Wiley Science Advisors

Ángel obtained his Master Thesis in the lab of Dr. Francisco Tejedor in 1994 and his Ph.D. in the Autonomous University of Madrid in 1999 working in the lab of Dr. Alberto Ferrús, at the Cajal Institute (CSIC). He conducted a postdoctoral training in the Department of Development and Chemical Communication in Insects at University of the Burgundy (France) in the lab of the Dr. Jean François Ferveur. He has received a CNRS (2000-2001) and Marie Curie Fellowships (2001-2003) and he returned to Spain in 2004 with a Marie Curie ERG (European Reintegration Grant) Contract. At present, he holds a Ramon y Cajal Contract at the Cajal Institute (CSIC). His research focuses on the development and activity of the nervous system of Drosophila, using precise genetic manipulations and multidisciplinary approaches like electrophysiology and behaviour. His current research involves the functional analysis of in vivo changes in the number of synapses in specific Drosophila olfactory neurons. He is also focusing in the analysis of synaptic changes in the vertebrate hippocampus and its consequences on memory and learning tasks.

Sabine is a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard Medical School, USA and her research focuses on structural studies of proteins, protein-protein complexes and protein-RNA complexes involved in translation initiation using NMR, SAXS/WAXS, XAS and other techniques. She received her PhD from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel and studied Chemistry at the University of Essen, Germany.

Barak obtained his Ph.D. from the Department of Structural Biology at the Weizmann Institute of Science. His scientific training has been in the fields of biochemistry, molecular biology, and biophysics. Barak is utilizing biophysical tools and approaches to assess the structural nature and the bio-molecular interactions between protein and protein-nucleic acid complexes.  Barak’s current research in the laboratory of Prof. Charles C. Richardson is concerned with DNA replication in bacteriophage T7.

Marianne obtained a B.Sc. (Honors) degree in Biomedical Science from the University of Kings College London, UK and a M.Sc. in Molecular Medicine from University College London, UK. She returned to Kings College London to complete her Ph.D. in Nuclear Biology, entitled ‘Epigenetic Analysis of the DES and HNRPA2B1-CBX3 Dominant Chromatin Opening Elements’ in the laboratory of Michael Antoniou. She recently joined Kevin Struhl’s group at Harvard Medical School Boston, MA, USA and is researching how chromatin states are inherited.

Kristin is a Master’s student at the University of Western Ontario.  Her research focuses on signal transduction and transcriptional activation of a protein called Puma which is important in neuronal apoptosis.  Her aim is to elucidate which transcription factors are activated by certain kinase pathways in order to then activate transcriptional upregulation of Puma and subsequent cell death.

The focus of Don’s research has been to understand nuclear folate metabolism, and in particular the biosynthesis of thymidylate within the nucleus.

Sara studied Biology at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and obtained her PhD in Neuroscience under the supervision of Dr. Gonzalo García de Polavieja in June 2009 (Excellent PhD Award) at the same university. During her PhD she studied the neuronal code of a sensory neuron in the leech Hirudo medicinalis and the adaptation of this code to different statistical contexts. She also studied the regeneration of leech nervous circuits during 3 months at the Dr. Christie Sahley laboratory (at Purdue University, IN). During the last year she has moved to the study of animal collective behavior, using a quantitative experimental approach. Her current work is focused in collective decision making in the zebrafish Danio rerio.

Philip is a molecular microbiologist interested in genomics, proteomics and transcriptomics. He is particularly interested in non-genomic applications of next-gen sequencing including RNA-sequencing and epigenetic sequencing. Other areas of interest include biofilm formation, quorum sensing and the human microbiome.

Jeremy Bailoo is an international student from Trinidad & Tobago who recently received a Ph.D in Developmental Psychology. He is currently interested in the investigation of naturally occurring variations in the development of species-typical behavior in humans and other animals and their underlying physiological and neuroanatomical correlates, especially as these pertain to parental care systems. From a more applied perspective, he is also interested in early life perturbations and assessment of their long term effects. Other interests include the History of Psychology, the use of animal models in Comparative Psychology and evaluation of their effectiveness, and Ethology.

Dr. Frances Balcomb is a post-doctoral research fellow in the Temple University Department of Psychology, and in SILC, (Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center), a multidisciplinary program focused on better understanding spatial learning. Dr. Balcomb’s primary research area is cognitive science, with a specific interest in the developing mind in human infancy and cross-species.  Current research with Dr. Nora Newcombe at Temple University and Dr. Lynn Nadel at the University of Arizona explores early emergent spatial navigation and memory skills, adapting paradigms from non-human animals to explore the qualitative nature of developmental cognition related to underlying neurological structures such as the hippocampus.  Ongoing research in collaboration with Dr. LouAnn Gerken at the University of Arizona explores early memory-monitoring, or metacognitive, skills in preschool children, adapting paradigms from work with rhesus monkeys to eludicate a better understanding of the ontongeny of memory-monitoring skills.

Shibdas Banerjee obtained his B.Sc. in Chemistry Honors from the University of Calcutta, Kolkata in 2006 and then he pursued M.Sc. in Chemistry from Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India in 2008 with the specialization in Organic Chemistry. Currently he is doing Ph.D. at TATA Institute of Fundamental research Mumbai under the umbrella of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) of the Government of India. His research is focused on the biomolecular mass spectrometry and enzyme catalysis. Besides understanding of the gas phase ion chemistry of biomolecules and the fundamental processes occur during the transformation of the analyte from solution to the gas phase upon electrospray ionization, he is also involved to study the enzyme catalysis and the product identification by mass spectrometric techniques. He is parallely interested in the creation of suitable active site in a thermostable P450 by site directed mutagenesis and/or directed evolution (protein engineering) to develop a robust biocatalyst to perform important chemical transformation of organic compounds.

Ravi obtained his Masters in Chemistry from DDU Gorakhpur University during 2000-2002. He earned his Ph.D. from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai (2008) in the field of “NMR spectroscopy and NMR method development”. Currently, he is working as postdoctoral fellow at University of Washington, Seattle (USA) where his research focuses on studying large macromolecular machinery including protein-protein or protein-nucleic acid complexes using NMR spectroscopy and other biophysical techniques i.e., Circular Dichroism (CD), isothermal calorimetry (ITC), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), dynamic light scattering (DSC) and analytical ultracentrifugation (AUC). He also has scientific interest in method development and their application in the field of NMR spectroscopy.

Seth’s research involves using protein-protein interaction network analysis to better understand relationships between diseases and drugs.  More specifically, his main project has focused on understanding the relationship between congenital long-QT syndromes and drugs which have the side effect of prolonging the cardiac QT interval.  QT interval prolongation is a major risk factor for dangerous cardiac arrhythmias and this drug side effect has caused several medications to be removed from the market.  His group used a new approach based on random walks to identify disease selective modules in an integrated mammalian protein-protein interaction network.  Comparing disease centered subnetworks uncovers relationships between diseases with similar symptoms or causes.  The LQTS disease gene neighborhood we identified is able to serve as a classifier of drugs that prolong the QT interval and help suggest mechanisms by which drugs might increase risk of arrhythmias.  They validated their approach using adverse event reports associated with drugs not previously known to have this side effect. 

Mirko Bischofberger did his PhD at the interface of Microbiology and Computational Biology to study how bacteria exert their lethal effect on humans. Currently he’s a fellow of the Science & Politics program of the Swiss government working on scientific issues for politicians (www.politikstipendien.ch). He’s also a freelance journalist for the science section of the Swiss newspaper “Neue Zürcher Zeitung” and founder of the website www.ItaliaDallEstero.info, an attempt to circumvent the current limited press freedom in Italy using the web.

Peter obtained his Ph.D. from Binghamton University with an emphasis on glucocorticoid and adrenergic regulation of stress-induced neuroinflammation. He is currently a post-doctoral research fellow in the lab of Huda Akil at the Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Institute, University of Michigan. In the Akil lab, his focus has expanded to examine the immunological underpinnings of mood and psychiatric disorders and the potential impact of these factors can have on behavior.

Daniel’s studies primarily involve investigating the role of free-radicals and DNA damage accumulation on the development of age associated cardiovascular disease. He also works on accelerated models of ageing known to induce progeroid syndromes. The aim of his studies is to identify common mechanisms between accelerated and normal cellular ageing in order to elucidate a unifying mechanism of cardiovascular ageing.

Meredith received her B.S. degree in Physics, with a second major in Psychology, from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2007. She is now a PhD candidate in Applied Physics at the University of Michigan, conducting research in biophysics. Meredith’s work focuses on the application of ultrafast laser pulse shaping techniques to fluorescence microscopy. She is also completing a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering with a focus on optics and photonics.

Catherine’s current research involves regulation of gene expression and bacterial interactions with host extracellular matrix in Borrelia burgdorferi. Her other research interests include spirochetes, bacterial interactions with mammalian hosts, innate immunity, bacterial pathogenesis, emerging infectious diseases, and public health.

