Seminar Archive - Biological Sciences - Mellon College of Science

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Spring 2016

Date	Speaker	Title	Host
1/12	Andy Cameron, Ph.D. Director, Center for Computational Regulatory Genomics, Beckman Institute	Sea Urchin Regulome	Veronica Hinman, Ph.D.
2/22	Christine Constantinople, Ph.D. Princeton University	Two-photon imaging during decision-making in rats	Alison Barth, Ph.D.
2/24	Linda Van Aelst, Ph.D. Cold Spring Harbor Labs	Mechanisms of Axo-Axonic Synapse Formation in the Neocortex	Sandra Kuhlman, Ph.D.
3/9	Spring Break - No Seminar
3/15	Wei-Chung Lee, Ph.D. Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School	Functional Neuronal Assemblies for Information Processing	Marcel Bruchez, Ph.D.
3/16	Peggy Cotter, Ph.D. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	The Margaret Ottie, MM'28 Undergraduate Lecture Series in Biological Sciences Contact-Dependent Signal Transduction in Burkholderia	Luisa Hiller, Ph.D.
3/23	Kristian Baker, Ph.D. Case Western Reserve University	RNA Quality Control - novel insights into targeting of substrates to the nonsense-mediated mRNA decay pathway	Joel McManus, Ph.D.
3/30	Sacha Nelson, Ph.D. Brandeis University	Physiological Genomics of Neuronal Cell Types	Aryn Gittis, Ph.D.
3/31 *10:30 a.m.	Raju Tomer, Ph.D. Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University	Rapid high-resolution mapping of intact brains structure and function	Marcel Bruchez, Ph.D.
4/6	Anthony Richardson, Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh	Immunometabolism and Staphylococcus aureus Skin Infections	Luisa Hiller, Ph.D.
4/13	Hari Shroff, Ph.D. NIH/NIBIB	High speed biological imaging at and beyond the diffraction limit	Fred Lanni, Ph.D.
4/20	Josh Huang, Ph.D. Cold Spring Harbor Labs	Genetic dissection of cortical circuit organization and assembly - chandeliers light up pyramids	Alison Barth, Ph.D.
4/27	Charles Sindelar, Ph.D. Yale University	One tiny step for kinesin, one slightly less tiny step for motor mechanics	David Hackney, Ph.D.
5/4	Xue Han, Ph.D. Boston University	Tools and Principles to Understand Neural Networks of Parkinson’s Disease	Marcel Bruchez, Ph.D.
5/11 *2:00PM	Matthew Sachs, Ph.D. Texas A&M University	Gene Regulation Through the Control of Ribosome Movement	Joel McManus, Ph.D.

Fall 2015

Date	Speaker	Title	Host
9/2	Maggie Braun, Ph.D. Department of Biological Sciences Carnegie Mellon University	Seminar for Senior Undergraduates
9/9
9/16	Daniel Larson, Ph.D. National Cancer Institute	Regulation of Transcription and RNA Processing in Single Cells: Understanding Heterogeneity in Gene Expression	Bob Murphy, Ph.D.
9/23	Alex Evilevitch, Ph.D. Department of Physics Carnegie Mellon University	Biophysics of Herpesvirus infectivity	Aaron Mitchell, Ph.D.
9/30	Jörn Dengjel, Ph.D. Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies	Proteomic analysis of macromolecular protein complexes in oncogenic cell transformation	Bob Murphy, Ph.D.
10/14	Vaughn Cooper, Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh	Experimental evolution in bacterial biofilms to understand adaptation during infections	Luisa Hiller, Ph.D.
10/28	Andres Villu Maricq, Ph.D. University of Utah	A Mobile Signaling Complex Regulates the Kinesin-Mediated Transport of Synaptic AMPARs	Adam Linstedt, Ph.D.
11/4	Kim Lewis, Ph.D. Northeastern University	Antibiotics from the Microbial Dark Matter	Student-invited Seminar Series
11/11	Ted Dawson, MD, Ph.D Johns Hopkins School of Medicine	Unlocking the secrets of Parkinson Disease	Aryn Gittis, Ph.D.
11/18	Don Morrison, Ph.D. University of Illinois at Chicago	Streptococcus: a genus addicted to genetic transformation(?)	Luisa Hiller, Ph.D.
11/25	Thanksgiving Break
12/2	Julia Sero, Ph.D. Institute for Cancer Research, London	Function Follows Form: Using high-content image analysis to investigate the relationships between cell morphology and gene expression	Bob Murphy, Ph.D.
12/9	Joseph Reese, Ph.D. Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, The Pennsylvania State University	From start to finish: the remarkable functions of the Ccr4-Not complex in the control of gene expression	Joel McManus, Ph.D.
12/16	Robert Froemke, Ph.D. NYU School of Medicine	Oxytocin, social behavior and excitatory-inhibitory balance	Alison Barth, Ph.D.

