News – Page 11 – Department of Biological Sciences

Dr. McKain and collaborators awarded $3.8M from NSF to study plant invasion genomics

September 23, 2019

Invasive species threaten biodiversity, impact crops, restructure ecosystems, promote disease, and damage infrastructure, costing the US $120 billion annually. Despite these impacts, understanding of how and why introduced species become invasive is shockingly incomplete. This knowledge gap reflects a lack of information about the early stages of invasions and the role of evolution in promoting invasiveness. The recent revolution in genome sequencing and computing technology promises to narrow this gap. By comparing genome sequences of historic herbarium specimens spanning the […]

Dr. Reed awarded $2M grant to improve undergraduate education in genomics

September 11, 2019

Dr. Laura Reed has been awarded a $2M grant from the NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education Program: Education and Human Resources (IUSE: EHR) to serve the national interest by improving undergraduate education in genomics. As the economy becomes more dependent on science and technology, the need for highly capable STEM workers is increasingly important. As a result, high-quality STEM education is critical for the U.S. economy, particularly STEM education that includes training in data science. It is also important to […]

NEW – Biological Sciences Help Desk provides free assistance with undergraduate core courses

August 30, 2019

Starting in fall 2019, the Department of Biological Sciences is assigning lecture GTAs to the core/large enrollment BSC majors courses to run the BSC Help Desk. The purpose of the Help Desk is to provide students with additional assistance on lecture material in addition to instructor office hours and services available at the Capstone Center for Student Success. We strongly encourage our students to take advantage of this free resource! See this link for more information: https://bsc.ua.edu/biological-sciences-help-desk/

UA team including Dr. Lukasz Ciesla awarded NSF MRI grant for cryoprobe-equipped NMR spectrometer

August 27, 2019

This award is jointly funded by the Chemical Research Instrumentation (CRIF) program, the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), and the Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) program. Dr. Lukasz Ciesla from the Department of Biological Sciences and a team of researchers led by Dr. Paul Rupar from the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry were awarded funds to acquire a 500 MHz NMR spectrometer equipped with a cryoprobe. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometers measure the interaction of radio waves with a […]

Drs. Lozier and Fierst awarded NSF Rules of Life grant

August 26, 2019

Biological Sciences faculty Drs. Jeff Lozier and Janna Fierst were recently awarded a National Science Foundation Rules of Life grant entitled “Bumble bee cold tolerance across elevations – From epigenotype to phenotype across space, time, and levels of biological organization” (https://nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1921585&HistoricalAwards=false). The project is a collaboration with faculty at University of Wyoming and Ohio State University, with a total budget of ~$2.5 million. This project will focus on bumble bees in mountains of the western US to examine how organisms […]

BSC graduate student Rebecca Varney (Kocot lab) wins best talk at World Congress of Malacology

August 23, 2019

Congratulations to Ph.D. candidate Rebecca Varney for winning a best talk award at the World Congress of Malacology for her presentation on the genome of the chiton Acanthopleura granulata (Mollusca: Polyplacophora)! Abstract of the talk: Molluscan genomic resources continue to increase, but with a marked bias toward bivalves and gastropods. Chitons are models for molluscan biomineralization, producing shell valves, sclerites, and radulas with teeth coated with magnetite (iron). Here we present the first genome of a chiton, the first from […]

Research on endangered woodpeckers by Dr. Ferguson featured by Wildlife.org

August 21, 2019

Dr. Paige Ferguson and her co-authors of a study published recently in the Journal for Nature Conservation wanted to see what management methods worked best to increase the abundance of the endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers in a section of the forest and how they could do it while improving forest health, recreation opportunities and other stakeholder goals. Prescribed burns, they found, are the answer. Read more about their findings at wildlife.org.

Dr. Ciesla awarded NSF grant to study a novel magnetic separation method to isolate compounds for drug discovery

August 20, 2019

Natural products are rich in biologically active (bioactive) compounds and serve as great sources for drug discovery. One of the major challenges in screening drug leads from natural products is the lack of effective tools to identify and separate the bioactive compounds. This project with PI Dr. Yuping Baio (CBE) will develop and characterize a new magnetic separation approach based on cell membrane-encapsulated iron oxide superparticles (a cluster of nanoparticles) for the separation and identification of bioactive compounds from natural […]

BSC Graduate Student Jennie Thies Featured in UA News

August 16, 2019

Jennie Thies is starting her fourth year in the PhD program with a highly competitive NIH Diversity Research Supplement, a two-year pre-doctoral fellowship that covers stipend, tuition and health care while supporting her research. Read about her accomplishments at UA News.

BSC welcomes Dr. Monica Kersh-Becker as an assistant professor

August 10, 2019

The Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alabama is pleased to introduce Dr. Monica Kersch-Becker as a new assistant professor. After receiving her Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2014, Dr. Kersch-Becker held a postdoctoral position at the State University of Campinas in Brazil and in 2017 joined our department as a visiting scholar. Dr. Kersch-Becker’s research focuses on basic and applied aspects of species interactions. She is passionate about chemical ecology at the forefront of science with a […]