Michele is currently an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Idaho State University. She received her B.A. in Psychology from DePaul University in 1999 and her Ph.D. in Psychology (Behavioral & Cognitive Neuroscience) from the University of Iowa in 2005. She conducted postdoctoral research for two years (2005-2007) in the field of spinal cord neurophysiology at the University of Miami School of Medicine’s Miami Project to Cure Paralysis. She was hired as an Assistant Professor in Experimental Psychology at ISU in 2007. Her research program examines the development of coordinated action in perinatal rats, and explores the role of the brain, spinal cord, sensory feedback, and experience in the modulation of motor behavior during ontogeny. Currently, her lab is examining 1.) how locomotor behavior in the rat is controlled by the spinal cord and is shaped by sensorimotor experience, 2.) how motor coordination during the perinatal period is shaped by naturally occurring events such as labor, delivery, and maternal-infant interactions, and 3.) how touch sensitivity in newborn rats is influenced by application of topical anesthetics. Her research is funded by the NIH, the NIH INBRE (Idaho Network for Biomedical Research Excellence) Program of the National Center for Research Resources, and internal grants from ISU.

Area of research: Mouse models of cancer

Tiago’s PhD thesis encompasses the monitoring of the termite (Isoptera) fauna from the region of the Upper Madeira River, in the Brazilian Amazonia, state of Rondônia. He is testing abiotical aspects influencing richness and abundance of termites, giving emphasis to termite guilds and life types.  He is comparing the species’ diversity from both sides of the river. In addition, he is investigating the genetic population structure of some species, to test the existence of gene flow among populations of both side of the river. He is also describing new species of termites that are eventually being sampled during the field expeditions. For detailed information about his work, visit his personal homepage: carrijo.wikidot.com

Frances has a BSc (Hons) from Durham University, UK, in Cell Biology and a MSc by research in Biological Imaging, also from Durham University, UK. During her MSc, Frances used Laser Scanning Confocal Microscopy and molecular methods to investigate the localisation and function of a novel cytoskeletal binding protein. Frances is currently a PhD student at Bristol University, UK, investigating the physical and chemical determinants of leaf albedo. The justification for the project is that if high albedo (more reflective) varieties of crops can be grown, less Solar energy will be absorbed by the Earth’s surface and global warming can be mitigated in areas where intensive agriculture is found.

Mohammed holds a B. Tech (Hons) Geology from Federal University of Technology, Yola and M. Sc. Mineral Exploration/Economic Geology from A. T. B. U. Bauchi all in Nigeria in the year 1996 and 2004 respectively. He has worked briefly with former Stirling Civil Engineering Nigeria Limited as a Geotechnical Engineer in the period 1998 – 2002 and later joined the services of the Department of Geology and Mining, Nasarawa State University, Keffi 2005 and in 2008 transferred his services to the Federal University of Petroleum Resources, Effurun, Nigeria. He was in active services of the latter institution prior to the commencement of his PhD in Geological Sciences in January 2011 at Plymouth University. His PhD research is centred on ‘Terrestrial climate reconstructions across Cenozoic greenhouse and icehouse climate events using new organic and inorganic climate proxies’. The research involves the description and analysis of Cenozoic terrestrial sedimentary sequences from Petrockstow, Bovey basins and Lundy Island within the UK. Key methodologies employed include sedimentary logging, sequence stratigraphy and geochemical sample analysis. Mohammed is also currently demonstrating at the Plymouth University, and has authored five journal articles.

Soumee’s field of research is to study the vibrational properties of disordered systems. Presently, she is working on glasses. Vibrational characteristics of glasses are very different from crystalline solids. There are many interesting phenomena that take place at low temperatures and across the glass transition owing to different relaxation processes in glasses. Soumee’s interest is in probing these properties using Raman and Brillouin spectroscopy and studying the structural changes involved in these relaxations.

Guanhua is working on two areas: one is statistical genetics which involve statistical method to analyze high-through data such as microarray data, DNA methylation, or next-generation sequencing data. The other is statistical learning theory and its application to personalized method, for example apply the Q-learning framework to give adaptive therapy plan to cancer patient according to their outcome of last therapy.

Zhao obtained a B.Sc. degree in Department of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology (now called School of Life Sciences) in Tsinghua University and completed his Ph.D. in School of Life Sciences in Tsinghua University in 2010. He has been studying the aberrant regulation of tumor-related enzymes in human cancers. He now works as a postdoctoral fellow in Prof. Hai-Meng Zhou’s lab and researches on the regulation of Wnt signaling pathway in lung cancer.

Lauren is a graduate research assistant in a Lung Development and Disease laboratory group in Oxfordshire, UK. Her group is interested in the molecular mechanisms which underlie branching morphogenesis and lung development. They hypothesize that the genes which control these mechanisms are not only critical to lung development, but also accountable for lung disease.

Following an ENU screen, her group was able to identify several genes important in lung development, and subsequently generate mouse lines with mutations in these genes. She is involved in characterizing these mouse lines, by mapping the mutation, performing lung function tests and analyzing lung histology. They have found that their mutant mice exhibit various lung defects, including reduced airway space, fewer epithelial branches and disrupted pulmonary vasculature, as well as exencephaly, ocular coloboma and renal hypoplasia. Their lab is also interested in respiratory lung disease and they are currently phenotyping three mouse lines which have mutations in known asthma susceptibility genes. She hopes that by studying lung development and disease in mice, we will improve our understanding of the mechanisms involved in lung development and also provide ideal mouse models for human disease.

Eric is a graduate student in the Department of Statistics at Rice University and in the joint MD-PhD program with Baylor College of Medicine.  He received a BA degree in Physics from Rice University and an MS degree in Electrical Engineering from UC Berkeley. His research focuses on developing estimation procedures for high throughput data in the presence of contamination.

After completing her B.Sc. in Kinesiology, Sarah’s passion for human physiology led her to the University of British Columbia where she is currently investigating the mechanism of cyclic AMP on Hyperpolarization-activated Cyclic Nucleotide-gated (HCN) channels, the heart’s pacemaker channel.

Adojoh gained his M.Sc. in Petroleum Geology at the University of Benin, Nigeria in 2009 before commencing his Ph.D studies at the University of Plymouth, UK. His current research focuses on the devlopment of a conceptual climate stratigraphy based on recovery of data from sedimentology, palynology and cyclogs to predict hydrocarbon plays in order to reduce the risks involved during exploration.

Chris is interested in the factors regulating proliferation and migration of neural precursor cells and postmitotic neurons in the embryonic forebrain. For his graduate work, he is researching the role of glutamate signaling in the developing forebrain.

Jim Davies (www.jimdavies.org) is a cognitive scientist interested in understanding and modeling imagination in people and computer programs. He has an undergraduate degree in philosophy, a master’s degree in psychology, and a Ph.D. in computer science from Georgia Tech. In his current work he models visual scene generation. He is also working on a book discussing the psychology of art and religion.

In his spare time he is a dancer, writer, improvisor, and calligrapher. You can read his blog at http://jimdavies.blogspot.com/

Relatively little is known of the molecular events required for development of a fully functional lung. Charlotte’s group is seeking to understand these molecular events with particular emphasis on the process of branching morphogenesis. It is her group’s hypothesis that some of the genes critical to lung development will also be involved in lung disease. To identify developmentally important genes and investigate their role in lung disease pathogenesis, she uses both forward and reverse genetics. Once they have identified mouse mutants with developmental lung defects, they thoroughly characterise the lung phenotype and use inducible models of fibrosis and allergic airway disease (asthma) to test susceptibility to lung disease.

Tagide is a postdoctoral fellow at the Carnegie Institution for Science. Her research focuses on the development and function of brain asymmetries and she uses genetic approaches to visualize and manipulate neuronal circuitry. Tagide obtained her Ph.D in Behavioral Ecology at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Alexa researches RNA stability and its relation to disease. Specifically, her lab has found that CUGBP1, which is misregulated in myotonic dystrophy, is involved in mRNA degradation. In myotonic dystrophy-like conditions, CUGBP1 is no longer able to degrade TNF mRNA, which may lead to increased TNF mRNA levels seen in myotonic dystrophy patients.

Doug obtained his B.S. in Microbiology, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Penn State University in 2001, during which time he worked at GlaxoSmithKline (then SmithKline Beecham) in the cancer angiogenesis group.  He spent the next three years doing research in the area of breast cancer bone metastasis at Penn State, and then at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.  In 2004, he entered the Molecular and Cellular Pathology graduate program at UAB, where his work focused on understanding the distinct actions of GH and IGF-1 in skeletal development.  His interest in GH and IGF-1 signaling expanded to skeletal muscle following completion of his Ph.D. training in 2008, and his move to Johns Hopkins in 2009.  He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Johns Hopkins, where he studies pathways that enable communication between bone and skeletal muscle to coordinate their development and mass.  Doug also serves as the Administrative Editor of the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research.

Douglas is currently a researcher and co-PI of the Laboratory of Plant Biotechnology at the Paraná State Agronomic Institute* (IAPAR), in Londrina, Paraná State, Brazil. The lab has its focus in genomics, transcriptomics and transgenic approaches to understand plant tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses, especially interested in tropical perennial crops. Before joining IAPAR, Doug earned his Ph.D. at University of Sao Paulo, where he worked on the characterization of sugarcane transposable elements. He also worked with Eucalyptus genomics during undergrad (Sao Paulo State University, at Botucatu) and sugarcane citogenetics at CIRAD, a agricultural research center in Montpellier, France. He is interested in structural and functional genomics of perennial crop plants where Brazil is a major player, like coffee and sugarcane.

*Douglas participates in the Wiley Science Advisors in his personal capacity. The views expressed are his alone and do not represent the views of IAPAR or the Paraná State Government.