Spring 2015

Date	Speaker	Title	Host
1/26 *Monday	Kassandra Ori-McKenney, Ph.D. University of California, San Francisco	Building a Neuron: Mechanisms Regulating the Cytoskeleton during Development and Function	Adam Linstedt, Ph.D.
1/28	Richard McKenney, Ph.D. University of California, San Francisco	Multiplex Regulation of Cytoplasmic Dynein Controls Intracellular Transport	Adam Linstedt, Ph.D.
2/4	Ivo Spiegel, Ph.D. Harvard University	Regulation of excitatory-inhibitory balance in cortical circuits by sensory-induced gene programs	Adam Linstedt, Ph.D.
2/11	Won-Suk Chung, Ph.D. Stanford University	The phagocytic role of astrocytes in synapse elimination	Adam Linstedt, Ph.D.
2/18	Sandeep Robert Datta, M.D., Ph.D. Department of Neurobiology Harvard Medical School	Sensorimotor coupling in the olfactory system	Alison Barth, Ph.D. & Nathan Urban, Ph.D.
2/25	Bruce Herring, Ph.D. University of California, San Francisco	The role of guanine nucleotide exchange factors at the synapse	Adam Linstedt, Ph.D.
3/2 *Monday	Jason Aoto, Ph.D. Stanford University	Neurexin-3 alternative splicing: insights into the synaptic function of neurexins	Adam Linstedt, Ph.D.
3/4	Roy Parker, Ph.D. University of Colorado, Boulder	Life, Death and Mid-life Crises of Eukaryotic mRNAs	Joel McManus, Ph.D.
3/11	Spring Break
3/18	Eric Harvill, Ph.D. Penn State University	Competition between Invading Pathogens and Resident Microbiota	Luisa Hiller, Ph.D. & Joel McManus, Ph.D.
3/25	William Hancock, Ph.D. Penn State University	The role of kinesin-2 motors in bidirectional transport and cytoskeletal rearrangements in neurons	David Hackney, Ph.D.
4/1	Rob Knight, Ph.D. University of California, San Diego	Dynamics of the Human Microbiome *The Margaret Ottie, MM'28 Undergraduate Lecture Series in Biological Sciences	Luisa Hiller, Ph.D. & Dannie Durand, Ph.D.
4/10 *Friday	Andrew Fire, Ph.D. Stanford University	Opportunistic RNAs and Acquisitive Genomes	Student-invited Seminar Series
4/15	Robert Edwards, M.D. Cahill Professor of Neurology and Physiology University of California, San Francisco	Formation of the Regulated Secretory Pathway	Manoj Puthenveedu, Ph.D.
4/22	James Casanova, Ph.D. University of Virginia	Arf family GTPases in the control of neuronal and non-neuronal endocytic pathways	Manoj Puthenveedu, Ph.D.
4/29	Mario Roederer, Ph.D. Senior Investigator, ImmunoTechnology	The Genetic Architecture of the Immune System	Bob Murphy, Ph.D.
5/6
5/13	John Rinn, Ph.D. Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University	Regulatory Roles of Repeat RNA	Joel McManus, Ph.D.

