Biology Department Student Prizes: 

The William K. Purves Biology Prize is awarded to a junior biology major who combines scholarship with some kind of breadth (intellectual, cultural, athletic or service).  The winner for the 2009-10 academic year is Peter Tu.

The W. A. Brandenburger Biology Prize is awarded annually to a senior biology major for outstanding performance and promise in the field of biology.  The Brandenburger Prize winners for the 2009-10 academic year are Clint Leach and Ethan Sokol.

Other announcements: 

Job Search for Molecular Biologist Faculty
Merck and AAAS announce 2009 winners of outstanding undergraduate research programs
Hallie Kuhn (Biology '09) Awarded Churchill Scholarship
Drewell Awarded NSF CAREER Grant
Williams Awarded Grant for Outreach 
HHMI Awards $1.5 Million Grant to HMC 
Williams Awarded NSF Research Grant

Job Search for Molecular Biology
Harvey Mudd College invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position at the rank of Assistant Professor, beginning Fall 2010.  We are seeking candidates with teaching and research expertise in molecular biology, and who have a broad range of interests in biology.  Possible areas of expertise include, but are not restricted to, microbiology, cell biology, immunology, plant biology, neurobiology, and other fields that use modern molecular biology approaches. 

We seek candidates who are dedicated to becoming an excellent undergraduate teacher.  Courses could include introductory biology, non-majors electives, and advanced courses appropriate to the person’s expertise; teaching formats include lecture/discussion, seminar and laboratory courses.  The successful candidate will develop a vigorous independent research program that will involve undergraduate students during the academic year and summer and will complement the existing faculty research areas (http://www.hmc.edu/bio).

Harvey Mudd College is a small and highly selective private undergraduate college of science, mathematics, and engineering. In their first two years, all Harvey Mudd students complete a core curriculum comprising courses in biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, mathematics, and physics, as well as the humanities, social sciences and arts. Harvey Mudd is a member of the Claremont University Consortium (http://www.claremont.edu), which includes four other undergraduate colleges and two graduate institutions. Claremont is about 35 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.

A Ph.D. is required and postdoctoral research experience is highly desirable.  Applicants should e-mail a cover letter, CV, statement of teaching experience and interests, and statement of research plans to Dr. Stephen Adolph (adolph@hmc.edu), and arrange for three letters of reference to be mailed directly to Search Committee, Department of Biology, Harvey Mudd College, 301 Platt Blvd., Claremont, CA 91711 (or via e-mail to biology@hmc.edu).  Review of applications will begin October 1, 2009, and continue until the position is filled.  Harvey Mudd College is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to the recruitment of candidates historically underrepresented on college faculties.  Experience with or demonstrated ability to effectively teach students from diverse backgrounds will be considered among the criteria for appointment.

Merck and AAAS announce 2009 winners of outstanding undergraduate research programs

Fourteen colleges and universities have been selected for awards from the Merck/AAAS Undergraduate Science Research Program. Sponsored by the Merck Institute for Science Education (MISE) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the program awards provide up to $60,000, paid over three years, for use by the biology and chemistry departments at the recipient institution.

This year's winners are: Harvey Mudd College, University of Wisconsin at Whitewater, Otterbein College, Bowdoin College, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Ashland University, Siena College, Kean University, Furman University, Lebanon Valley College, Niagara University, University of West Florida, State University of New York at New Paltz, and Colorado College.

Since 1994, the Merck/AAAS Undergraduate Science Research Program (USRP) has awarded grants to support undergraduate interdisciplinary research in the sciences. The program, funded by MISE and administered by AAAS, was a pioneer in designing a grant program that focused on interdisciplinary collaboration in biology and chemistry at primarily undergraduate institutions. USRP grants have been awarded to more than 200 colleges and universities and have supported more than 2,000 undergraduates, providing them the opportunity to work with and learn from faculty in the laboratory and engage in basic research.

Hallie Kuhn (Biology '09) awarded Churchill Scholarship

Harvey Mudd College (HMC) students Andrew Higginbotham ’09 and Hallie Kuhn ’09 have been awarded the highly prestigious and competitive Churchill Scholarship for study at the University of Cambridge in England, the Winston Churchill Foundation announced recently.

Higginbotham and Kuhn represent the 14th and 15th recipients of the Churchill Scholarship from HMC and the first time two HMC students have been honored in the same year. Between 13 and 15 Churchill scholars are selected nationwide each year. This year, the foundation recognized six women and eight men with the scholarship.

According to Professor of Computer Science Ran Libeskind-Hadas, who coordinated the Churchill Scholarship application process at HMC, “This year was evidently the most competitive year for Churchill Scholarships in their history, so getting two scholarships from Mudd is particularly impressive.”