Binita gained her B.Sc in Chemistry at The University of Burdwan and her M.Sc in Chemistry at IIT-Roorkee. In 2008 she began study in the Biophysical Sciences at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata. She is now studying for her Ph.D at the University of Calcutta. Her research is focused on the production of ultra-trace amounts of clinically relevant radionuclides and derivation of subsequent separation methodologies from the bulk target by radioanalytical and green methods.

Deren received a B.S. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Minnesota in 2007, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Evolutionary Biology from the University of Chicago.  His current research if focused on understanding how species interactions influence rates of adaptation and diversification in plants.  More specifically, Deren is investigating a particularly species rich group of plants endemic to high elevation habitats of the Chinese Himalaya, to study how competition for pollinators among these plants has influenced floral evolution and reproductive isolation.  Deren is interested in combining inferences from large-scale phylogenetic comparative analyses with fine-scale investigations of population structure and gene-flow.

Becky has a BS in Brain and Cognitive Science from the University of Rochester; she is now earning her PhD in Baltimore. She is doing a joint partnership program with Johns Hopkins and the NIH completing her thesis work in the lab of Dr. Bruce Hope at NIDA. Her focus is on the circuitry and neurobiology of addiction using pharmacological and molecular techniques in rodent models. She has worked previously at the Medical University of South Carolina with Gary Aston-Jones researching similar interests in rats.

Xiaochun received his bachelor degree from University of Science & Technology of China, master degree from Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Ph.D. degree from Cornell University. In Professor John Lis’s laboratory, he isolated RNA aptamers against different surfaces of transcription factor TBP by SELEX and discovered the dynamic nature of TBP interactions during transcription initiation and reinitiation with these molecular probes. Currently he is a postdoctoral research fellow in Professor Kevin Struhl’s laboratory at Harvard Medical School. His research involves mapping genome-wide association of transcription factors by ChIP-chip and ChIP-seq. He uses budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a model system to elucidate molecular mechanisms of transcription regulation

Anne Ferguson is a Research Technician I in Dr. Francesca Pignoni’s lab at Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, NY. The lab is a basic vision research lab, studying eye development in the Drosophila fruit fly. Currently, she is working on a large scale RNAi screen for eye development genes—they are looking to find all of the genes involved in fruit fly eye development. From there, the goal is to characterize these genes anew or augment their records with new information.  

After graduating recently with a 1st Class Masters of Physical Geography with honours at the University of Hull, William started a PhD at Plymouth University with Richard Twitchett and Gregory Price. His PhD research involves collecting novel paleontological data from various palaeolatitudes and different shelf environments from around the world. High resolution palaeoecological studies will be performed on the shelly macro and microfauna through field sampling and/or thin section analyses. Emphasis will be placed on rigorous statistical analyses of the data, and importance given to the consideration of rock-record and other potential biases. Palaeoecological changes and trends will be compared between localities and in comparison to a variety of palaeoenvironmental and climatic proxies.

Currently Alon’s research is divided among clinical studies and educational methodology. Specifically, the educational methodology he is looking at focuses on the efficacy of multimedia such as podcasts in the education of both dental students as well as dental hygienists.

Leo Garcia is a 3rd year PhD student, researching new ways of using ultrasound elastography to help characterise tumour mobility. Even though ultrasound elastography aims to generate stiffness information by imaging tissue strain, it has been shown recently that how adhered a tumour is to its surroundings affects strain distributions within, and surrounding, the tumour. These changes may be more easily visualised with high quality 2D strain distributions reconstructed from steered ultrasound data. Leo’s project seeks to combine mobility imaging with steered ultrasound elastography and assess improvements in differentiation between adhered malignant tumours and more mobile benign tumours. Leo lives in London with his girlfriend, a cat, a hamster and a snake, and likes listening to music.

Jorge obtained a degree in Biology from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, in 2000. Nowadays he is a PhD. student working at the Cajal Institute (CSIC) in Madrid. He is currently interested in astrocytes heterogeneity, fundamentally in regarding to postnatal neurogenesis. Under the Dr. López-Mascaraque supervision, he has developed a clonal analysis method to understand how astrocyte heterogeneity is defined in development. In his free time, he tries to get a degree in Physics from the National Distance Learning University (UNED).

Victoria is a PhD student at Queen’s University Belfast researching settlement structure in the Middle–Late Bronze Age in Ireland. Using a landscape archaeology theoretical background this research will use GIS to investigate spatial and chronological trends in the character of the domestic record. Settlement types and general settlement patterns will be considered in relation to their counterparts in Britain and continental Europe to determine the degree to which developments in Ireland were linked to changes elsewhere during this time. Other research interests include human remains from domestic contexts in Iron Age Atlantic Scotland (MA completed in Queen’s University Belfast, 2004/2005); the Bronze Age village of Corrstown, Northern Ireland; and eighteenth-century landscape gardens. Victoria is also a freelance archaeological editor and writer of excavation reports and publications and has worked with several Irish archaeological companies. She received her BA Hons from Oxford University, Keble College, in 2004.

Alexandra’s work is focused on mucosal immunology, namely the immune system of the lung. She looks at a variety of lung pathogens (viral: influenza and RSV, and bacterial: Streptococcus pneumoniae, and Haemophilus influenzae). Her main aim is to understand the immunological mechanisms which govern susceptibility to secondary bacterial infection after viral lung infection.

Evi’s group is using ENU mutagenesis in the lab to identify mutants affecting cilia structure and formation and handling these to study the role of cilia in the establishment of L-R asymmetries. The ultimate aim of her work is to generate a network of factors controlling L-R axis determination during embryonic development. Thereafter, these genes and pathways could be investigated in humans and will shed light on the abnormalities that give rise to disease manifestation, with the ultimate aim of treating and extinguishing such diseases.

Daniel studies how steroid hormones affect development and behavior. As a postdoctoral fellow he developed an assay to visualize estrogen receptor activation in live zebrafish. Current studies include determining in which tissues estrogenic endocrine disrupting chemicals, such as pesticides, act during development and comparing estrogen receptor activity in male and female brains. Ultimately, Daniel aims to track estrogen responsive neurons and their projections during development and in adulthood and to map receptor activity in the brain during sexually dimorphic behaviors. Daniel received his Ph.D. in cellular and molecular medicine from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

The title of Nicole’s research is “Heuristic Chemistry.” Her research focuses on the virtually neglected use of heuristic principles in understanding organic chemistry. The purpose is to combine psychological aspects of human decision making processes with adequate concepts of fundamental organic chemistry reactions.

Intuitive reasoning typically demonstrated by experienced chemists should be made accessible to young learners through heuristic concepts. Hence, she performed a heuristic analysis of the cyclic six electron case, as an ubiquitous reaction type for unsaturated hydrocarbons and proposed a simple comprehensible pattern that try to enhance the conceptual understanding of learners.

Michael is currently a Health Science Policy Analyst at the National Institutes of Health*. In this role he analyzes and reports on biomedical research advances in the area of digestive diseases for reports to policy makers, communications with patient advocacy groups, and publications that highlight the Institute’s research mission for the public. Before joining NIH, Michael earned his Ph.D. at Columbia University, where he developed and applied state-of-the-art NMR techniques for studying protein structure, dynamics, and folding. He then completed his postdoctoral research at the Immune Disease Institute and Harvard Medical School, where he received an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellowship for his research on the structural mechanisms of signaling by the epidermal growth factor receptor. He is interested in basic and clinical research on digestive and metabolic diseases and using biomedical communication within the research community and the general public to improve public health.

*Michael participates in the Wiley Science Advisors in his personal capacity. The views expressed are his alone and do not represent the views of the National Institutes of Health or the United States Government.

Enrico obtained his M.Sc. in theoretical physics at the University of Rome III (Italy) with a thesis on the phenomenology of particle physics under the supervision of Prof Guido Altarelli (CERN). During his undergraduate studies, mainly driven by his own curiosity, he developed an interest about the thermodynamics and the kinetics of the complex systems. This led him to move to the University of Zurich to do a PhD on the topic of protein folding under the supervision of Prof Amedeo Caflisch. Working on theoretical and computational  methods, Enrico realized that the protein folding problem not only represents one of the most fascinating open problems of the modern molecular biology but it also represents a paradigmatic example of “complexity in act” in biology. His curiosity for biological problems led him then to do a postdoc in computational biology at the Life Science Institute of the EPFL (Prof Felix Naef). There he worked on the biophysical modeling of the protein-DNA interactions to investigate the regulatory networks of Yeast. He is currently investigating protein dynamics at the Courant Institute – NYU (Prof Eric Vanden-Eijnden) as assistant research scientist. Enrico’s journey through apparently diverse scientific subjects allowed him to maturate a passion for the debates on science policy issues, the philosophy of science and the evolution of the scientific culture.

William’s research focused on the application of adult bone-marrow-derived stem cells to tissue regeneration, particularly bone.  He focused on the interaction between the stem cells and their microenvironment, which has further applications to the study of bone-metastatic cancer.

Kallol is a graduate student at the Indian Institute of Science, Molecular Biophysics Unit. His research interest lies in mass spectrometry of peptides and proteins. Besides looking at specific protein structure related problems, he uses mass spectrometry to characterize libraries of natural peptides of biological significance, of different origins, and then uses the technique for de novo structure determination of individual peptide components. Further, his interest is in developing new mass spectrometric methodologies to overcome the existing problems in structure determination. In the process, he also tries to understand the gas phase chemistry behind different mass spectrometric fragmentation methodologies.