Fall 2014

Date	Speaker	Title	Host
8/27	Carrie Doonan & John Woolford	Making the Most of Your Senior Year
9/3	Justin Fay, Ph.D. Washington University's School of Medicine	Domestication and Diversification of Wine Yeast	Joel McManus, Ph.D.
9/10	No seminar this week
9/17	Qian-Quan Sun, Ph.D. University of Wyoming	Bad Sleep in Activity-Dependent BDNF Mutant Mouse: A Window into Neurodevelopmental Disorders	Alison Barth, Ph.D
9/24	Neil Hukriede, Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Department of Developmental Biology	Kidney Development, Regeneration and Small Molecules	Brooke McCartney, Ph.D.
10/1	John Murray, Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania	Using the C. elegans Lineage to Decode Development	David Hackney, Ph.D
10/8	Ruben L. Gonzalez, Jr., Ph.D. Columbia University Department of Chemistry	The Structural Dynamics of Translation Initiation	Marcel Bruchez, Ph.D.
10/15	Nicole Calakos, Ph.D. Duke University School of Medicine	To Do Or Not To Do: Striatal synaptic and circuit contributions to repetitive “OCD-like” behaviors	Aryn Gittis, Ph.D.
10/22	Dennis Kostka, Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine Department of Developmental Biology	Analyzing gene regulation across evolution, development, and differentiation	Veronica Hinman, Ph.D.
10/29	Jian Yu, Ph.D. Department of Pathology and Radiation Oncology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute	A Journey into Death Mechanisms of Intestinal Stem Cells	Brooke McCartney, Ph.D.
11/5	Nina Salama, Ph.D. University of Washington	Bacterial Adaptations to Life in the Stomach	Luisa Hiller, Ph.D.
11/12	James Casanova, Ph.D. University of Virginia *cancelled	Arf family GTPases in the control of neuronal and non-neuronal endocytic pathways	Manoj Puthenveedu, Ph.D.
11/19	Chris Amemiya, Ph.D. Benaroya Research Institute	Comparative Genomics and the Evo-Devo of Innovation	Veronica Hinman, Ph.D.
11/26	Thanksgiving Holiday
12/3	Catherine Dulac, Ph.D. Harvard University	Molecular and Cellular Architecture of the Mouse Social Brain	Student-invited Seminar
12/10	Nicholas Priebe, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin	The Private Lives of Neurons	Sandra Kuhlman, Ph.D.

Spring 2014

Date	Speaker	Title	Host
1/15	Dr. Shipra Vaishnava	Immune regulation of host-microbial interactions in the gut	Aaron Mitchell, Ph.D.
1/29	Dr. Gretchen Diehl Rescheduled to 1/29 at 3:30 p.m.	The integration of microbiota-derived signals to regulate intestinal immunity	Aaron Mitchell, Ph.D.
1/29	Andrew Ewald, Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University	Collective invasion in breast cancer requires a conserved basal epithelial program	Robert Murphy, Ph.D.
2/5	David D. Boehr, Ph.D., The Pennsylvania State University	Dynamic amino acid networks in enzyme catalysis	Gordon Rule, Ph.D.
2/12	Robert Lee, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania	Bitter taste receptors are sentinels of innate immunity	Aaron Mitchell, Ph.D.
2/19	Samuel Young, Ph.D., The Max Planck Florida Institute	Uncovering the molecular mechanisms that regulate the availability and resupply of synaptic vesicles for information transfer	Alison Barth, Ph.D.
2/26	Michael Behnke, Ph.D., Washington University School of Medicine	Mapping and characterizing virulence factors in the parasite Toxoplasma gondii	Aaron Mitchell, Ph.D.
2/28	Kevin Fox, Ph.D., Cardiff University	Functional dichotomy in experience-dependent plasticity among cellular subtypes of cortical layer V	Sandra Kuhlman, Ph.D.
3/5	Women in Science Seminar: Marina Picciotto, Ph.D., Yale University	Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors and behavior: distinct cholinergic mechanisms underlying regulation of food intake and corticothalamic development	Student-invited Seminar Series
3/12	No Seminar due to Spring Break
3/19	Dr. Sarah Gaffen, Univeristy of Pittsburgh	Out of the mouths of babes (and mice): Interleukin-17 signal transduction and fungal immunity	Aaron Mitchell, Ph.D.
3/26	Chris Lowe, Ph.D., Stanford University	New perspectives of animal body evolution from hemichordate developmental biology	Veronica Hinman, Ph.D.
4/2	Erica Stone, Ph.D., University of California San Diego	Regulation of helper T cell differentiation and function by FOXO1, a key metabolic transcription factor	Aaron Mitchell, Ph.D.
4/9	Alan Russell, Ph.D., Highmark Distinguished Career Professor, The Institute for Complex Engineered Systems, Carnegie Mellon University	Polymer-based Protein Engineering
4/16	Manuel Llinás Ph.D., Penn State University	Transcriptional Regulation and Metabolism in Malaria Parasites	Luisa Hiller, Ph.D.
4/23	Victor Faundez, M.D., Ph.D., Emory University	Endosome Mechanisms of Schizophrenia Susceptibility Genes	Manojkumar Puthenveedu, Ph.D.
4/30	Jim Surmeier, Ph.D., Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine	Impaired TrkB receptor signaling underlies corticostriatal dysfunction in Huntington’s disease Endosome Mechanisms of Schizophrenia Susceptibility Genes	Aryn Gittis, Ph.D.
5/21	Adam Kepecs, Ph.D., Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory	Mapping the response repertoire of identified neurons during decision making	Alison Barth, Ph.D.
5/27	Tamara K. Berdyyeva, Ph.D., Neuroscience Postdoctoral Fellow at Janssen	Investigating Mechanisms of Drug Action at the Neuronal Ensemble Level in Behaving Mice: Advantages of In-Vivo Calcium Imaging in Drug Discovery *Seminar will be held in MI 130	Sandra Kuhlman, Ph.D.

