaztli Coria (Graduate Student, Alain Laederach’s Lab) for receiving an NIH F31 fellowship titled, “A novel melanoma therapeutic target: Elucidating the structure and mapping functional domains of the lncRNA SAMMSON.” Aaztli is studying the lncRNA SAMMSON that is specifically expressed in malignant melanoma cells. Upon depletion of SAMMSON melanoma cells undergo apoptosis, suggesting these cells are “addicted” to this long non-coding RNA. She aims to model the secondary structure of SAMMSON and identify the structural domains required for SAMMSON to interact with the protein p32.