Sushma is a scientific assistant working with Prof. Sudipta Maiti at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, India, since last four years.  She works on Alzheimer ’s disease problems. More specifically her project is to understand how a small perturbation in amino acid sequence can cause a dramatic change in the propensity of aggregation of Ab-amyloids in solution while structurally they remain almost same as original Ab-peptides. During this period I got a handy experiences of various single-molecule optical technique like FCS (Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy), fluorescence lifetime, FRET (Forster Resonance Energy Transfer).

Oliver received his PhD with Lynn Nadel at The University of Arizona studying the updating of spatial memory in humans. Currently, he is a post-doctoral fellow funded by the German Research Society in the lab of Karim Nader at McGill University, where he investigates the neural mechanism involved in acquiring, maintaining, and modifying complex, i.e., event-like memories in rats. In relation to these projects on memory systems dynamics, his other research focuses on the molecular mechanisms involved in memory persistence, forgetting and experimental amnesia.

Josh gained his Ph.D in Microbial Pathogenesis at Texas A&M University in 2010. He  then went on to study host-pathogen interactions at the NIH. Specifically his research focused on how C. burnetii enters the host cell and the downstream signal path that is activated. He is now working as a research biologist at the United States Department of Agriculture. His current works looks at aspects of Salmonella and E.coli infection in cattle.

Andrew is a pre-doctoral student in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of California, San Diego.  He received a BSE degree in Biomedical Engineering from Arizona State University.  His research focuses on identifying and manipulating mechanosensing pathways in human Mesenchymal Stem Cells (hMSCs).

Sophie obtained a B.Sc (Honours) degree in Zoology from the University of Durham in 2009 and becoming interested in bioacoustics she went on to complete a Masters by research on the effects of ship noise on three-spined stickleback behaviour at the University of Bristol in 2010. After spending a year working as a research assistant in French Polynesia, New Zealand and Australia focussing on different aspects of bioacoustics, coral reef and climate change research, she returned to the University of Bristol where she is now in the first year of her Ph.D on the effects of chronic noise on the development, physiology and behaviour of fish in collaboration with the École Pratique des Hautes Études. Current work involves rearing cod to the sound of passing ships at a fish farm in Scotland.

Louisa is a postdoc in the zoology department at Oregon State University, currently looking for faculty positions. Her research area is the effects of the circadian clock on the toxicological response, and the effects of toxins on the clock. She is working with Drosophila melanogaster, with pesticides as model compounds.

Junwei majored in clinical medicine and received his bachelor degree in 1997. After graduation he focused on infectious disease diagnosis and treatment. In 2004 he began to study for a professional master’s degree of professional clinical microbiology. From 2007 to 2010, the main characteristics of his work were testing in clinical microbiology and infectious disease diagnosis. To further his study he went to Fudan University in 2010, where his research now focuses on bacterial resistance and mechanisms of bacterial resistance.

Dr. Graham Huesmann obtained a BS from the University of Oregon while working in the laboratory of Dr. Nathan Tublitz.  He then went to the University of Illinois where he graduated from the Medical Scholars Program with an MD/PhD in 2007.  While there he worked in the laboratory of Dr. David Clayton on the model system of the Zebra finch songbird.  He pioneered work on the role of caspase-3 in memory trace capture, showing that there was a role for this enzyme, previously thought to be exclusive to apoptosis, in a normal healthy brain.  He funded his work in part with an NRSA from NINDS.  After completing graduate school Graham did a year of Internal Medicine at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign before starting a residency in Neurology at the Partners Neurology program at Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Harvard Medical School.  While at Harvard he received an R25 research grant from NINDS and joined the laboratory of Dr. Rudolph Tanzi, where he continued his work on caspase-3, looking at the regulation of this enzyme in normal brain and at the genetic and functional mutations underlying Alzheimer’s and Autism.  Caspase-3 appears to play a role in the pathophysiology of both of these conditions, as well as other neurodegenerative processes.  In the summer of 2011, Dr. Huesmann joined the staff at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, as a Clinical Fellow in Epilepsy where he is seeing patients and continuing to work in the Tanzi lab on both proteomic and genetic analysis of caspase-3 regulation in a mouse model and in human tissue.

Amro HUSSIEN received his MBBS degree (Medicine and Surgery) from Omdurman Islamic University, Sudan in 2009. Currently, he is doing the internship training at King Abdulaziz University Affiliated Hospitals, Saudi Arabia. His research interest is focused on Regenerative Medicine with specific concentration on the use of nanotechnology (e.g. carbon nanotubes scaffolds and nanoparticles) to manipulate and proliferate the induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and human embryonic stem cells (hESC) for cell-based therapies, tissue engineering and bio-implants.  He is going to start his graduate studies at University College London this year. Other interests include impact of learning technologies on science and medical education, particularly the Web 2.0, social networks, virtual patients and simulations.

Reid’s current research project focuses on characterizing psychrotolerant sporeforming bacteria in dairy systems.  His other interests include food processing and fermentation.

Srikant works on synthesizing Fluorophores (which are used to tag to proteins for bio-imaging), trying to incorporate Organic Fluorophores in an inorganic rigid silica matrix which are nanometer in size. This incorporation into a rigid matrix makes these organic fluorophores robust and long lasting. To understand if these matrices are robust, his team does a lot of characterization which involves Physical Chemistry/Physics. They then collaborate with the biologists and try to image the tagged proteins. They play a role in the Bio-imaging procedures that create all the pretty pictures of cells and various organelles that you see in books.

Lijun Jia, Ph.D, is currently a Professor in the Department of Immunology at Shanghai Medical School of Fudan University. He obtained his PhD degree from Yangzhou University in 2003 where he developed a novel vaccine against highly pathogenic avian influenza. From Sep 2003 to Nov 2005, he pursued postdoc training on tumor-targeting bacteria-mediated anticancer therapy in Nanjing University in China. Then he joined Medical School of University of Michigan as a research fellow, working on the identification and validation of anticancer targets against ubiquitin-proteasome system until Feb 2010. 

His major research directions include: 1) Anticancer target identification and drug discovery against SCF E3 ubiquitin ligases; 2) Tumor-targeting bacteria-mediated cancer therapy; 3) Development of novel vaccines against viral infectious disease and cancer.

Danri obtained both a BA (psychology and sociology) and a BPhil (Hypermedia for language learning) from the University of Stellenbosch. She is currently part of a group of students researching patient recall and perceptions after signing for a blood transfusion. Her interests include neuroscience, as well as, computer technologies and their use in teaching medicine.

Jack received his BA from Washington University in St. Louis and is currently pursuing his PhD at the University of Chicago. His research involves utilizing mechanisms that inhibit myofibroblast differentiation (the key pathologic cell in pulmonary fibrosis) in vitro and in the context of in vivo  models of pulmonary fibrosis.

David is a tenure-track faculty member in the Department of Statistical Science at Baylor University.  He received his B.A. in mathematics from the University of Richmond in 2006 and his M.A and Ph.D. in statistics from Rice University in 2010 and 2011, where his doctoral work focused on various aspects of algebraic statistics.  His current research interests include algebraic statistics, statistical computing and graphics, and the statistical modeling of complex urban systems under multiple hazards.

Matthias researches hierarchical modeling of massive spatio-temporal data sets, with application to global mapping of CO2.

Evelyn received her BSc in Zoology from Trinity College, Dublin. She then went on to the University of York, U.K. to complete an MSc in Zooarchaeology. She obtained her PhD from Queen’s University, Belfast, investigating freshwater radiocarbon reservoir corrections. Her current area of research is freshwater ecology. She investigates carbon cycling and food web structure in lower Lough Erne using radiocarbon (¹⁴C) and stable isotopes (¹³C and ¹⁵N) from dissolved inorganic carbon, dissolved and particulate organic matter and a range of invertebrates and fish to investigate carbon pathways and terrestrial influence on the food web.

Video of presentation of preliminary results: http://go.qub.ac.uk/Evelyn

John uses first principles quantum mechanics and atomistic forcefields to computationally investigate problems in chemistry, physics, energy, and materials research.

Emiko is a Geology PhD student at Plymouth University; she has an MS degree in geomorphology from University of Cincinnati and an MSci in Earth sciences from Durham university. Her research interests lie in understanding the links between climate and tectonics in landscape evolution in active tectonic areas. Emiko has studied climatic and tectonic signals in the sedimentation of alluvial fan surfaces in the Mecca Hills and Coachella Valley while quantifying the rates relative rates of sedimentary processes. Her research is now based in western Turkey. This research draws heavily upon Quaternary dating techniques such as cosmogenic nuclide dating and radiocarbon dating and also utilises computing techniques to extract data from DEM images. Field studies play a significant role in her research. She has interests in a variety of topics including tectonics and structural geology and sediment provenance studies through to past climate and environmental reconstruction. Emiko has used U-series, Uranium-Thorium, radiocarbon analysis and laser ablation mass spectrometry to examine sea level change around Australia and Italy and to study the preservation of foraminifera. She has also carried out detailed mapping of the Lizard ophiolite and suture zone (Cornwall, UK) which contained abundant igneous, metamorphic and structural geology.