Fall 2013

Date	Speaker	Title	Host
8/28	Maggie Braun, Ph.D.	Making the Most of Your Senior Year
9/4	Laura Rusche, Ph.D., University at Buffalo	Evolutionary Connections Between Heterochromatin and DNA Replication	Aaron Mitchell, Ph.D.
9/11	Melissa Moore, Ph.D., University of Massachusetts Medical School	Assembly & Dynamics of Uber Complex RNPs	John Woolford, Ph.D.
9/18	Sergey Nuzhdin, Ph.D., University of Southern California	Genotype-to-Phenotype Mapping in Post GWAS World	Joel McManus, Ph.D.
9/25 (12:30 pm.)	Garth Ehrlich, Ph.D., Drexel University, College of Medicine	The Universality of the Distributed Genome Hypothesis among Bacterial Species	Aaron Mitchell, Ph.D.
9/25 (3:30 p.m.)	Eric Betzig, Ph.D., HHMI Janelia Farm Research Campus	Imaging Life at High Spatiotemporal Resolution	Nathan Urban, Ph.D.
10/2	The Margaret Ottie, MM'28 Undergraduate Lecture Series in Biological Sciences Barth Grant, Ph.D., Rutgers University	Worming our Way Through Endosomes: C. elegans Provides Insights into Receptor Recycling Mechanisms	Manoj Puthenveedu, Ph.D.
10/9	Joshua Rest, Ph.D., Stony Brook University	Fitness and Modularity of Stochasticity in Gene Expression	Dannie Durand, Ph.D.
10/16	Jack Waters, Ph.D., Allen Institute for Brain Science	Excitation of Neocortical Pyramidal Neurons via Nicotinic Receptors	Sandra Kuhlman, Ph.D.
10/23	Tom Maniatis, Ph.D., Columbia University	The Clustered Protocadherins Provide a Barcode for Single Cell Diversity in the Mammalian Brain	Student-invited Seminar Series Committee
10/30	Alan Wells, D.M.Sc., M.D., Department of Pathology, University of Pittsburgh	Won't you be my Neighbor? Cell Fate Determination by the Microenvironment	Nathan Urban, Ph.D.
11/6	Guy Salama, Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh	Sex Differences, Calcium and Cardiac Arrhythmias	Nathan Urban, Ph.D.
11/13	Denise Montell, Ph.D., University of California-Santa Barbara	Life, Death, and Resurrection at the Cellular Level	Student-invited Seminar Series Committee
11/20
11/27	No Seminar due to Thanksgiving Break
12/4	Cecilia Lo, Ph.D., Department of Developmental Biology, University of Pittsburgh	Genetic Etiology of Congenital Heart Disease: Insights Gained from a Large Scale Mouse Forward Genetic Screen.	Veronica Hinman, Ph.D.