The students represent five public and five private institutions: Bryn Mawr College, Harvey Mudd College, Northwestern University, Princeton University, University of California at San Diego, University of California at Santa Barbara, University of Chicago, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Notre Dame, University of Rochester, and University of Virginia.

Four institutions have Churchill Scholars for the first time (Bryn Mawr, Notre Dame, UCSD and UCSB), and for the first time Harvey Mudd and Northwestern each have two Churchill Scholars.

The Churchill Scholarship, tenable for nine or 12 months, depending on the academic program, is offered annually and worth between $44,000 and $50,000. It covers all university and college tuition and fees (currently about $25,000). In addition, students receive a living allowance of £10,000 if enrolled in a nine-month academic program and £12,000 if enrolled in a full-year academic program. They also receive an allowance of up to $1,000 for travel to and from the United Kingdom and the possibility of a special research grant of up to $2,000.

Previous Churchill Scholars from HMC are Rosalind Beckwith ’07, Carl Yerger ’05, Christopher (Kit) Rudolfa ’04, Joel Miller ’00, Nathaniel Brown ’98, Nikolaus Loening ’97, Jon Sorenson ’95, Peter Bogdanoff ’94, Michelle Mathys ’86, Alan Middleton ’84, David Matsumoto ’82, Roger Oba ’82 and Mark McKinstry ’73.

The Churchill Foundation provided the following profiles of the Harvey Mudd College recipients:

Andrew Higginbotham will receive his bachelor of science in physics from Harvey Mudd College, where he is the 12th Churchill Scholar. From Chapel Hill, North Carolina, he will do research in the laboratory of Dr. Jacqui Cole at the intersection of chemistry and physics, relating non-linear physical properties to chemical structure through condensed matter physics to understand better the relation between optical properties and chemical structure in organic materials. Consistently on the Dean’s List, he has done extensive original research in high intensity physics and laser-driven fusion at Harvey Mudd and at the University of Texas at Austin; he has two first-author papers under review and has received many awards. Andrew’s letters of recommendation speak of his research as “a remarkable achievement, which would be considered impressive for a senior graduate student and which is almost unheard of from an undergraduate,” and of him as “a potent combination of intelligence, diligence, creativity, and imagination.” Andrew has been active in student government. After his year at Cambridge, he plans to do his doctorate in physics in the United States.

Hallie Kuhn will receive her bachelor of science in biology from Harvey Mudd College, where she is the 13th Churchill Scholar. From Glenwood Springs, Colo., she will do research on the human papilloma virus responsible for cervical cancer in the laboratory of Dr. Nick Coleman in oncology in the Department of Pathology. At Harvey Mudd, where Hallie was consistently on the Dean’s List, she won the Brandenburger Biology Prize for outstanding performance and promise, the Purves Biology Prize, and the Biology Writing Prize; she is a member of the Sigma Chi Research Society. Throughout college she has done research on the molecular motor dynein and spent a summer at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Chemistry at the University of Oregon. She has extensive training in mathematics, chemistry, systems engineering, and computer science in preparation for work in bioinformatics. Hallie has volunteered in a rape and sexual assault crisis center in Los Angeles and in a Red Cross asylum in Denmark, where she spent a semester abroad. She is an aerobics teacher and is active in yoga and dance. After her year at Cambridge Hallie plans to return to the States to study for an M.D.-Ph.D. in clinical oncology.

Drewell Awarded NSF Career Award

Robert Drewell, assistant professor of biology at Harvey Mudd College (HMC), has been awarded a $600,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER grant for his project “Investigating the evolution of gene regulation at Drosophila Hox genes.” The project will be funded for five years.

“This award is a huge honor for Rob, as NSF CAREER awards are highly competitive,” said Stephen Adolph, professor of biology and interim chair of the HMC Department of Biology.

Utilizing a combination of molecular, genetic and computational approaches, Drewell will focus his research efforts on better understanding the genes that regulate intricate developmental processes in the embryo of the common fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster).

Since all organisms use common genetic systems, understanding biological processes in the fruit fly, which has been used for genetic analysis since the early 1900s, helps scientists understand those same processes in other complex multicellular organisms.

“How a single fertilized egg cell can develop into a complex animal is one of the central questions in modern biology,” Drewell explained. “This NSF CAREER award will allow us to expand our studies on the Hox genes, which are the ‘master control’ genes of development in all animals, including humans.”

Only a relatively small number of genes in an organism’s vast genetic material are programmed to designate specific cell fates in the embryo. Drewell and his team of student researchers already have indications that new gene regulatory mechanisms will be uncovered during this project.

Aside from its research goals, the project will also focus on three educational objectives: Drewell will develop an integrated curriculum and various educational tools that merge molecular and developmental biology, genetics and evolution. He will also test the hypothesis that research can attract and retain talented students in careers in science through enhancement of the undergraduate experience. Furthermore, Drewell will continue to actively recruit and engage student researchers, especially those from traditionally underrepresented groups in science.