Soo studied Atomic Physics during her graduate studies at Georgia Tech, specializing in the interactions of single atoms and ultra-high finesse cavity systems.  After receiving her Ph.D. in 2008, she was employed as a Defect Metrology process engineer by Intel Corporation and worked on the Ivy Bridge 22nm processor technology.  Upon completion of a technology cycle at Intel, she decided to return to the field of fundamental research and is now an NRC postdoctoral fellow at the US Naval Research Laboratory.  Currently, she is observing the effects of index of refraction properties on microparticles in microfluidic systems.

Jani obtained his Ph.D. from University of Helsinki based on computational work on controlled modification of the properties of carbon nanotubes. Since then, he has worked both in Finland and in Germany on materials science topics ranging from high pressure properties of nitrogen to radiation response of nanomaterials such as hexagonal boron-nitride and graphene.

Currently, he is teaching and carrying out research back in Helsinki as a senior scientist. The ongoing research is continuing the computational studies on radiation of nanomaterials in close collaboration with many international experimental groups. A website summarising the recent developments is established at http://www.helsinki.fi/nanocarbon/.

Nynke obtained her Ph.D. from the Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences (IRAS) at Utrecht University. Her PhD research focused on measuring and modeling the freely available concentrations of test chemicals in in vitro cytotoxicity assays to improve in vitro-in vivo acute toxic dose extrapolations. She is currently doing her post-doctoral research at the same institute, where she has expanded her research to include in vitro hepatocyte cultures to predict clearance rates across species.

Krishnendu is a graduate student working in TIFR, India. He works in spin polarisation of transient radicals and spin lattice relaxation mechanism of few of the stable radicals.  Thats all he has been doing for last three years to pursue his phd. Before that he completed his master degree in physical chemistry from Banaras Hindu University, India.

Besides that he has participated in quite a few science demonstrations that are organised for school or college guys by his institute.  There he tried to let people know about how physics, chemistry and of course biology work together behind our perception of colour that we experience in our everyday life.

Zohre’s work is about aerobic biodegradation of nitroaromatic compounds. Currently she is working on degradation of chlorobenzene in anoxic/oxic layer interface, 8-nitroguanine and amino imidazole biodegradation in environment. Her aim is to develop applicable techniques and understandings of degradation pathways of nitoaromatics. Her research does not only focus on natural attenuation, but also has an aim to study phytoremediation using endophytic bacteria with selected carriers.

Paul graduated from the University of Sussex in 2003 and began his PhD in Nic Tapon’s lab at Cancer Research UK. In 2008 he started his post-doc in Jean-Paul Vincent’s lab at the NIMR. His group uses Drosophila melanogaster as a model system and his research focuses on studying cell-cell adhesion and apoptosis using a combination of molecular biology, cell biology and genetics.

Area of research: Developmental biology

Jia Jing received her B. Sc (Honors) degree from the University of Melbourne, Australia. She then completed her PhD degree at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden under the supervisions of Dr. Catharina Larsson and Dr. Anders Höög. Her PhD thesis focused on the genetics and cytogenetics alterations in thyroid cancers. She has recently started her postdoctoral training in Dr. Kevin Struhl’s laboratory at Harvard Medical School, USA. Jia Jing’s group is currently using yeast as a model system to understand transcription regulation of ribosomal protein genes. Genetics and cooking are her lifelong passions.

Ju Youn studies the post-transcriptional gene regulation by computational approach. She has been working on the evolution of polyadenylation (PolyA) sites in mammal and the regulation of 3’UTR and regulatory elements by alternative polyadenylation (APA).  Currently, her research is focused on identifying the cis-elements to control mRNA decay and understanding the relationship mRNA stability with the alternative polyadenylation (APA).

Daniel Lepek is Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at The Cooper Union.  His research interests include particle technology, fluidization and multiphase flow, pharmaceutical engineering, modeling of transport and biotransport phenomena, and engineering education.  Daniel teaches a wide range of courses and supervises research projects involving both undergraduate and graduate students.  Daniel holds a B.E. in Chemical Engineering from The Cooper Union and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from New Jersey Institute of Technology.  He is an active member of AIChE, ISPE, and ASEE.

Boo obtained her BA in Biological Sciences from the University of Oxford, where she specialised in Environmental Biology and Botany. After a brief foray into secondary education, her love of science drew her back to research and she began postgraduate studies at the University of Bristol in 2009. Boo is sponsored by the Lady Emily Smyth Agricultural Research Station: a local charity set up to fund research into all aspects of agricultural biology. After a year of small projects including the ecology of parasitoid wasps in organic and conventional farmlands, and remote sensing of plant viruses, she began her PhD studying the molecular biology of the mismatch repair system in hexaploid bread wheat. In layman’s terms, she looks at crops with cancer. She can also be occasionally found writing for Experimentation magazine (http://www.experimentation-online.co.uk/) and talking to students about careers in science as part of her role as a STEM ambassador.

Feifan Liu received a Ph.D. in Pattern Recognition and Intelligent Systems from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. He conducted a postdoctoral training at the department of computer science in the University of Texas at Dallas.

He is currently an Associate Scientist (Research Faculty) at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His main research interests are natural language processing, biomedical text mining, clinical information systems and machine learning.

Parag is currently a PhD candidate at the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Cornell University. His research involves using NMR Spectroscopy to analyse secondary metabolites in the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans. Specifically he is working towards the identification of endogenous ligands of the nuclear hormone receptor DAF-12 and elucidation of the steroid biosynthetic pathway in C. elegans. Parag completed his BSc. Hons. degree in Chemistry from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, India in 2006 and MSc. In Organic Chemistry from University of Delhi, India in 2008.

Dr. Manns is an assistant professor in the Neuroscience and Animal Behavior branch of the Department of Psychology at Emory University. He is also affiliated with Emory’s Graduate Program in Neuroscience. He obtained his Ph.D. at UCSD and later did postdoctoral work at Boston University.  His research connects neuroscience with psychology to ask how the functional circuitry of the hippocampal memory system supports our everyday memories.

Becky graduated from the University of Illinois in 2007 with a B.S. in Chemistry. At U of I, she did research with Prof. Scott Silverman on catalytic DNA. At Michigan, Becky’s research with Dr. Mark Banaszak Holl focuses on understanding the mechanisms of non-viral gene delivery. She is also working towards an M.S. in Post-Secondary Science Education under the direction of Prof. Joe Krajcik of Michigan’s School of Education.

Membrane polarity is a key feature of cell membranes, allowing cells to functionally differentiate different membrane environments. Such polarity consists of an asymmetric lipid and protein distribution in the plasma membrane of cells. This asymmetric lipid and protein composition confers distinct functions to distinct membrane domains, and serves to facilitate cellular processes as diverse as differentiation, directional cell migration and vectorial transport of molecules across cell layers. Manos’s current research uses the Drosophila embryo as a genetically tractable model system to explore the mechanisms that underlie the generation and maintenance of membrane polarity.

Reese is a doctoral candidate at the Research Imaging Institute at the University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio.  He received a BA degree in Physics from Trinity University. His current research focuses on neural and genetic correlates of executive function.

Catriona obtained a BA from National University of Ireland, Cork, in History and Archaeology. She then worked in commercial archaeology before completing an MSc in Human Osteology and Funerary Archaeology from the University of Sheffield.  She has just submitted a PhD to Queen’s University Belfast, on the palaeopathology of a medieval skeletal collection from Ballyhanna, Co. Donegal. At present, Catriona is working at the Centre for Field Archaeology at Queen’s University Belfast and her research interests include: palaeopathology, bioarchaeology, human osteology, and palaeodemography.

Area of research: Neurobiology of memory

Caitlin obtained her Ph.D from the University of Melbourne, Australia, investigating gene x environment interactions in an animal model of schizophrenia. She is now a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia Unveristy in the lab of Dr. Jay Gingrich where her research is focussed upon the serotonin 2A receptor, and its role in mediating and/or modulating psychotomimetic responsiveness, hallucinogenic activity and impulsivity. Her work has also expanded to include investigations into the mechanism of action of currently prescribed antipsychotics with a view to enabling the development of drugs possessing improved efficiency and reduced side effects.

Karuna Kara Mishra received his M.Sc. degree in Physics from the university of Sambalpur, Odisha. He is now a Ph.D candidate in Indira Gandhi Center for Atomic Research beneath the umbrella of Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) of Government of India. K. K. Mishra’s work focuses on the study of dynamical properties of ferroelectric materials by employing Brillouin, Raman and Dielectric spectroscopic techniques. Structural phase transition on ferroelectric and Relaxor ferroelectric materials (single crystal) due to changes in relaxation dynamics and vibration are of specific interest.  Emphasis is put to understand the coupling between strain and polarization fluctuation and the dynamics of PNRs in relaxor as well.

Pushpa has done B.sc Chemistry (Hons) from Gargi College Delhi University. She has completed her M.sc chemistry from IIT Delhi in Department of chemistry. She has done her M.sc Project under the supervision of Prof. B.Jayaram which was mainly on computational tool development and design new lead molecule for Penicillin binding proteins. She is currently a 3^rd year Research scholar in Tata institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. Her research mainly focuses on Plasmodium Falciparum P protein which is ribosomal stalk proteins and involved in translation. Mechanism is not clear.  She is mainly interested its structural and functional aspect of this proteins using NMR and also interested to develop new NMR methods which makes life easier.