Spring 2013

Date	Speaker	Title	Host
1/16	Joel Kralj, Ph.D., Harvard University	Imaging Voltage in Electrically Excitable Cells	MBIC Search Committee
1/22 (Tuesday @ Noon)	Joshua Vaughan, Ph.D., Harvard University	Super-resolution Fluorescence Microscopy at the Molecular Scale	MBIC Search Committee
1/23	Matt Wachowiak, Ph.D., Department of Physiology and Brain Institute, University of Utah	All in a Sniff: Dissecting Olfactory System Function in the Context of Active Sensing	Nathan Urban, Ph.D.
1/30	Fan Wang, Ph.D., Department of Cell Biology, Duke University	Brainstem Sensorimotor Circuits for Active Touch	Alison Barth, Ph.D.
2/6	CANCELLED: Garth Ehrlich, Ph.D., Drexel University, College of Medicine	Testing the Universality of the Distributed Genome Hypothesis among Bacterial Species: Development of a Core Genome-based Taxonomic Method	N. Luisa Hiller, Ph.D.
2/13	Moriel Vandsburger, Ph.D., Weizmann Institute of Science	Upon Closer Examination: Tailoring Magnetic Resonance Imaging Methods to Elucidate In Vivo Biological Phenomena
2/14 (Thursday)	Dave Zhang, Ph.D., Harvard Medical School	Nucleic Acid Molecular Engineering for Diagnostic Applications	MBIC Search Committee
2/20	Elizabeth Rhoades, Ph.D., Yale University	Order from Disorder: Understanding the Role of Natively Unfolded Proteins in Neurodegeneration	Adam Linstedt, Ph.D.
2/27	Vladislav Verkhusha, Ph.D., Albert Einstein College of Medicine	Engineering Fluorescent Proteins for Multiparameter Imaging
3/6	The Margaret Ottie, MM'28 Undergraduate Lecture Series in Biological Sciences Indira Raman, Ph.D., Northwestern University, Department of Neurobiology	Synchrony Coding in Cerebellar Circuits	Aryn Gittis, Ph.D.
3/13	No Seminar due to Spring Break
3/20	Arjumand Ghazi, Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh	The Genetics of Aging and Reproduction in C. elegans	Manojkumar Puthenveedu, Ph.D.
3/27	Allyson O'Donnell, Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh	Arrestin’ Developments: New Biological Functions for the α-arrestin Family of Trafficking Adaptors	Tina Lee, Ph.D.
4/3	Thanos Tzonoupoulis, Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh	Mechanisms and Functions of Synaptic and Intrinsic Plasticity in Normal and Pathological Auditory Processing	Alison Barth, Ph.D.
4/10	John Williams, Ph.D., Vollum Institute	Acute Desensitization of Opioid Receptors	Manojkumar Puthenveedu, Ph.D.
4/17	Sanford Simon, Ph.D., The Rockfeller University	Searching for the “Holey Grail” – the Mechanism of Transport Through the Nuclear Pore of Cells How physics, chemistry and computational simulations are elucidating the mechanisms of biological machines.	Marcel Bruchez, Ph.D.
4/24	Jianhua Cang, Ph.D., Northwestern University	Critical Period Plasticity and Binocular Matching in the Mouse Visual Cortex	Sandra Kuhlman, Ph.D.
5/1	Howard Shuman, Ph.D., University of Chicago	The Right Host can Make or Break the Visit of an Accidental Pathogen: Tales of Legionella	Aaron Mitchell, Ph.D.

Fall 2012

Date	Speaker	Title	Host
8/29	Nathan Urban, Ph.D., Dr. Frederick A. Schwertz Distinguished Professor of Life Sciences & Head Department of Biological Sciences Carrie Doonan, Ph.D., Director of Undergraduate Laboratories & Teaching Professor	Preparing for Your Senior Year at Carnegie Mellon (For Undergraduate Students)
9/5 & 9/6	Next Generation Medical Imaging Workshop
9/12	William Guido, Ph.D., University of Louisville	Circuit Development in the Visual Thalamus of the Mouse	Sandra Kuhlman, Ph.D.
9/19	Mark Rebeiz, Ph.D., Department of Biological Sciences, University of Pittsburgh	Morphological Evolution: The Modification and Origination of Nodes and Networks in Development	Veronica Hinman, Ph.D.
9/26
10/3	Amy Caudy, Ph.D., Donnelly Centre, University of Toronto	Metabolic Profiling of a Prototrophic Yeast Deletion Collection	Dannie Durand, Ph.D.
10/10	Sarah Ross, Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh	The Neural Circuits of Itch	Alison Barth, Ph.D.
10/17	Adam Kwiatkowski, Ph.D., Department of Cell Biology and Physiology, University of Pittsburgh	Promoting Change From Within: A Mechanistic Framework for Actin Network Reorganization by Alpha-Catenin at Cell-Cell Contacts	Tina Lee, Ph.D.
10/24	Frank Conlon, Ph.D., Department of Genetics, University of North Carolina	Transcriptional Control of Early Cardiovascular Development	Veronica Hinman, Ph.D.
10/31	CANCELED: Indira Raman, Ph.D., Northwestern University, Department of Neurobiology	Synchrony Coding in Cerebellar Circuits	Aryn Gittis, Ph.D.
11/7	Reserved.
11/14	No Seminar due to Rotation 1 Presentations
11/21	No Seminar due to Thanksgiving Break
11/28	Reserved.
12/5	Reserved.

