Congratulations to Jeff Sekelsky for winning the 2023 Graduate School Award for Excellence in Graduate Student and Academic Program Support for his decade-long work directing the Curriculum in Genetics and Molecular Biology. Jeff’s work has had a huge impact on the Department of Biology and the greater UNC genetics community, and he is most deserving of our gratitude.

Each year the Undergraduate Honors Committee selects a junior Biology major as the Irvine Hagadorn Award recipient, based on academic and research excellence and contributions to the Biology Department. We review an outstanding group of students, and the choice is challenging. This year’s winner is Matthew Lu. He is doing his research in the Darville lab in Pediatrics/Infectious Disease, has a 4.0 GPA, and has served as a peer mentor in Biology 101H and as an SI leader for Biology 202 with Dr. Laura Ott.

Congratulations, Matthew! Runner-up was another outstanding student, Sarah Broyhill.

Congratulations to Esteban Agudo, who has been selected to receive a Dissertation Completion Fellowship from The Graduate School for AY2023-2024!

Congratulations to the Phi Beta Kappa Spring 2023 Inductees! Check out this article on the society and this semester’s inductees.

Congratulations to:

Oyindamola O’temu Ajasa
Bilar Nizar Azzam
Connor Jarrett Blevins
Garrison Wallace Bullard
Natalie Lauren Clark
Rami Zahi Darawsheh
Valerie Dartey-Hayford
Navya Dixit
Amber Doan
Luke Joseph Diasio
Thomas Wayne Doss
Simon Wilkes Ellington
Mitchell Millett Kent
Casey Lepley
Lauren Ellison Lowe
Jade Kristen Monday
John Garnett Nelson (bio minor)
Isabel Nichols
Katherine Brittain Reeves
Renee Elizabeth Reeves
Caroline Richter
Clara Louise Shertzer
Claire Nicole Skinner
Grayson Spencer Sword (bio minor)
Lucian William Tessier

Ken and Cathy Lohmann and grad students Kayla Goforth, Alayna Mackiewicz, and Dana Lim were authors of a paper entitled “Magnetic maps and animal navigation” that won the Journal of Comparative Physiology’s 2023 Editor’s Choice Award. The editors declared it a “magnificent and much recommended review.” Congratulations!

Congratulations to Ken Lohmann who was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sea Turtle Society! Check out the full list of past award recipients here.

Kerry Bloom has been featured on an episode of the DG Early-Morning Show podcast! The episode, entitled “Dr. Kerry Bloom talks about engineering chromosomes, 3D printing centromeres, solutions to improve America’s outdated education system,” is available where you listen to podcasts! To listen on Spotify, click here.

Be sure to check out “Sex-chromosome mechanisms in cardiac development and disease” by Frank Conlon and Arthur Arnold in the Nature Cardiovascular Research journal! Read about it here.

Congratulations to Eva Mei Shouse and Madelina Marquez, current Department of Biology graduate students, who have been awarded NSF GRFPs! Madelina’s research is in environmental microbiology, cyanobacteria, trophic ecology, and secondary metabolites, and is advised by Sophie McCoy. Eva’s research is in cytokinin signaling in rice, and is advised by Joe Kieber. One of our incoming Fall 2023 Ph.D. students, Karl Hill, has also been awarded an NSF GRFP. Karl will be joining David Pfennig’s lab and his research will focus on blending fieldwork with genomic/molecular techniques to understand adaptation, speciation, and biodiversity. A big congratulations to all three!

Newly released and available on Amazon:

Putting Down Roots: Foundations of Botany at Carolina
February 20, 2023
$54.00 – 616 pages
by William R. Burk (Author)

This book traces the development of the academic discipline of botany at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1792 to 1982. Coverage of the professors who taught botany during UNC’s first century includes their biographical background, pedagogical style, scientific instruction, and contributions to science. The academic influences that each of these educators had on Carolina are also noted. The concluding chapter, constituting about one-sixth of the volume, describes the UNC Department of Botany, established in 1908. The principal focus of this chapter is the department’s accomplishments, its faculty, and its graduate students. Several significant themes are woven through the text, particularly for the 1800s: the University Museum, the idea of establishing a model farm, the Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society, the emergence of laboratory practice in the curriculum, the University Library and the sciences, and the campus landscape and its beautification. Included among the noteworthy milestones of the university and of Chapel Hill are the first woman to teach botany, the early history of the freedmen’s school for Black children, and the establishment of the campus’s first chemical teaching laboratory. The book should be of interest to historians of botany and science. Other potential audiences include individuals interested in the history of UNC, the pioneering role of women in science, the education of the freedmen, and the role of scientific societies in advancing scientific knowledge.

William R. Burk is a retired life science librarian. His early service was at academic libraries of the University of Utah, the University of Guam, and the University of California–Santa Barbara. Subsequently, he was the Botany (later Biology) Librarian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for thirty years.