Alejandro received his Bachelor’s degree in Biology in 2006 and is at present a PhD student in Molecular Genetics at Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile. His current research focuses on the molecular basis of circadian rhythms using Neurospora crassa as a model. By using a systems-based approach, he is trying to decipher transcriptional networks involved in the circadian control of gene expression.

Alejandro’s other research interests include transcriptional regulation, RNA processing and genomics, and he blogs at MolBio Research Highlights (http://amontenegro.blogspot.com).

Dr. Corrie Moreau completing her Ph.D. at Harvard University in 2007 where she investigated the evolution and diversification of ants and showed that there is a correlation between the rise of the flowering plants (angiosperms) and ants.  For postdoctoral research she was awarded a Miller Fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley where she began to investigate patterns of speciation and climate change in ants in the Australian Wet Tropics of Queensland, work she continues today at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois.  Dr. Moreau also investigates the endosymbiotic microbial community of ants and how this affects their diversity and trophic position.  The overarching focus of her research program is to understand the origin and evolution of ants, and in particular, how different factors may influence patterns of diversification – from the rise of the flowering plants, associations ants have with other insects and plants, to their microbial community are all potential underlying factors that may have facilitated their ecological dominance in almost all terrestrial ecosystems.  In addition she is interested in how climate change and invasive ants have and will continue to affect the evolutionary processes that generate and sustain high biological diversity in tropical rainforests and other habitats.  More specifically Dr. Moreau is interested in how we can use DNA/Genomics/molecular methods and ant species to address evolutionary questions and ultimately protect biodiversity.

Christian obtained his Dr. (Ph.D.) under the supervision of Prof. Dr. P.R. Schreiner, Ph.D. from the Justus-Liebig University Giessen, Germany. His Ph.D. thesis in the field of organocatalysis titled “Nucleophilic Oligopeptide Organocatalysis: Acylation, Oxidation, and Multicatalysis” concentrated on the synthesis of catalytically active oligopeptides. These peptides can be used as catalysts in organocatalytic transformations, e.g. acylations, epoxidations, and oxidations. The experiences in these reactions were used to design the first organocatalytic multicatalyst systems. He is currently continuing this work as Postdoctoral fellow.

Eliza received a B.S. in Psychology and Communication Disorders from Baldwin-Wallace College and her M.S./Ph.D. in Neuroscience and Behavior from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Carolina Consortium on Human Development at the Center for Developmental Science. Eliza is studying laterality in human infants and nonhuman primates under Dr. George Michel at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Dr. Allyson Bennett at the Wake Forest University Primate Center.

Michelle’s research activities are aimed at investigating the adaptive immune system involved in resolution and protection from herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) infection. Particularly, her team wants to contribute to understanding the significance of CD8+ memory T cells at mucocutaneous sites following dendritic cell vaccination to prevent primary HSV-2 infection, which will likely correlate to adjuvants given at the time of antigen exposure.

Sai’s dissertation research is in calibration methods for exponential family models with complex dependence, focusing on social network models.
Sai received his BA from Harvard University and worked at Goldman Sachs & Co in New York City.

In 2005, Emily earned a B.S. in Genetics, Cell Biology and Development from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities.  As an undergraduate, she participated in two summer research programs: the HHMI Exceptional Research Opportunities (EXROP) and the Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) at New York University School of Medicine.  In 2011, Emily earned a Ph.D. in Cell Biology in the Developmental Genetics Program at New York University School of Medicine Cancer Institute in the laboratory of Ramanuj DasGupta. Following a genome-wide RNAi screen and using Drosophila as a model, Emily’s graduate work focused on elucidating mechanisms of crosstalk between the Wnt/Wingless pathway and other signaling pathways during development and oncogenesis.  Currently, Emily is a Teach For America Corps Member and will begin teaching high school science in Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN in the fall of 2011.  Using her scientific and teaching expertise, Emily plans to pursue a career in science policy.

Joel is a PhD student in Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania.  He is developing high throughput screening assays to explore and optimize pluripotent stem cell differentiation.  Lineage-wise, he is most interested in hematopoietic differentiation and erythrocyte and megakaryocyte generation.  He received his Master’s degree from the University of Tennessee, focusing on orthopedic implant design assessment and enhancement.  While an undergraduate at the University of Tennessee, he developed finite-element models of abdominal aortic aneurysms.  Amongst other hobbies, in his spare time he writes about science and health regulation at Penn’s Regblog (http://www.law.upenn.edu/blogs/regblog/).

Prithwish has an undergraduate degree in Chemistry and Biotechnology from the Indian Institutes of Technology and a PhD in Biophysics from University of Rochester. He has been involved in various interdisciplinary research work including: investigating membrane protein configurations by fluorescence techniques, developing single-molecule fluorescence detection systems and developing tools for imaging spatio-temporal  activation of proteins in cells. Currently, he’s a Research Scientist at a small company working on novel platforms for low noise measurement of ion channel currents as well as next-generation nanopore-DNA sequencing technologies. Prithwish also blogs about science at www.omespeak.com/blog.

Currently Anirban is doing research on Raman spectroscopy of Nano materials and nanocomposites. Metal nanorods are a very interesting system for studying Surface enhanced Raman Scattering. These metal nanorod array shoes very high polarization dependent scattering; investigating the anisotropy in those nanostructures are very interesting. Electronic raman scattering is also a part of Anirban’s PhD thesis. Studying the electronic raman of some kind of superconducting materials  gives a lot of information regarding the characteristic energies at low energies.

Adam J. Pelzek earned his B.S. in Molecular Biology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2001, completing a senior thesis on a protein involved in apoptosis in the lab of Dr. James Franklin. He returned home to Milwaukee and began working as a lab technician in Dr. Brian Volkman’s Lab at the Medical College of Wisconsin, developing assays for the binding of human chemokines to their receptors. He moved to NYC and began work in 2004 as a research assistant in the lab of Dr. Vincent Fischetti, where he works primarily in three areas: 1) isolation and characterization of phage that infect B. anthracis and closely related strains, including research on phage lysins such as plyG and plyB, 2) the in-vitro effects of interfering with the function of bacterial epimerase genes, and 3) meta- and multi-genomic screening of environmental samples for biologically-relevant activities.

Grace is currently working on the final year of her BSc. at McGill University, with a major in biology and a minor in environment. After she graduates, she hopes to complete research on the capacity of organisms to adapt to environmental change on different time scales.

The main motivation of the research of Oscar Rubio Pons is to understand how matters can change their properties with light and to use the knowledge to design and create molecular materials that may improve our life in many areas such in medicine for new treatments  to the semi-conductor industry and technology to create new solar cells. There is no so much knowledge about how the matter behaves under excitation pulse and about the photo-dynamics take place in the material. Just a few experiments in the timescale of attoseconds and femtoseconds are nowadays released but there is almost not theoretical description to understand in a complete way such experiments.

Oscar obtained a master degree in Chemical Science from the University of Valencia, Spain. He went to Stockholm, Sweden to obtain his PhD thesis in Theoretical Chemistry at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) thesis entitled “Charge-transfer Excitation and Photophysical properties of molecular building blocks”. He joined as Marie Curie ToK fellow at the Trinity College University of Dublin, Ireland to make research in organic light emitting diodes. After that he went to Germany, first in Munich at the Technical University and later at the Erlagen-Nurnberg University to work within quantum dynamics and electron transport. He is currently doing research in the field of solar cells, molecular electronics and non-linear optics.

Matt is currently researching the effects of magnetic fields on the behaviour of soil dwelling invertebrates, and looking into possible causes of this behaviour. There is little published material in this area, so it has been a challenge to begin a novel piece of research, but fascinating to work with it from the beginning, developing equipment and methods for how to conduct the experiment.

Abbie is interested in how microorganisms are able to degrade toxic compounds in the environment. Her current research focuses on this process in two ways: First, she would like to isolate microbes that are able to grow in conditions where oxygen is absent and petroleum compounds are supplied as a carbon source. These organisms can be further studied so that we can understand the genetic and biochemical pathway by which the substrates are degraded. Secondly, she can use a combination of genetic tools and metabolic biomarkers as probes to examine the environment for degradation activity.

Gianpaolo received a Ph.D in Pharmacology in 2008 at the University of Milan. He is interested in nuclear receptors: proteins that are able to sense the presence of small chemicals and to consequently modify gene expression. His current research focuses on the differences in nuclear receptor signaling between males and females. He is a passionate of molecular imaging and supports the development of new molecular assays at www.reportergene.com

Ashley received her BS in Biomedical Engineering from Columbia University in 2008 and currently works as an oncology clinical research professional. She coordinates several clinical trials for the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of urothelial carcinoma.

Tom’s Ph.D. is centered around Motor Neurone Disease (MND). His main focus is working with transgenic Superoxide Dismutase 1 (SOD1) mice.

Mutations in SOD1 are the most common cause of human Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), the most frequent form of MND. Tom works with mice that carry copies of the human SOD1 gene with a key disease causing mutation. These mice have well characterized symptoms and disease as a result. His aim is to cross these mice to mice carrying randomly induced mutations (through treatment with a chemical mutagen – ENU). The aim is to produce mice carrying the human SOD1 mutation and ENU mutations, in order to search for mutations that either enhance or suppress the SOD1 induced disease. This will provide insight into how SOD1 causes motor neurone degeneration and disease. He also focuses on the use of ENU to produce endogenous mutations in mouse genes (homologous to human) that result in motor neurone degeneration. This provides a powerful tool for identifying novel molecular mechanisms involved in MND without a priori assumptions.