Spring 2012

Date	Speaker	Title	Host
1/5	Matthew Smear, Ph.D., HHMI’s Janelia Farm Research Campus	Active Olfaction	Alison Barth, Ph.D. & the Neurobiology Search Committee
1/11	Aryn Gittis, Ph.D., Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease, UCSF	Striatal Interneurons and the Regulation of Striatal Output Pathways	Alison Barth, Ph.D. & the Neurobiology Search Committee
1/18	No Seminar Due to Advisory Board
1/25	David McCormick, Ph.D., Yale University	Cortical Dynamics are Controlled by Inhibition	Alison Barth, Ph.D.
2/1
2/8
2/15
2/22
2/29
3/1 MI Auditorium	Erik Shapiro, Ph.D., Departments of Diagnostic Radiology, Biomedical Engineering & Yale Stem Cell Center, Yale University School of Medicine	MRI-based Stem and Immune Cell Tracking	Eric Ahrens, Ph.D.
3/7	Kimberly Beatty, Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley	Chemical Tools for Imaging Proteins and Pathogens	Eric Ahrens, Ph.D.
3/14	No Seminar Due to Spring Break
3/21	Maxime Dahan, Ecole normale supérieure, Paris; Transcription Imaging Consortium, HHMI, Janelia Farm Research Center	Investigating the Nuclear Exploration and Target Search of DNA-binding Proteins in Mamallian Cells at the Single Molecule Level	Marcel Bruchez, Ph.D.
3/28
4/4	The Margaret Ottie, MM'28 Undergraduate Lecture Series in Biological Sciences Techung Lee, Ph.D., University of Buffalo	Lend me your Stem Cells to Heal my Broken Heart	BioSAC Student-invited Speaker Student Representative: Kaitlin Healy
4/11	Becky Seal, Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh	Delineating the Functional Role of Cholinergic-Glutamatergic Co-transmission in the Striatum	Alison Barth, Ph.D.
4/18	Jennifer Lee, Ph.D., National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, NIH	Amyloids in Pathology and Biology: Lessons from α-Synuclein and Pmel17	Chien Ho, Ph.D. and Gordon Rule, Ph.D.
4/25	Maurice Swanson, Ph.D., University of Florida	Mechanisms of RNA-Mediated Disease	John Woolford, Ph.D.
5/2	Melissa Rolls, Ph.D., Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Pennsylvania State University	Staying Alive: Strategies Used by your Neurons to Function as Long as you Do	Brooke McCartney, Ph.D.
5/9 (MI Auditorium)	Luisa Hiller, Ph.D., Center for Genomic Sciences, Allegheny-Singer Research Institute	Sex, War and Rumors: Driving Heterogeneity in Biofilms	Aaron Mitchell, Ph.D.

