News
June
Distinguished Dissertation Award for Elizabeth Ndontsa
06/24/2013
Dr. Elizabeth Ndontsa has received one of the three 2013 Auburn University Graduate School Distinguished Dissertation Awards in Biological/Life Sciences. Dr. Ndontsa was a graduate student in the laboratory of Dr. Douglas Goodwin.
Click here to read more...
Research by Professors Easley and Shannon highlighted by NSF
06/24/2013
Research performed in the laboratories of Dr. Christopher Easley and Dr. Curtis Shannon on Innovative techniques for measuring hormones and other proteins in complex fluids such as blood were featured on a web page published by the National Science Foundation.
Click here to read more...
Arboretum awarded Level III accreditation through ArbNet
06/07/2013
The Donald E. Davis Arboretum was awarded Level III accreditation through the ArbNet program. The accreditation recognizes the arboretum’s collection, display and dedication to woody plants such trees and shrubs for public benefit, scientific knowledge and conservation. The arboretum boasts almost 900 trees, including a post oak called the “Founder's Oak,” which measures 88 feet tall, 47.3 inches in diameter, and 89 feet across the crown width. For more information on the Level III accreditation through Arbnet, visit the website here.
Click here to read more...
Singh receives Fulbright grant
06/07/2013
Narendra Singh, professor of biological sciences, has been awarded a Fulbright grant to teach and conduct research in India from August to December 2013 at SRM University. Singh's research and teaching involves the molecular biology of stress tolerance in plants, genetic manipulation of higher fungi, and edible vaccines that can be mixed with feed to ward off diseases that cause massive damage to the poultry industry. In India, he will teach and co-teach graduate courses in plant molecular biology and biotechnology, and offer a senior seminar course for undergraduate students. He plans to focus his research on the elucidation of mechanism of action of a plant protein he discovered in 1985 and named osmotin.
Click here to read more...
Bond receives NSF grant to study millipedes
06/07/2013
Jason Bond, professor of biological sciences and director of the Auburn University Museum of Natural History, received a three-year, $548,000 grant from the National Science Foundation's Division of Environmental Biology for his research proposal titled, "Millipede Systematics: Developing phylogenomic, classification, and taxonomic resources for the future." The grant funding will allow Bond to conduct research on millipedes which are in the arthropod class Diplopoda, comprising some 12,000 described species distributed worldwide in nearly every biome. According to Bond, the group has a deep evolutionary history that includes some of the first terrestrial animals, dating from the mid-Silurian over 400 million years ago. Despite their ecological importance as decomposers in forests, wealth of diversity with an estimated 20,000 to 80,000 species, and prominence as chemical warriors owing to their vast array of defense secretions, the group is woefully understudied. Bond and his team will revise the current ordinal and family-level classification systems using a modern phylogenomic framework based on next-generation sequence data and then employ these data to explore the evolution of chemical defense secretions and their precursors.
Click here to read more...
Havird and Santos receive NSF grant
06/07/2013
Justin C. Havird (pictured left) and Scott R. Santos (pictured below), both of the Department of Biological Sciences, are the recipients of a two-year grant from the National Science Foundation's Division of Environmental Biology. The research proposal is titled,
"Assessing evolution of euryhalinity in anchialine shrimps," and the funding will allow Havird and Santos to further investigate the evolution of the molecular mechanisms of osmoregulation in shrimp species from coastal ponds and pools. According to Havird, the molecular mechanisms of ionic and salt regulation in crustaceans have only been characterized for a narrow range of species, mainly crabs with a marine ancestry.
Click here to read more...
Fogle receives NSF grant for international collaboration
06/07/2013
Professor Mike Fogle received a one-year grant in the amount of $21,511 from the National Science Foundation's Catalyzing New International Collaborations program, which is funded through the Office of International Science and Engineering. The grant, titled, "U.S.-Sweden Planning Visit: Research on the Dynamics of Complex Systems with Ion Storage Rings," will cover travel costs for Fogle and a graduate student to travel to Stockholm, Sweden, to develop a collaboration with Richard Thomas, a research associate at Stockholm University. Thomas' research group in Stockholm recently completed construction of a new, state-of-the-art ion storage ring facility, the Double Electrostatic Ion Ring Experiment, which will be used to investigate the detailed structure and dynamics of molecular systems under precisely controlled interaction conditions. No devices of this type exist in the U.S.
Click here to read more...
Bennett family establishes Ralph B. Bennett Memorial Endowed Fund for Excellence
06/07/2013
The Dr. Ralph B. Bennett Memorial Endowed Fund for Excellence was established for the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. The endowment was established in memory of Ralph Blount Bennett by his wife, Donna V. Bennett, and daughters, Rebecca Ruth Bennett and Leah Elizabeth Bennett Edwards, for the purpose of providing funds for excellence in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics.
Click here to read more...
COSAM alumnus Cara Tupps joins Peace Corps
06/07/2013
Cara Tupps, a May 2013 graduate with a bachelor of science in microbiology, joined the Peace Corps and will teach biology to middle and/or high school students in the Republic of Mozambique in Africa. In preparation for her two-year commitment to the Peace Corps, Tupps will donate her long hair for the fourth time to Locks of Love, a nonprofit organization that provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children suffering from long-term medical hair loss from any diagnosis.
Click here to read more...