Dan earned his B.S. in Biology and History from Muhlenberg College and his Ph.D. from NYU School of Medicine. His current research focuses on characterizing MR spectroscopic metrics for neurological disease, specifically the whole-brain concentration of the amino acid-derivative N-acetylaspartate (WBNAA), which has been shown to be a biomarker for diffuse neurodegeneration, particularly in multiple sclerosis. The ultimate goal is to validate WBNAA for use as a secondary outcome in clinical trials.

Jonathan has a B.Sc. in History and Philosophy of Science from University College London and has recently completed a M.Sc. in genetic counselling at Cardiff University. As part of his masters he conducted research that examined the communication of ‘risk’ in cancer genetics, specifically when an individual was at risk of inheriting a pathogenic germline mutation in either BRCA 1 or BRCA 2, genes that lead to an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer in women and prostate cancer in men.  Specifically his research utilises concepts from cognitive linguistics to analyse the metaphorical content of the language used by both professionals and patients as they come to understand concepts such as ‘risk’ ‘genes’ and ‘cancer’ in context of genetic counselling.

Dr. Louis Rubbo, assistant professor in physics, joined Coastal Carolina University in the Fall of ’07.  Prior to then he held a post-doctoral position at the Pennsylvania State University in the Center for Gravitational Wave Physics, where he conducted research in gravitational wave astronomy.  After earning a bachelor’s degree at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Dr. Rubbo went on to earn a Ph.D. in physics from Montana State University – Bozeman.  In addition to his teaching experience, Dr. Rubbo has been involved with developing new educational materials such as hands-on activities in astronomy and public outreach activities for K-12 students.  At Coastal Carolina, he teaches introductory astronomy and physics, as well as continuing his research in gravitational wave astronomy and astronomy education.

In 2009 Diego obtained his Ph.D. in the field of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan under the supervision of Dr. Mercedes Pascual. His research focuses on the Ecology of Infectious Diseases, and his dissertation is based on Cholera dynamics. From 2009 to 2011, Diego got a postdocotoral position at Cornell university where he worked with Drew Harvell, Laura Harrington and Kelly Zamudio in the research project “Forecasting Disease and Economic Consequences of Climate Change ”. During this project Diego developed statistical and dynamical models that incorporated the influence of external climate signals applied to three different epidemiological systems: Coral Reef Diseases, Amphibians Diseases in Central America and Mosquito Borne Diseases. Diego is actively applying Markov Chain Monte Carlo, Generalized Linear Mixed Models, Spatial Statistics, Network and Machine Learning approaches to disease dynamics and other complex systems in ecology. At the end of 2011, Diego accepted a position as professor in statistics at Universidad Nacional Arturo Jauretche, in Argentina, where he is starting a research group in computational Ecology.

Beat is a PhD candidate working at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, in the Cell Biology and Biophysics Unit.  He is interested in research at the interface between cell biology and computer science. He develops software to validate theoretical models of biological systems and to explore their behavior with varying parameters.  His work revolves around genetic algorithms, virtual screens and cluster computing.

Area of research: Molecular biology

Iain is just starting the first year of his PhD. His work involves studying the relevance of redox signalling in cardiac dysfunction.  He is especially interested in how NADPH oxidase 4 modulates adaptive signalling pathways in response to cardiac stress.

Christine received a B.S. in Biology at Fordham University in the Bronx, New York where she was also named a Clare Boothe Luce Undergraduate Scholar for two years and focused on studying peptide nanotubes and their ability to mitigate glucagon aggregation as a potential therapeutic tool.  During the summer of 2004 she also assisted in nanoparticle research at the Universität Duisburg-Essen in Essen, Germany.  Christine is now a pre-doctoral candidate at the University of Connecticut studying biochemistry in Dr. Nathan Alder’s mitochondrial membrane protein lab.  She focuses on the assembly and activity of respiratory complex II, a key complex involved with energy metabolism in the cell, reconstituted into model membrane systems, such as liposomes and nanodiscs.  Christine has also been awarded a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to support her pre-doctoral work.

Hannah holds an interdisciplinary PhD studentship exploring consent issues around novel applications of genetic technologies in clinical practice and research. After obtaining a B.Sc. in Biology from The University of Nottingham, Hannah completed a M.Sc. in Genetic Counselling and a M.A. in Language and Communication Research at Cardiff University. She is currently investigating consent by applying discourse analysis to consent encounters.

Avtar did his undergrad at Cornell in Physics (Class of 2008) and is currently a 2nd year Ph.D. in Applied Physics working in a Biomedical Optics lab (his advisor is a faculty member in the BME department). His lab develops techniques for biological fluorescence microscopy and collaborates with a number of groups on instrumentation and fluorophore development with applications to in vivo medical diagnostics, molecular biology, neurobiology and other fields.

Deepshikha did her Bachelor in technology from MIT and is currently working as a Assistant Prof .in chemical engineering department in Moradabad Institute of technology.  Her B.tech project’s title is “The PRODUCTION OF ETHYLENE FROM DEHYDROGENATION OF ETHANE”; in this project she has been designing a plant to produce ethylene by dehydrogenation of ethane which is of capacity 30,30,000 mmtpa keeping the factor into consideration that the most promising area in ethylene production is in the separation section utilizing 70% of energy requirement of the entire process.

Himanshu is a 2^nd year graduate student at the Tata Institute of Fundamental research, Mumbai.  He obtained a bachelor in technology in Industrial Biotechnology at university of Shri Mata Vaishnodevi having Industrial project on “Screening of local microflora and Chiral separation of racemic acetyl -1 –phenyl ethanol using lipase from Bacillus subtilis.”.  He received a Graduate research fellowship by Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), Govt. Of India 2010-2015.  His research focuses on Over-expression, Purification and Structural Characterization of S55A Mutant of UVI31+ from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and NMR in Plant metabolism.

Julianne obtained her B.S. from the University of Rochester in 2008 and returned to School of Medicine and Dentistry to pursue her PhD as part of the Pathways of Human Disease program. She is doing her graduate research in an endocrine and cancer biology laboratory studying the bone marrow microenvironment, its influences on hematopoiesis and hematopoietic stem cell self renewal and also how the microenvironment may change in various pathologies.

Kevin’s dissertation work involves mechanistically examining the relationships between viral RNAs and the cellular RNA decay machinery. More specifically, he examines the role that RNA decay does, or doesn’t, impact viral replication. Currently this work employs several cell culture models, including both the mammalian host and mosquito vector species.

Aloysius is currently an Assistant Professor at Yonsei University. He received his B.Sc. (Hons) in Chemistry from the National University of Singapore, Singapore in 2003, M.Sc. in Chemistry (Theoretical Surface Chemistry) from the University of Auckland, New Zealand in 2005, and his Ph.D. in Physics (Condensed Matter Theory) from the University of Sydney, Australia in 2008. He was then awarded the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral fellowship and conducted postdoctoral research for two years (2008 – 2010) in the area of theoretical surface science at the Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Berlin, Germany. He was later hired as an Assistant Professor in Materials Theory at Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea in 2010.

His research program focuses on the development and application of materials theory for modern-day technologies. His primary interest lies in the fundamental understanding of the chemistry and physics of materials, probed via novel first-principles computational methods. By applying state-of-the-art density-functional theory (DFT) calculations and the use of statistical thermodynamics, simulations of poly-atomic systems are used to understand and predict the structure and properties of solids and their surfaces which includes studying the interactions and reactions of molecules adsorbed on surfaces, and the energetics of defects on surfaces (as well as interfaces) and in the bulk.

His research is currently funded by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Korea, the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), as well as other industry-related funding sources like the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) and POSCO.

Carlos Óscar Sánchez Sorzano has a B.Sc. and M. Sc. in Electrical Engineering with two specialities (Electronics and Networking, Univ. Málaga), a B. Sc. in Computer Science (Univ. Málaga), a B.Sc. and M. Sc. in Mathematics, (speciality in Statistics, UNED) and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering (Univ. Politécnica de Madrid). He served as secretary of the Dept. of Engineering of Electronic and Telecommunication Systems of the Univ.  CEU-San Pablo (Madrid) between 2005 and 2008, coordinator of the Section on Signal and Communications theory between 2004 and 2009, head of the Bioengineering Laboratory of that University since 2007, director of the Summerschool on  Advanced Data Analysis and Modelling between 2006 and 2009, and codirector of the Master on Computational Biotechnology between 2007 and 2009. He did his Ph.D. at the Biocomputing Unit of the National Center of Biotechnology (CSIC), and worked as a post-doc at the Biomedical Imaging Group of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). In 2006 he received the Ángel Herrera research prize. He is senior member of the IEEE since 2008 and that same year he was accredited as “profesor titular de universidad” by ANECA. In 2009 he was appointed as “Profesor Agregado” at Univ. San Pablo CEU, awarded a Ramón y Cajal research contract and appointed as technical director of the INSTRUCT Image Processing Center for Microscopy. Since 2011 he is president of the National Association of Ramón y Cajal researchers and coordinates the service of image processing and statistical analysis of the CNB. Since 2011 he is also the coordinator of Biomedical Engineering at Univ. San Pablo CEU.

