Congratulations to Mansi Srivastava, recipient of the National Institutes of Health, Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (MIRA) for Early Stage Investigators for her proposal, "Using a new regenerative model system to elucidate mechanisms for stem cell regulation."
The MIRA award is a unique funding opportunity that supports research that increases understanding of biological processes and lays the foundation for advances in disease diagnosis, treatment and prevention.
Congratulations to Andrew Knoll, awarded the International Prize for Biology of Japan Society. Created in 1985 to honor the 60-year reign of Emperor Shōwa of Japan and his support of biology, the annual award is considered one of the most prestigious honors a natural scientist can receive.
The Committee on the International Prize for Biology (chaired by Dr. Hiroo Imura, Acting Vice...
As a graduate student in Naomi Pierce's lab, Leonora Bittleston (PhD '17) traveled to Nepenthes Camp in the Maliau Basin, an elevated conservation area in Malaysian Borneo with a rich, isolated rainforest ecosystem, to collect pitcher plants. The carnivorous pitcher plants trap, drown and digest their animal prey to supplement nutrient-poor soils. Bittleston collected samples of the liquid inside the pitchers to compare to pitcher plants in Massachusetts and along the Gulf Coast. Though unrelated, both plant families had similar adaptations for trapping prey and are a perfect...
National Geographic's Open Explorer is following undergraduate Integrative Biology (IB) concentrator, Liz Roux (Gonzalo Giribet, advisor) as she travels southern Florida collecting flatworms (Bdelloura candida) living on Atlantic horseshoe crabs in order to research phylogeography and symbiosis around the Florida peninsula. Read more about NatGeo's Open Explorer Following IB Concentrator, Liz Roux
A new study published in Science by Professor Emeritus Alfred Crompton and his faculty assistant, Catherine Musinsky, suggests suckling was part of the original mammalian package. The ability to suckle milk is a defining characteristic of mammals. Yet, one branch of mammals, egg-laying monotremes, which include the platypus and echidna, do not. Monotreme babies instead lap or slurp milk from patches on the mother'...
Postdoctoral Researcher, Federico Roda (Hopkins Lab) investigated the mechanistic link between a plants ability to reject its own pollen and to reject pollen from another species. By performing over 5000 controlled crosses in a group of native Texas wildflowers, Roda and Prof. Hopkins found these two types of pollen rejection systems were highly correlated across individuals and occurred at the same time during pollen development. The study published in...
Congratulations to Jasmin Camacho (Hoekstra Lab) awarded the American Association of University Women (AAUW) 2018 American Fellowship for her project, "Developmental, Cellular, and Genetic Mechanisms Underlying Striking Craniofacial Variation in New World Leaf-Nosed Bats." The AAUW is the nation’s leading voice promoting equity and education for women and girls, supporting women scholars since...
The process of species formation involves the evolution of barriers to reproduction between closely related taxa. Sevan Suni’s (Hopkins lab) study in Evolution quantified these barriers between three closely related Texas wildflowers. The study describes patterns in the strength of these barriers to reproduction between species and uses these patterns to understand the evolutionary forces that drive the process of...
Austin Garner worked with members of the Hopkins lab to synthesize and review the patterns of genomic variation expected when natural selection acts during the formation of species. In the study published in Genes, the team predicted what patterns might arise when selection favors traits that stop closely related species from hybridizing where they grow together. This work aimed to understand if...
In the 1930s, paleontologists excavated approximately 4,000 pounds of material in Goshen County Wyoming on Harvard owned land; some of the materials were sent by train to Harvard MCZ. For more than 80 years, collection stopped, until this money when Jim Hanken, Stephanie Pierce and Chris Capobianco (Preparator in MCZ Vertebrate Zoology) visited the site. The trio brought back their findings and plan to return again, perhaps even for a fieldtrip with Pierce's students....
PhD student, Jennifer Kotler (Haig Lab) is first in a series of profiles in the Harvard Gazette featuring some of Harvard’s stellar graduates. Diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) at age 8, Jennifer spent...
