1) Congratulations to DR. JOHANNES WALTER who has just been selected for a Leukemia & Lymphoma Society SCHOLAR Award.
2) The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has received a $16.5 million
donation to fund cancer research, marking the largest gift from an
individual in the Harvard-affiliated institute’s 58-year history. It
will be used to research proteins and their functions at a
soon-to-be-created center which will be directed by BCMP’s DR. JARROD
MARTO.
NOTICES:
3) “Where’s the best child care? Any good local summer camps?
Rave about your family day care provider! Ask questions of your
colleagues. Give suggestions to your colleagues.” Visit the new
Office of Work/Life Resources Child Care bulletin board on the HARVie
website for employees. To get there, visit http://harvie.harvard.edu/
and sign in with your Harvard ID. Then click on the animated “HARVie’s
Bulletin Board” link in the left column. From there, you may either
sign in the bulletin board as a guest or by creating a username.
4) The DF/HCC DNA Resource Core at the Harvard Institute of
Proteomics is pleased to announce the addition of two new genome-scale
ORF clone collections to our plasmid repository, Vibrio cholerae and
Francisella tularensis. To search and request plasmid clones, please
go to http://www.hip.harvard.edu/ and click "Request Plasmid Clones" at
the bottom to get to the Plasmid Information Database (PlasmID). Also
at PlasmID, you can view other clones in the repository, which include
human, yeast, Y. pestis and Pseudomonas ORF collections; 'empty
vectors' for various molecular genetic techniques including mammalian
expression and shRNA; cancer-related cDNA expression clones; viral
genes and genomes; and more. Please contact Stephanie Mohr at stephanie_mohr@hms.harvard.edu to schedule a brief on-site demo of the PlasmID website or if you have questions about sharing or requesting clones.
WELCOME:
5) KATJA SCHMITZ (Clardy lab) studied chemistry in her undergrad
at the University of Bonn, Germany (July 2002.) She received her Dr.
rer. nat. (German equivalent of the Ph.D.) in biochemistry at the
University of Bonn (Feb 2005.) She worked in the group of Professor
Sandhoff under the supervision of Dr. Schepers, who is an Assistant
Professor associated with this group. Her objective was to generate
conjugates of cell penetrating peptides and siRNAs as a means trigger
RNAi in mammalian cells and to develop polyamines and peptoids as
synthetic substitutes for these peptides and to test these in cultured
cells as delivery agents for fluorescein and porphyrins. She is now
working on Small Molecule Microarrays as a tool to screen libraries of
fungal extracts for small molecules that specifically bind various
target proteins.
6) PASCAL FORTIN (Walsh lab) received his undergrad from Laval University and his Ph.D. from University of British Columbia.
7) JOHN SLUSARZ (Mechanical Design Engineer in Larson lab)
8) HAZEL LEVY (Hogle lab) received a BS from University of Florida
in 1996 where she majored in Microbiology and minored in Chemistry.
She received a master’s degree from University of Florida in Entomology
in 1998, with a minor concentration in Biochemistry. Her master’s
thesis advisor was Dr. James Maruniak and the research topic was insect
mitochondrial genome evolution. She received her Ph.D. from the
University of Florida in 2005. Her Ph.D. advisors were Dr. Mavis
Agbandje-McKenna and Dr. Nicholas Muzyczka and the research topic was
adeno-associated virus capsid and receptor complex structure.
9) REBECCA BUTCHER (Clardy lab) received her undergrad from
Harvard University as well as her Ph.D.. For her thesis, she carried
out several forward chemical-genetic screens for novel bioactive small
molecules and investigated their mechanism of action. In addition, she
developed a general method for the identification of the cellular
targets of small molecules with unknown mechanism. Her advisor was
Stuart Schreiber.
10) ROSITSA KOLEVA (Marto lab) received her master’s degree as
well as her graduate thesis at Faculty of Chemistry, University of
Sofia, Bulgaria. Her mentor was Prof. M. Palamareva, Ph.D., Dr. Sci..
Her thesis topic was Synthesis of Trans-2,3,4-Three Substituted
Isoquinolines and their Thin Layer Chromatography. She synthesized new
polysubstituted Quinolines and Isoquinolines as potential drugs for the
Central Nervous System.
11) WEIDONG TIAN (Roth lab) received his Bachelor of Engineering
with the Department of Biochemical Engineering at Shanghai Jiaotong
University and a Master of Science with the Department of Biology at
Tsinghua University. His thesis was on: Production of Biodegradable
Plastics (Polyhydroxyalkanoates, PHAs) from bacteria isolated from
oil-contaminated fields. His advisor was Dr. Guoquiang Chen. He
received his Ph.D. with the Department of Biology at Washington
University in St. Louis. His thesis was: Systematic studies of enzyme
function conservation and application for genome-wide enzyme function
prediction and metabolic pathway reconstruction. His advisor was Dr.
Jeffrey Skolnick.
12) JEREMY KAMIL (Coen lab) did his undergrad at Cornell
University (College of Arts and Sciences, August 1997.) He received
his Ph.D. from University of California, Davis (June 2003.) His Ph.D.
thesis involved the identification and characterization of a
lipoprotein lipase homolog in the genome of the Marek’s
diseaseherpesvirus. His thesis advisor was Hsing-Jien Kung, Ph.D..
Jeremy also did a first postdoc at Cornell in the lab of Klaus
Osterrieder where he investigated role of this lipase homolog in vivo.
13) NGOC QUANG TRAN (Richardson lab) came from Vietnam, and
graduated from Hanoi National University, Hanoi. He did his M.Sc. at
Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources, Vietnam Academy of
Sciences and Technology. He received his Ph.D. from International
Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, ICGEB New Delhi,
India, with the project entitled “Molecular cloning and
characterization of minichromosome maintenance from pea.” His Ph.D.
advisor was Dr. Narendra Tuteja. He obtained a degree of Doctor of
Philosophy (Ph.D.) in October 2005.