“Rob’s laboratory is a lively place where students can be found studying fruit fly genetics at all hours of the day and on the weekends,” said Adolph. “Although this is just Rob’s third year at Harvey Mudd, he has already mentored at least 20 different research students and published 5 research papers with HMC student co-authors.”

Drewell’s research group is also cohesive outside of the laboratory. During the summer they climb nearby mountains, including Mt. Baldy, Mt. San Gorgonio and Mt. Whitney, and they can often be spotted swimming or playing basketball together.

NSF's Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program offers the Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education, and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations.

NSF believes that such activities build a firm foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research.

“This is a particularly exciting time in the history of molecular biology to be investigating these issues, as we have access to the complete genomic DNA sequences in an ever-increasing number of species,” explained Drewell. “This new grant will allow us to take full advantage of the research opportunities presented by these advances. Of course, the real stars of the show are the talented and dedicated students here at Harvey Mudd College that have enabled me to develop a cutting-edge research program since my arrival. The support from the NSF will permit us to increase our research efforts in the coming years.”

Williams Awarded Grant for Outreach
Mary Williams, Professor of Biology, and a team of collaborators have been awarded a grant from the American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) Education Foundation to conduct research that will advance plant biology through K-16 education and public outreach activities.

Williams will collaborate with Jeffrey Coker, assistant professor of biology at Elon University and Jane Ellis, associate professor of biology at Presbyterian College, on the project. ASPB has defined The 12 Principles of Plant Biology as a springboard for plant science education at the K-12 levels. These principles serve as guidelines for curriculum developers and teachers to ensure that students gain a thorough understanding of plant biology.

Williams, Coker and Ellis will use their award to complete the components of a project that was started with funding from a 2007 project entitled, Twelve Activities to Accompany the 12 Principles of Plant Biology.

The first six of these plant science activities are in their final stages of assessment. The 2008 funding will go toward the development and disbursement of the last six activities. This will include field testing and optimizing them through the Elon Academy at Elon University and the CHAMPS program at Presbyterian College.

The Elon Academy is a one-month program for talented 8th through 12th grade students with underprivileged backgrounds. The CHAMPS (Communities Helping, Assisting, Motivating, Promising Students) is a summer program for 6th-graders at Presbyterian College. Along with their own assessment process, the team will incorporate feedback about the project from a variety of noted experts in the fields of education and plant biology.

Finally, the team will disseminate the project annually to several thousand new people around the country. They will present their activities at teacher workshops within various school systems and prepare documentation of the activities to be archived on the ASPB website. The team also will develop traveling booth activities for teachers to conduct at National Association of Biology Teachers, National Science Teacher Association (NSTA) and public science events like American Association for the Advancement of Science Family Science Days. When the 12 activities are fully developed, the trio will present to the Council of State Science Supervisors at the NSTA conference with the goal of disseminating the project through this influential network of science education outreach.

ASPB, headquartered in Rockville, Md., was founded in 1924 as the American Society of Plant Physiologists. This professional society has a membership of 5,000 plant scientists from the United States and more than 50 other nations. ASPB publishes two of the most widely cited plant science journals in the world: The Plant Cell and Plant Physiology.

HHMI Awards $1.5 Million Grant to HMC
Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) has awarded a $1.5 million grant to Harvey Mudd College (HMC) to create more engaging science classes, bring real-world research experiences to students and increase the diversity of students who study science.

The grant, which will be paid over four years, is part of $60 million in grants announced by HHMI this week. The awards were the results of a competition that invited 226 of the nation’s leading baccalaureate-granting institutions to apply. One hundred ninety-two submitted proposals and, after three rounds of peer-review, 48 grants were awarded.

More than a quarter of the awardees have never received an HHMI grant before. HMC has received three consecutive grants, beginning in 2000, then renewed in 2004 and again in 2008, for a total of $4.2 million.

“Over the last three summers, the HHMI grant has supported 78 summer research students, and we expect to support more than 30 students this summer,” said David Asai, Stuart Mudd Professor of Biology and chair of the Department of Biology at HMC. “These students represent all nine degree programs at Harvey Mudd College and were mentored by faculty members in all seven HMC departments.

“Most of the summer students were engaged in research on campus, but the grant has also supported students who did research at UCLA, Harvard, the Genome Institute of Singapore and in Alaska. Of the 78 students supported in the last three summers, 37 have graduated; 14 are now in Ph.D. programs and 5 are in professional programs, including medical school.”

The current HHMI grant has also provided funds for collaborative grants that involve faculty investigators in biology who collaborate with a faculty member in another department. In four years, HMC has funded 13 collaborative projects involving 14 different faculty members from 6 HMC departments and 37 different students from HMC’s departments of biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, physics and three other institutions: Goucher College, the Joint Sciences Program at The Claremont Colleges and Pomona College.