Dr. Sanjeeva Srivastava obtained his Ph.D. degree at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada and he did his post-doctoral training at Harvard Institute of Proteomics, Harvard Medical School, USA. He has received several prestigious fellowships and awards, including a national young scientist award in Canada. Recently he has joined an Assistant Professor position at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, India. His current research interests are to use proteomic techniques such as Two dimensional gel electrophoresis, Mass Spectrometry, Protein microarrays and Surface Plasmon Resonance for biomarker discovery in cancer and endemic diseases of India as well as study protein-protein, protein-drug interactions.

Sarah is a postdoctoral research fellow at the US Naval Research Laboratory where her research concentrates on integrating the separative capabilities of dielectrophoresis and optical forces within a microfluidic platform. She received her M.Sc. and Ph.D. in chemistry from Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona USA. In addition to the National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship she has also received the Fulbright Fellowship and the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship for her doctoral research in Ecuador on bioaerosols.

Amber earned her B.S. in physics and general science from Frostburg State University, MD in 1999 and her M.Ed. and Ph.D. in physics from the Pennsylvania State University in 2001 and 2006 respectively.  She is currently a senior postdoctoral scholar for the California Institute of Technology working at the LIGO Livingston Observatory in Louisiana.  Her work includes gravitational wave physics and educational outreach through the LIGO Science Education Center (SEC).  Her physics research interests include developing analysis methods to seek short duration gravitational wave bursts in the output of the LIGO interferometers, developing physically motivated gravitational wave simulations to measure the effectiveness of these data analysis methods, refining the infrastructure needed to rapidly follow-up candidate gravitational wave detections in wide field optical telescopes, and developing techniques for detecting optical transients in the resulting images.  She has formal higher education teaching experience, informal teaching experience in the middle school and secondary levels and extensive experience in public outreach.

The focus of Chinmay’s research is to better understand the DNA replication pathway, with a focus on Dna2 and its mechanism in eukaryotes; under Dr. Robert Bambara at URMC.  His previous research project was on Developing a delivery system for siRNA and DNA by using novel Carotenoid Lipids, under Dr. Philip Leopold, Steven Institute of Technology.

Miki is a Master’s student at the University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki prefecture, Japan. Her research area is pollination ecology. She is interested in plant-animal interactions and their effects on floral evolution. Her research focuses on “floral color change” -ontogenic color change in fully turgid flowers, and she tries to elucidate how the flower-pollinator interaction effects in shaping this trait.

Zhengzheng is primarily interested in developing statistical methods for the designs and analyses of medical and public health studies, with or without genetic components.

Joseph’s research is in the area of optical chromatography using laser light to manipulate microscopic particles suspended in a liquid environment, generally focused on separating mixtures of particles by size. His research group has extended this work by broadening the focus to now include particle size, shape and chemical composition.  Essentially, a focused laser balances a particle against an opposing fluid flow, just as a ping pong ball can be levitated on a jet of air. In this case, the air is the force from the laser and gravity is the force dragging on the particle in the fluid. The equilibrium position a particle assumes in these forces provides a unique and highly reproducible “signature” which can be used to determine exquisitely fine differences between particles.

Area of research: Human and mouse molecular genetics of cardiovascular diseases

Antti is studying nanoscale systems with computational methods.  His current research activities are concentrated on metal nanoparticle – carbon nanostructure interactions and the effects of electron irradiation on these systems.

Khanh’s current study is about synthetic cannabinoids as novel treatment for estrogen receptor (ER) negative breat cancer, which accounts for approximately 30% of all breast cancers and are often of a poorer prognosis and more aggressive behavior. Unlike ER positive tumors, ER negative type lacks of estrogen receptors in the cancer cells and therefore earn little treatment benefit from conventional approaches targeted to estrogen receptors such as selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs). Khanh’s study is about whether synthetic cannabinoids produce anticancer effects towards this type of breast cancer and the underlying mechanisms for these effects.

Jessica has a B.S. in Forensic Science from Mercyhurst College. During her time there she has done research including the quantitaion and contributors of bacteria in the Lake Erie watershed. Upon her graduation she spent a year and a half as a laboratory specialist in the Forensic Biology section of the Virginia Department of Forensic Sciences in Richmond VA where she worked with serology and DNA evidence for criminal cases. She currently works at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory (AFDIL) where she develops casework DNA profiles from high quality samples for up link into a major DNA database.

Stephen Turner’s research includes genome-wide association analysis of complex human traits, and developing novel statistical and bioinformatics methodology for understanding the relationship between genes, environment, and human phenotypes. He is also a registered United States patent agent with an interest in intellectual property and technology management. See more at www.stephenturner.us.

Alex is interested in the broad topic of spatial cognition. Particularly, she is interested in how spatial skills develop, and how they relate to other domains. In her particular area of research, she uses a comparative cognition approach to better understand how we maintain our sense of direction – or the “You are here” part of navigation, and how this changes across species and during development.

Pauline gained her masters degree in Agricultural Economics at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria in 2009, before beginning her Ph.D studies at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Her current research interests include crop water physiology and efficient water use on crops, using different irrigation methods and irrigation quotas to examine the best irrigation methods and schedule.

Neeltje is a PhD student studying at both Imperial College and the Health Protection Agency in London, where she looks at the receptor binding properties of the haemagglutinin protein of influenza. She obtained her M.Sc. in Biomedical Science at the Radboud University in Nijmegen and B.Sc. in Biochemistry at the Hogeschool van Arnhem en Nijmegen in Nijmegen.

Katyayni’s area of research focusses on investigating the tumor-promoting effect(s) of the resident brain immune cells, the microglia, with the experimentally induced glioma tumor cells in mice.

Lei Wang received his B.S. from Peking University and Ph.D. from University of California at Berkeley. During his graduate study guided by Dr. Peter Schultz he developed a general method for genetically incorporating unnatural amino acids in live cells and expanded the genetic code for the first time. For this work he was awarded the Young Scientist Award by the journal Science. He then had postdoctoral training with Dr. Roger Tsien as the Merck Fellow of the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, where he developed a new method for evolving proteins in live mammalian cells. His lab at Salk expanded the genetic code to incorporate unnatural amino acids into proteins in mammalian cells (including primary neurons), stem cells, and currently multicellular organisms to study signal transduction, stem cell differentiation, and neurobiology. His lab is also investigating the origin and evolution of the genetic code using synthetic biology methods. He is a Top Young Innovator named by MIT Technology Review, a Searle Scholar, a Beckman Young Investigator, a Basil O’Connor Starter Scholar, and the recipient of the CIRM New Faculty Award and the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award.

Zuoyun studies establishment and characterization of the inducible lung cancer mice model. She uses the mice model to study the mechanism of lung cancer and display some therapeutic prospects.

Vernell’s interest is in the field of bioinformatics.  He is currently working on ways that evaluate novel microRNA predictions generated from deep sequencing.

Jeremy’s research is focused on identifying and characterizing the functions of non-coding RNAs in mammalian cells.

In articular cartilage, each chondrocyte is surrounded by a narrow region called the pericellular matrix (PCM) that is distinct from the extracellular matrix in its biochemical composition, ultrastructure, and mechanical properties. Rebecca’s research is focused on developing techniques to measure the properties of the PCM in situ and understand PCM degradation in the larger context of cartilage degeneration during osteoarthritis.

Liu just graduated and received her Ph.D. degree from Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences. She is at present working in her mentor Dr Yong Liu’s lab as a research assistant to finish up some continuing projects. Her research mainly focuses on studying the physiological roles of A-to-I RNA editing in the regulation of pancreatic islet B-cell function and insulin secretion, and on investigating the metabolic effects of disturbance of the signaling circuitry that controls glucose metabolism.

Kristin’s interest in human genetics was piqued when she learned the utility of Punnett squares in her high school biology class. In pursuit of a career in human genetics, she earned bachelor’s degrees in anthropology and zoology at the University of Oklahoma. Her graduate studies at the University of Kansas included a master’s thesis examining the efficacy of RAPD markers in determining genetic structure and population history of the Chuvash of Western Siberia. Her dissertation focused on the phylogenetic relationships between of the Basque population of Spain and other Western European groups and the implications for the peopling of Europe. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Her research interests include genetic epidemiology, biological and environmental contributors to health disparities, population genetics, human evolution, genomics, and bioinformatics.

Ali is studying at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran. His research is concentrated in the fields of Nanobiotechnology, Nanomedicine, Targeted Drug Delivery, Cancer Nanomedicine, and Nanoparticulate polymeric carriers.

Zhiguo is now working as PostDoc in organic chemistry and focusing on organocatalysis; that is, to catalyze organic transformations using small organic molecules such as thioureas, proline derivatives, etc., thereby to mimic natural processes.

Ying’s journey of science started in Dr Xuebiao Yao’s lab at University of Science and Technology of China. He started studying mitosis checkpoints which special focus on kinetochores. After graduation he came to Cornell University and joined Dr. Tudorita Tumbar’s lab working on hair follicle stem cells. His current research interests are tissue stem cell differentiation and self-renewal, and his science dream is to regenerate tissue/organ using these adult stem cells.

Mengxi received her B.S. degree in Biotechnology from Tongji University, Shanghai, China. She is now a 4th year Ph. D. student major biochemistry and molecular biology in University of Science & Technology of China. Her research focuses on the structures and the interactions about the proteins which are involved in nitrogen metabolism and regulation in cyanobacteria.