:: Microbiology Department News ::

:: Spring 2012 Seminar Schedule ::

Researchers Awarded Grant from Morris Animal Foundation

November 2011: Amy Biddle and Jeff Blanchard, in collaboration with Sam Black and Carlos Gradil from the Vet & Animals Sciences Department, have been awarded a grant from the Morris Animal Foundation for "Identifying bacteria associated with starch induced laminitis and colic with the potential to attenuate lactate in the equine gut".   By revealing bacteria in the horse gut with the ability to attenuate increased concentrations of lactate, these findings could be used to create probiotic preventatives or therapeutics for two serious conditions affecting millions of horses annually.

Sequencing Grant Awarded

September 2011: Kristen DeAngelis, Assistant Professor of Microbiology, was awarded a grant through the Community Sequencing Program at the Joint Genome Institute. Kristen DeAngelis and her collaborators, Jeff Blanchard (UMass Microbiology) and Tanja Woyke (Joint Genome Institute), were awarded the grant based on their proposal "Microbial ecology and genomics of carbon-storing bacteria in rhizosphere soils." The award includes sequencing of soil communities, multiple soil metagenomes and single-cell genome sequencing.

UMass Microbiology Welcomes New Faculty and Graduate Students

January 2012: UMass Microbiology welcomes Dr. Yasu Morita to its faculty as an Assistant Professor
effective January 22. Dr. Morita received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University and did postdoctoral research at the University of Melbourne and Osaka University.

September 2011: Dr. Kristen DeAngelis joined the Department of Microbiology as an Assistant Professor on September 1, 2011. Dr. DeAngelis received her Ph.D. from the University of California Berkeley and prior to coming to UMass was a Seaborg Postdoctoral Fellow at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Dr. DeAngelis' research interest is molecular microbial ecology.

In Fall 2011, the Microbiology Department also welcomes new students to its Graduate Program:
Jesús Alvelo, Jeffrey Grimes, Jennifer Hayashi, Jaclyn Izbicki, Daniel Lammel, Bonnie Le, Chu-Yuan Luo, Jonathan Miller, Pranev Patel, Jessica Smith, Megan Strough, Colin Wardman, Hsuan-Yi Wu and Pengwei Zhang.

Wilmore Webley Receives Grant from Baystate Medical Center

May 2011: Wilmore Webley, Assistant Professor of Microbiology, has been awarded a grant from the Collaborative Biomedical Research Program at Baystate Medical Center. Dr. Webley was awarded $25,000 in support of his research project, "The Role of Heloxilins and Neutrophils in Infectious Asthma.

News from the Holden Lab

May 2011: Jim Holden, Associate Professor of Microbiology, was awarded a grant for $149,987 from the Northeast Sun Grant Initiative. The research will focus on enhancing feedstock-to-hydrogen gas conversion using
hyperthermophilic microbes.

July 2011: Lucy Stewart, a Ph.D. student in the Holden lab, was awarded a three-year NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship.  Her research in the area of planetary science will explore microbial maintenance energies and habitability in hydrothermal vents.

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