Fall 2011

Date	Speaker	Title & Abstract	Host
8/31	The Margaret Ottie, MM'28 Undergraduate Lecture Series in Biological Sciences Lynne Maquat, Ph.D., University of Rochester	Tales from the Cellular Underworld: Quality-control and Conditionally Regulated mRNA Decay	Javier López, Ph.D.
9/7	Philip Benfey, Ph.D., Biology Department and IGSP Center for Systems Biology, Duke University and GrassRoots Biotechnology	Development Rooted in Interwoven Networks	Veronica Hinman, Ph.D.
9/14	Veronica Hinman, Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon University	The Evolution of Developmental Gene Regulatory Networks
9/21	James Hurley, Ph.D., National Institutes of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, NIH	Nipped in the Bud: The Strange Ways that ESCRTs Sever Membranes	SISS Committee
9/28	Amanda Paulovich, M.D., Ph.D., Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center	You Can't Study What You Can't Measure	Aaron Mitchell, Ph.D.
10/5	Meyer Jackson, Ph.D., University of Wisconsin	Exocytosis, Fusion Pores, and Membrane Bending	Manojkumar Puthenveedu, Ph.D.
10/12
10/19	Leslie C. Griffith, M.D., Ph.D., Brandeis University	Sleep Circuits in Drosophila	Manojkumar Puthenveedu, Ph.D.
10/26
11/2	Dmitry Rinberg, Ph.D., HHMI's Janelia Farm Research Campus	Timing in Olfaction	Nathan Urban, Ph.D.
11/9	Tim Ryan, Ph.D., Weill Cornell Medical College	Control of Synaptic Function	Manojkumar Puthenveedu, Ph.D.
11/16	Paul Selvin, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	Nanometer Accuracy and Resolution with Fluorescence Microscopy: Watching Molecular Motors; Cancer Therapy	Marcel Bruchez, Ph.D.
11/23	No Departmental Seminar due to Thanksgiving Break
11/30	Sandra Kuhlman, Ph.D., UCLA	Practice Makes Perfect: Defining the Role of Inhibition in Vision and Sensory Learning	Alison Barth, Ph.D. & the Neurobiology Search Committee
12/7	Lynne Angerer, Ph.D., NIH-NICDR	Qwnt-essential Patterning of the Sea Urchin Embryo	Veronica Hinman, Ph.D.
12/8	Kevin Franks, Ph.D., Columbia University	Assembling an Odor: Cortical Integration of Olfactory Information	Alison Barth, Ph.D. & the Neurobiology Search Committee
12/14 (MI Social Room)	David Cox, Ph.D., The Rowland Institute at Harvard	Reverse-Engineering the Neuronal Substrates of Invariant Visual Object Recognition	Alison Barth, Ph.D. & the Neurobiology Search Committee

Spring 2011

Date	Speaker	Title	Host
1/12
1/17 (Monday, 12:30 p.m. in the Mellon Institute Social Room)	Ilana Witten, Ph.D., Stanford University	The Neuromodulatory Control of Reward: an Optogenetic Investigation	Alison Barth, Ph.D.
1/19	DJ Kleinbaum (CMU Biological Sciences '05) and Brian Frezza (CMU Computational Biology '05), Emerald Therapeutics	Liquid Information Processors as Next Generation Nucleic Acid Therapeutics	Maggie Braun, Ph.D.
1/24 (Monday, 12:30 p.m.)	Co-sponsored by the CNBC Spencer Smith, Ph.D., The Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research, University College London	Maps in Neocortex	Alison Barth, Ph.D.
1/26	Bernardo Lemos, Ph.D., Harvard University	Heterochromatin and Population Genomics: Y Variants Tip the Chromatin Balance	A. Javier Lopez, Ph.D.
2/2	John Pool, Ph.D., University of California, Davis	Population Genomic Insights into Natural Selection and Altitude Adaptation	A. Javier Lopez, Ph.D.
2/7 (Monday)	Praveen Sethupathy, Ph.D., NIH/NHGRI	Integrative Genomic Approaches for Mapping the cis-regulatory Landscape of Human Pancreatic Islets	A. Javier Lopez, Ph.D.
2/16	No Seminar due to Bioimaging Day
2/17 (Thursday, Mellon Institute Social Room)	Co-sponsored by the CNBC Kevin Bender, Ph.D., Oregon Hearing Research Center/Vollum Institute, Oregon Health & Science University	A Novel Role for Calcium in Neuronal Signaling	Alison Barth, Ph.D.
2/22 (Tuesday)	Jesse Gray, Ph.D., Harvard Medical School	How do Transcriptional Networks Rewire Neuronal Circuits?	A. Javier Lopez, Ph.D.
2/28 (Monday, 12:30 p.m.)	David Margolis, Ph.D., Brain Research Institute, University of Zurich	Stability and Plasticity of Cortical Circuit Dynamics	Alison Barth, Ph.D.
3/2	William Costerton, Ph.D., Allegheny-Singer Research Institute, West Penn Allegheny Health System	Microbial Biofilms in Nature and Disease	Aaron Mitchell, Ph.D.
3/9	Mark Histed, Ph.D., Harvard Medical School	Connecting Cortical Representations to Behavior	Alison Barth, Ph.D.
3/16	Jian Lu, Ph.D., Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Cornell University	Function and Evolution of Small RNA Targeting	A. Javier Lopez, Ph.D.
3/23	Wah Chiu, Ph.D., Baylor College of Medicine	Visualizing Chaperonin in Different Functional States by Cryo-EM	Russell Schwartz, Ph.D.
3/30	Joel McManus, Ph.D., University of Connecticut Health Center	Evolution of Gene Regulatory Networks in Drosophila	A. Javier Lopez, Ph.D.
4/6	Eric Ahrens, Ph.D., Department of Biological Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University	In vivo Cytometry: An MRI-based Approach to Quantitatively Study Cell Trafficking and Function
4/13	Co-sponsored by CMU Biomedical Engineering Shermali Gunawardena, Ph.D., The State University of New York at Buffalo	Deadly Pile-ups on Neuronal Highways: Investigating Axonal Transport Defects in Neurodegeneration	Ge Yang, Ph.D.
4/20	The Margaret Ottie, MM'28 Undergraduate Lecture Series in Biological Sciences Tony Harris, Ph.D., Department of Cell & Systems Biology, University of Toronto	Regulation of Epithelial Polarity by the PAR Complex	Brooke McCartney, Ph.D.
4/27	Dr. Robert Langer, Department of Chemical Engineering, MIT	The Future of Regenerative Medicine, Tissue Engineering and Controlled Drug Delivery	BioSAC Student Representative: Amy Wang

