News

July 09. Nüsslein, researchers catalog and study soils in Amazon rainforest. Story at MassLive.

July 09. Cataloging the Amazon Rain Forest's Soil Microbes. Story at Microbe World.

July 09. Amazon Rainforest Microbial Observatory to Catalog, Study Soils. Story at Lab Manager.

July 09. Forming an Amazon Rainforest Microbial Observatory. Story at Innovations Report (Europe).

July 09. Researchers Catalog and Study Soils in Amazon Rainforest. Story at Topix.

July 09. Forming an Amazon Rainforest Microbial Observatory. Story at YubaNet.

July 09. Forming an Amazon Rainforest Microbial Observatory. Story at eScienceNews.

July 09. Nüsslein, researchers catalog and study soils in Amazon rainforest. Story at 'In the Loop at UMass'.

July 09. http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/554235/ (site temporarily down)

July 09. UMass Amherst Researcher Leads Team in Founding Amazon Rainforest Microbial Observatory to Catalog, Study Soils. Story at 'News Release -- UMass Amherst'.

July 09. Researchers Catalog and Study Soils in Amazon Rainforest. Story at Academics.ws.

June 09. Welcome to Dr. Kyung-Hwa Baek, a new Postdoctoral Researcher to work on the Amazon soil Microbial Observatory.

June 09. Welcome to high school teacher Mitch Walkowicz. He will work with us this summer to study the need of perchlorate reducers to attach directly to the sulfur pellets.

June 09. We received additional funding for our NSF grant on Perchlorate Reduction to support an RET (Microbiology) and an REU (Env Engineering).

May 09. Welcome to the three new Graduate students, George Hamaoui, Brendan Murphy, and Nazita Gamini.

May 09. Brendan Murphy won the ASM Student Travel Grant Award for his abstract submission to the 109th General ASM Meeting.

May 09. Undergraduate student Nidhi Kumar helped to test combinations of essential oils as antimicrobial additives to natural cosmetics, a research project that won the Morton Award for best poster presentation at this years Annual Meeting of the Society for Economic Botany. 

May 09. Kahlil Rieber won the ASM Student Travel Grant Award for his abstract submission to the 109th General ASM Meeting.

April 09. Brendan Murphy and Kahlil Rieber won the HHMI Student Travel Grant Award.

March 09. Our Pilot Reactor is online now. Teresa Conneely’s research on complete perchlorate removal by biodegradation successfully moved form the lab bench to the field. After optimizing our pilot reactor at the Massachusetts Military Reservation for months we are now online, and test groundwater clean up on site. 

Jan 09. Prof. Nüsslein, together with collaborators, won a grant from the USDA CSREES to establish a “Amazon Rainforest Microbial Observatory: Functional Diversity, Taxonomic Diversity, And Response To Ecosystem Conversion”. The research is led by Prof. Nüsslein, and the award of $800,000 will support research to investigate the effects of land use change (rainforest cut down to grow grass as cattle feed) on select taxa of soil bacteria.

Dec 08. Visiting Postdoctoral Researcher Heather Reed gave birth to Quentin. 

Nov 08. Former group member Jeffrey Dabkowski (M.S. 2008) got into the Physician Assistant program at Northeastern University, one of the hardest schools to get into in the country (Northeastern receives 1000 applications and only accepts 34 into the program each year).

Oct 08. Amazon rainforest microbial observatory: functional diversity, taxonomic diversity, and response to ecosystem conversion. Story at USDA.

Sept 08. Welcome to the new Graduate student Burcu Ünsal. 

May 08. Jeffrey Dabkowski’s abstract to ASM 2008 triggered the invitation for a press release, which was later picked up by the Medtechinsider (http://medtechinsider.com/?p=29 ) and the European site Medical Device Link (http://www.devicelink.com/emdm/archive/08/09/008.html).

Aug 08. Graduate student Teresa Conneely won the Siemens Best Paper Award at the August 2008 IWA North American Membrane Research Conference.

July 08. Postdoctoral Researcher Vicente Gomez was offered the 2008 Office of the Provost Postdoctoral Fellowship Award.  Sponsored by the Provost Office, Michigan State University postdoctoral fellowship for two years at Michigan State University, working with Tom Schmidt.

Mar 08. Kahlil Rieber received the HHMI Academic Research Internship for Spring 2008 and an HHMI travel grant to attend the ASM General Meeting in Boston 2008

Oct 07. Mighty Microbe Story in Oct 2007 of Time Magazine‚s „Best Inventions of the Year. http://www.bio.umass.edu/micro/news/nussleintime.htm

May 07. Vicente Gomez and Teresa Conneely received ASM Corporate Activities Program (CAP) Student travel grants for the General Meeting in Toronto 2007.

Jun 07. Javier defended his doctoral dissertation in June 2007 and is now working at Dartmouth College with Lee Lynd leading the Lynd Lab's  Microbial Ecology Group.

Apr 07. Caryl Ann Becerra is the recipient of a 3 year pre-doctoral fellowship from the Ford Foundation.

Mar 07. Jeff Dabkowski has been selected as one of twelve University graduating seniors to receive the prestigious Leaders of the 21st Century Award. Jeff was nominated by Greg Tew from Polymer Science & Engineering. The award will be presented at the UMass Graduation Ceremony on Saturday, May 26, 2007.

Feb 07. Bacteria can help prevent earthquake damage. Story at Mongabay.

Jan 07: Vicente Gomez-Alvarez defended his doctoral dissertation.