BMB Weekly #9: March 3, 2023

 

Crisis Support and Updates In light of the tragic events that took place in our Spartan community on the evening of February 13th, please visit this link for a list of support resources for our community members to utilize.

 

 

Brian Kelch from the University of Massachusetts will be presenting "Peering under the hood of Nature's macromolecular machines: motors, rings, springs and things."

To join us on Zoom, click this link. Password: bmbseminar

The Spring BMB Seminar Series will run through the end of April. The complete schedule is available on the BMB Spring Seminar Series website. If you are interested in meeting with any of these speakers please email Leslie Williams, glady@msu.edu. Many speakers are planning to visit in-person. A zoom option will continue to be offered for all seminars.

 

The Exchange is the weekly Tuesday morning event for graduate students. Please join us for the following:
Journal Club: Dr. Brian Kelch, U. Mass. Worcester (Kristin Parent)
DNA replication and repair complexes

Volunteers: Katie Thompson, Rachel Nicholas, Michael Nikolovski

The MSU Graduate Women In Science are seeking presenters and volunteers for the 2023 Girls Math and Science Day held on Saturday, May 20th, 2023 from 1-5pm in Wells Hall.The event is an opportunity for middle school students to participate in science demonstrations while working with enthusiastic graduate students and researchers. The day is composed of four 30 minute sessions where students participate in hands-on workshops on a range of topics in math and science.
For those interested in submitting an activity and presenting a workshop, please fill out this form.
For those interested in volunteering, please fill out this form.
If you have not completed a Background Check Form in the past year you must fill out this Background Check Form and upload it in the Google Form. 
If you want more information, please email us at gmsd.gwis.msu@gmail.com and we look forward to your participation!

A team of experienced science communication training experts working with George Mason University and Stony Brook University are offering free science communication training workshops this spring at Michigan State University. The workshop will provide an immersive experience whereby participants will learn how to communicate with audiences about the value and importance of their work as well as science more generally. Participants will also receive financial compensation for participating. Learn more here. 

BIPOC in Biotech will bring together BIPOC PhDs and Postdocs across the Midwest with a variety of local life sciences organizations to build connections and community, give students an insider view into a breadth of career opportunities, and provide expert tips on how to market themselves and pitch their work for these potential career pathways. Travel awards are being offered to those who register before March 10. Learn more here. 

 

This award provides financial assistance to domestic students who intend to travel to developing countries for the purpose of providing technical assistance, participating in research, or engaging in service. The intent is for students to work towards discovering and implementing solutions in response to urgent human needs (for example: food security, environmental quality, health and nutrition, education, and other areas) and, thereby, to encourage careers in international development teaching, research and practice. Grants are intended to support travel, related living expenses, and projects costs—not to be used as a tuition scholarship. Learn more here. 

The Leadership Fellowship is a year-long, cohort-based program housed in the office of Graduate Student Life & Wellness. It was created to build a stronger and more connected graduate student community at MSU by supporting and providing space for graduate and professional student leaders to engage in change-oriented projects. Fellows aim to increase belonging and community within their colleges or specific populations of students, and their projects increase graduate student well-being, inclusion, and ultimately success. Learn more here. 

This interdisciplinary program will provide professional training in natural science collections curation and management to MSU graduate students during the summer of 2023 (May 15 – August 18). Training will be structured to encompass both theory and practice. Students will be assigned to a collection that matches their background. Participation in the bi-weekly seminars is required of student interns and open to other interested members of the university community. Meetings will rotate among campus natural science collections and student interns will work in one of the campus collections. The last meeting of the term will focus on student presentations, providing students with an opportunity to describe their summer collections work to the group. Learn more here. 

The primary goals of this program are to provide opportunities for a diverse group of students to have mentored teaching experiences and gain familiarity with materials on teaching and assessment techniques during this academic year long program. This is for doctoral students with interests in teaching, learning, and assessment in higher education who are enrolled in programs associated with the Colleges of Natural Science, Agriculture and Natural Resources, Engineering, Social Science, Human Medicine, Nursing, Osteopathic Medicine, and Veterinary Medicine. Learn more here. 

The Fulbright-Hays Act was designed to contribute to the development and improvement of the study of modern foreign languages and area studies in the US. This competitive grant program enables PhD candidates to do dissertation research abroad for 6 to 12 months. Awards typically provide airfare, maintenance allowance, research-related expenses, and more. Learn more here. 

This annually awarded national scholarship is designed to support the educational goals of a graduate student from an underrepresented group who is pursuing a master’s or doctoral degree in mathematics education or a STEM discipline. The individual should also have a commitment to civic engagement. Learn more here. 

 

We are beginning to prepare for the annual Plant Science Graduate Research Symposium (PSGSRS) organized by HOGS. This event welcomes plant science students from all disciplines, including but not limited to: Horticulture, Plant Biology, Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences, Plant Pathology, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Cell and Molecular Biology, Forestry, Entomology, Fisheries and Wildlife...etc. to share their research via poster or oral presentation formats, communicate with peers, and exchange comments and feedback on their research. The tentative date for the Symposium is April 28th. 

We are kindly requesting people volunteer for planning committees to organize the Symposium. Please sign up for a committee using this spreadsheet where a brief description of duties are outlined for each committee. Once the committee positions are filled, we will have our first planning meeting for the Symposium. We’re excited to work with you all! Feel free to contact McKena Wilson (liphamra@msu.edu) with any questions you may have.