In addition, the grant has enabled the implementation of new laboratory modules in molecular biology, computational biology, genetics and a molecular biology experiment incorporated in freshman chemistry (Chem25). The current grant also supports the molecular biology laboratory that is part of the HMC Summer Institute.

Directed by Professor of Biology Catherine McFadden, the 2008 HHMI grant will enable HMC to continue current successful programs, including the support of student summer research, collaborative mini-grants to faculty working in the area of computational biology and the continued development and implementation of laboratory modules.

“The 2008 grant will also enable us to explore two exciting new ventures,” Asai said. “Under the leadership of the grant’s co-director, Professor of Computer Science Ran Libeskind-Hadas, faculty and students in biology and computer science will develop a new freshman-level introductory course that integrates the two disciplines, currently taught as CS5 and Bio52. The idea is to plan the new course, CB552, then implement it with approximately 36 freshmen in 2009-10 and another 36 students in 2010-11. We will then assess the effectiveness of the new course which, if successful, will be expanded to include a larger number of students in 2011-12.”

The second new venture will be the Future Faculty Fellows, which will bring to HMC senior postdoctoral scientists who are interested in pursuing teaching careers in small colleges. Each fellow will spend up to two years at HMC, helping to teach courses and mentoring research students. Each fellow will be provided close mentoring by current faculty members, including team-teaching and sharing research students.

HHMI is the nation’s largest private supporter of science education. It has invested more than $1.2 billion in grants to reinvigorate life science education at both research universities and liberal arts colleges and to engage the nation’s leading scientists in teaching.

One of the world’s largest philanthropies, HHMI is a nonprofit medical research organization that employs hundreds of leading biomedical scientists working at the forefront of their fields. HHMI has an endowment of approximately $18.7 billion. Its headquarters are located in Chevy Chase, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C.

Williams Awarded NSF Research Grant
Associate Professor of Biology Mary Williams has been awarded a grant, funded by the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Research for Undergraduate Institutions (RUI) program.  This grant is a three-year $313,209 award for her project, “Collaborative Research: SAC9, a Novel, Plant-Specific Phosphoinositide Phosphatase Essential for Membrane/Cytoskelton Dynamics in Arabidopsis.” It was funded by the NSF’s division of molecular and cellular biology. Williams will collaborate with long-time research associate Daryll DeWald of Utah State University, who is an expert of phosphoinositide chemistry and cell biology; Williams’ expertise is in molecular biology and genetics.

The NSF grant funds an investigation into a type of cell signal (phosphoinositide) that is activated in plants when they are stressed (e.g., by drought). Cells respond by making proteins that protect the plant from drought stress. Williams and her team of investigators will study the gene that encodes an enzyme called a phosphoinositide phosphatase (a.k.a. PI phosphatase), which controls the signal. Most organisms (animals, fungi, plants) make PI phosphatases. In their research, Williams’ team previously found that in addition to the “normal” PI phosphatases, plants make an extra one, called SAC9. The research, which will be conducted using Arabidopsis, will address how the unique aspects of SAC9 contribute to signaling function. Arabidopsis is widely used as a model organism for plants. It was the first plant whose genome was sequenced and is used in hundreds of labs and companies around the world as a tool for discovering gene functions.

“Just as a raisin shrivels as it loses water, cells also shrivel, and, unfortunately, they often break open during this process as the plasma membrane can lose integrity and the cellular contents can leak out, killing the cell,” Williams explains. “Normally, as the plant experiences drought stress, it reinforces its membrane to help it resist breaking. The cytoskeleton is the structure within a cell that regulates membrane integrity and structure. Our research shows that the SAC9 enzyme has an important role in controlling the membrane/cytoskeleton dynamics. Experiments also suggest that one effect of the phosphoinositide signaling pathway is to activate the reinforcement of the membrane.”

The goal of the research is to use the information about plant stress signaling for crop improvement. Plants use the same pathway to signal too little water and too much salt. A deleterious consequence of agricultural irrigation is that it leads to increasingly salty soils – water with some dissolved salts is pumped onto the fields, but pure water evaporates and is taken up by the plants. Over time (even as little as 20 years), this can make the soil too salty for the same crops that used to grow in them. This is already a major problem for agriculture in California as well as other regions that require intensive irrigation. The research is designed to contribute to the development of plants that are more salt and drought tolerant.

The grant also provides summer research stipends for HMC undergraduates and funds the biochemical supplies needed to carry out the research. One important tool being used in this project is the confocal microscope HMC purchased through a previous NSF grant, and some of the funds will be used to offset the costs associated with using and maintaining this microscope.

During the 2008-09 academic year, Williams will travel to a lab at Glasgow University in Scotland that specializes in studying membrane dynamics to learn some of their methods that she will adopt to accelerate her research.

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