The University of Massachusetts Herbarium recently received an Andrew W. Mellon “Global Plants Initiative” grant to create a coordinated database of images and information for the approximately 1300 Type Specimens housed in the collection. The images and associated information will be freely available on the Worldwide Web in “JSTOR PLANTS.”
Current News
Dr. Kent Greenwood, a magna cum laude graduate of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, was selected by his peers as the 2012 Community Clinician of the Year for the Worcester North District Medical Society. The Massachusetts Medical Society established this Award in 1998 to recognize physicians who have made significant contributions to their community and patients.
Dr. Greenwood is a board-certified surgeon with Nashoba Surgical Associates in Fitchburg, specializing in general surgery, with staff privileges at HealthAlliance Hospital in Fitchburg and at Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer. He graduated from the University with a bachelor's in biology, and he earned his medical degree from the Tufts University School of Medicine. Dr. Greenwood is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and a Diplomate of the National Board of Medical Examiners.
Biology lecturer Laura Francis has received Residential First-Year Experience (RFYE) Student Choice Award! She was nominated by Valentina Velasquez and Taylor Schille for her contributions to the experience of first-year students at UMass Amherst. First-year students were given the opportunity to nominate a professor or instructor who had a profound
influence on them during their first semester. Nominations were made for a variety of reasons, including: inspiring students to learn, hosting interesting and motivating lectures, going above and beyond to support first-year students, helping students adjust to college, challenging students to reach their full potential, and much more.
Biology professor Duncan Irschick along with colleagues Al Crosby (Polymer Sciences), and Brian Umberger (Kinesiology) has received a $25,000 Commercial Ventures and Intellectual Property (CVIP) Technology Award. The award will help these scientists develop new products from their recent invention of Geckskin™, and to potentially create a startup based on these products.
Established in 2004, the fund was created and is maintained through licensing revenues supplemented by a contribution from the President's Office. According to UMass Present Robert Caret, "This program highlights University of Massachusetts researchers who stand at the forefront of scientific innovation."
Biology professor Duncan Irschick, along with Al Crosby (Polymer Sciences, UMass), and Walter Federle (Cambridge University, UK,) has been awarded a three-year $900,000 grant from the Human Frontiers Science Program to study bioadhesion in geckos and insects. This grant is awarded to only 25 international teams from all over the world out from a total of about 800 applicants, and awards are only given to highly innovative teams that demonstrate that they have developed and can test a ground-breaking idea in the broader realm of the biological sciences.
Biology professors Betsy Dumont and Karen Searcy recently returned from Sapporo, Japan, where they were invited speakers at the opening of an exhibit at the Hokkaido University Museum. The exhibit focused on vascular plants and lichens collected by W. S. Clark and D. P. Penhallow between 1876 and 1877. The two men journeyed from Amherst to Japan to open an agricultural college that is now Hokkaido University, and are well known and highly regarded throughout Japan. The exhibit included specimens borrowed from the University of Massachusetts Herbarium as well as displays about the Amherst area, the University of Massachusetts campus, and Sapporo.
Biology professor Gerald Downes, Molecular and Cellular Biology Graduate Student Timo Friedrich, and colleagues have developed a mutant zebrafish to study Maple Syrup Urine Disease (MSUD). It is an inherited metabolic disorder that causes affected individuals to smell like maple syrup. Untreated, it can result in mental retardation, profound neurological damage, seizures, coma and death through mechanisms that are not well understood. This new model is described in the March issue of the journal Disease Models and Mechanism.
MSUD causes disease by disrupting the proper metabolic breakdown of three amino acids: Isoleucine, leucine and valine, found in protein-rich foods such as eggs, meat and milk. These amino acids and their by-products accumulate to toxic levels in the body, with devastating effects on the brain and nervous system. This new animal model can be a useful tool to reveal how MSUD leads to nervous system damage and develop new therapeutics. Professor Downes has been invited to describe their study at the MSUD symposium, which brings together MSUD affected individuals, clinician, and scientist, which will be held from June 28-30, 2012 in Philadelphia PA.
This paper can be accessed here.
Biology professor Duncan J. Irschick and his colleagues Al Crosby and Michael Bartlett from the Polymer Sciences Department have just published a paper in the journal Advanced Materials which shows how mimicking the anatomy of gecko feet creates a new dry adhesive ("Geckskin™") with unparalleled adhesion. A 4 x 4 inch pad of Geckskin™ can fasten about 700 lbs. to a smooth surface, such as glass, yet can be peeled off easily with one's fingers and reattached with no loss of adhesive ability. The material's design involved the creation of fake "tendon" and "skin" which are integrated with a pad that adheres to a surface using van der Waals forces, just like a gecko's foot does. This work is the first clear demonstration of the "up-scaling" gecko-style adhesion, and presents many exciting possibilities for human applications, ranging from construction to medicine.
The paper can be accessed here.
Some media coverage:
From Channel 40
From the Daily Mail
From Wired Magazine
The January 5, 2012 issue of Diverse: Issues in Higher Education named Biology professor Magdalena Bezanilla as an Emerging Scholar of the Year for 2012. The journal profiles twelve scholars younger than 40 who are making a significant impact through teaching, research, and service. The honorees were selected from a pool of candidates recommended by scholars, department chairs, university public information officers, and others. The selection of Emerging Scholars is based on their research, educational background, publishing record, teaching record, and competitiveness and uniqueness of field of study.
The Biology Department has recently received funds from the National Science Foundation to use its experience developed while implementing the Gene and Genome Analysis class (Biology 383H) in new partnership with Holyoke Community College (HCC). The Gene and Genome class is built around student-designed labs with just the right amount of instructor input to keep student teams engaged and progressing. The class allows students to work in teams to discover the functions of unique plant genes. The new funding will allow instructional methods developed in the UMass Gene and Genome course to be implemented at HCC. The overall goal is to leverage the individual strengths of the two institutions to develop new laboratory courses that focus on renewable energy.
Biology Department Video