A friendly reminder that the Office of Admissions is accepting UNOFFICIAL international academic records for international graduate admissions processing for Summer and Fall 2023. The expectation is that official hardcopies of the records will be sent to the Office of Admissions in official, sealed envelopes early in students’ first semester of enrollment. Learn more here. 

To help field questions, Global Safety has developed a guide with recommended steps and resources. This is available as a PDF and on the Global Safety website at www.globalsafety.msu.edu/positive-COVID-19. The first step is to call ISOS for guidance.

 

The Biological Sciences (BioSci) Program at MSU is seeking two fixed-term faculty members to join the BioSci Program teaching team. The successful candidate for the first position will serve as curriculum coordinator and instructor for BS172, a large enrollment introductory organismal biology lab course designed for life-science majors. The successful candidate for the second position will serve as an instructor for introductory biology lecture and lab courses designed to actively engage life-science majors in three-dimensional learning and will work with teams of faculty to develop curriculum for these courses. Questions regarding the position may be directed to Dr. Katie Krueger, BioSci Program Assistant Director and Chair of the Search Committee (krueg172@msu.edu). 

The Department of Chemistry at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville is accepting application packages for a full-time, tenure-track Assistant Professor position.  The successful candidate will teach courses that support the Department of Chemistry and School of Pharmacy. Teaching assignments will incorporate biochemistry courses; laboratories and courses at both the undergraduate and graduate (M.S.) levels, including major and service courses in introductory chemistry; and courses for the School of Pharmacy. The successful candidate is expected to engage in scholarly work in any area of biochemistry, involve Chemistry students in their research program, seek external grants to support research, and produce scholarly publications. Service activities in support of the Department of Chemistry, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the University are expected. Learn more here. 

The PILOT Project bridges the gap between graduating students and non-academic professionals and is designed to prepare graduate students for a smooth transition to non-academic career tracks. The program coordinator will work to develop programs, draft communications materials, create content, and more. Learn more here. 

 

Doherty, J. H., Cerchiara, J. A., Scott, E. E., Jescovitch, L. N., McFarland, J., Haudek, K. C., & Wenderoth, M. P. (2023). Oaks to arteries:
         The Physiology Core Concept of flow down gradients supports transfer of student reasoning. Advances in physiology education,
         10.1152/advan.00155.2022. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1152/advan.00155.2022

Janson, G., Valdes-Garcia, G., Heo, L., & Feig, M. (2023). Direct generation of protein conformational ensembles via machine learning. 
         Nature communications, 14(1), 774. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-36443-x

Manathunga, M., Aktulga, H. M., Götz, A. W., & Merz, K. M., Jr (2023). Quantum Mechanics/Molecular Mechanics Simulations on NVIDIA
         and AMD Graphics Processing Units. Journal of chemical information and modeling, 63(3), 711–717.
         https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jcim.2c01505

Mancuso, C. A., Liu, R., & Krishnan, A. (2023). PyGenePlexus: a Python package for gene discovery using network-based machine
         learning. Bioinformatics (Oxford, England), 39(2), btad064. https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btad064

Medeiros, H. C. D., Yang, C., Herrera, C. K., Broadwater, D., Ensink, E., Bates, M., Lunt, R. R., & Lunt, S. Y. (2023). Phosphorescent
         Metal Halide Nanoclusters for Tunable Photodynamic Therapy. Chemistry (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany), 29(7),
         e202202881. https://doi.org/10.1002/chem.202202881

Nault, R., Saha, S., Bhattacharya, S., Sinha, S., Maiti, T., & Zacharewski, T. (2023). Single-cell transcriptomics shows dose-dependent
         disruption of hepatic zonation by TCDD in mice. Toxicological sciences : an official journal of the Society of Toxicology, 191(1),
         135–148. https://doi.org/10.1093/toxsci/kfac109

Raza, S., Miller, M., Hamberger, B., & Vermaas, J. V. (2023). Plant Terpenoid Permeability through Biological Membranes Explored
         via Molecular Simulations. The journal of physical chemistry. B, 127(5), 1144–1157. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpcb.2c07209

Stallknecht, E. J., Herrera, C. K., Yang, C., King, I., Sharkey, T. D., Lunt, R. R., & Runkle, E. S. (2023). Designing plant-transparent
         agrivoltaics. Scientific reports, 13(1), 1903. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-28484-5

Tefft, N. M., Ford, K., & TerAvest, M. A. (2023). NADH dehydrogenases drive inward electron transfer in Shewanella oneidensis MR-1. 
         Microbial biotechnology, 16(3), 560–568. https://doi.org/10.1111/1751-7915.14175

Wang, Q., Sun, L., & Lundquist, P. K. (2023). Large-scale top-down proteomics of the Arabidopsis thaliana leaf and chloroplast proteomes. 
         Proteomics, 23(3-4), e2100377. https://doi.org/10.1002/pmic.202100377

Weraduwage, S. M., Sahu, A., Kulke, M., Vermaas, J. V., & Sharkey, T. D. (2023). Characterization of promoter elements of
         isoprene-responsive genes and the ability of isoprene to bind START domain transcription factors. Plant direct, 7(2), e483.
         https://doi.org/10.1002/pld3.483

 

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College of Natural Science | BMB Weekly | Vol. 56, No. 9