Fall 2010

Date	Speaker	Title	Host
Thursday, 8/19 (1 – 3 p.m.)	Ben Jantzen, Coordinator of Graduate Student Programs, Eberly Center	Overview of Student Cognition
8/25	Maggie Braun, Ph.D., Assistant Department Head for Undergraduate Affairs and Special Faculty Lecturer, Carnegie Mellon University	Preparing for Your Senior Year at Carnegie Mellon (For Undergraduate Students)
9/1
9/8	Nathan Urban, Head, Department of Biological Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University	Navigating NIH Funding (For Graduate Students)
9/15
9/16 (2 p.m.)	Chris Bakal Ph.D., Institute for Cancer Research in London	Signaling Networks that Regulate Morphological Noise and Promote Exploratory Behavior	Robert Murphy, Ph.D. co-sponsored by the Ray and Stephanie Lane Center for Computational Biology
9/22
9/29
10/6	Aylin Hanyaloglu, Ph.D., Imperial College, London	Unravelling the Trafficking Code of G protein-coupled Receptors (GPCRs): Impact on Hormonal Signaling and Reproduction	Manojkumar Puthenveedu, Ph.D.
10/13	The Margaret Ottie, MM'28 Undergraduate Lecture Series in Biological Sciences Katrin Karbstein, Ph.D., The Scripps Research Institute	Dissecting 40S Ribosome Assembly	John Woolford, Ph.D.
10/20	Alejandro Sanchez Alvarado, Ph.D., Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, University of Utah	Planarians, Stem Cells, and Regeneration	SISS Committee
10/27	Steve Cresawn, Ph.D., James Madison University	Fostering Bacteriophage Genomics in the Classroom and Beyond	Jonathan Jarvik, Ph.D.
11/3	Jeff Schloss, Ph.D., Program Director for Technology Development Coordination, National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), NIH	A Revolution in DNA Sequencing Technologies -- Challenges & Opportunities	Nathan Urban, Ph.D.
11/10
11/17	Mark von Zastrow, Ph.D., University of California, San Francisco	Regulation of Signaling Receptors by Endocytosis	Manoj Puthenveedu, Ph.D.
11/24	No Seminar due to Thanksgiving Break
12/1	Ed Lein, Ph.D., Allen Brain Institute	Neuroanatomical Transcriptomics: Large Scale Gene Expression Mapping in the Developing Mammalian Brain	Alison Barth, Ph.D.
12/3 (11 a.m., 6115 Gates-Hillman Center)	Klaus Palme, Freiburg Inst. For Advanced Studies, University of Freiburg (Germany)	The Magic Role of Auxin and Beyond	The Lane Center for Computational Biology, Department of Biological Sciences, and Joint CMU-Pitt Ph.D. Program in Computational Biology Seminar