2019 News Articles - Biological Sciences - Mellon College of Science

Friday, December 20, 2019

Achievement in Athletics and Academics

Thirty-one Carnegie Mellon University student-athletes were recognized at the sixth annual Student-Athlete Academic Achievement Celebration in the Posner Center.

Tuesday, December 10, 2019

Murphy Named 2020 IEEE Fellow

Robert F. Murphy, the Ray and Stephanie Lane Professor of Computational Biology and head of the Computational Biology Department at Carnegie Mellon University, has been elevated to fellow status in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the world's largest technical professional organization.

Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Carnegie Mellon Scientists Develop High-Throughput Fluorescence Technique for Synapse Analysis

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Biological Sciences have developed a new fluorescence-based technique that allows for the analysis of hundreds of thousands of synapses at a time. The new, high-throughput method for mapping the distribution of synapses on a neuron will accelerate neuroscience research on synaptic connectivity and how it changes during development, learning and disease.

Wednesday, November 13, 2019

Research Sheds Light on the Regulation of Gene Expression

New research led by Carnegie Mellon University Associate Professor of Biological Sciences Joel McManus reveals how a group of poorly understood nucleotide sequences in our DNA have a major impact on gene expression.

Tuesday, November 12, 2019

Aryn Gittis Awarded Grant from The Michael J. Fox Foundation

Neuroscientist Aryn Gittis, an associate professor of biological sciences in the Mellon College of Science and member of the Carnegie Mellon Neuroscience Institute, has been awarded a grant from The Michael J. Fox Foundation to advance her research on new treatment methods for Parkinson’s disease.

Friday, October 04, 2019

Eric Yttri Awarded Brain Research Foundation Seed Grant for Study on Value

Eric Yttri, an assistant professor of biological sciences and member of the Carnegie Mellon Neuroscience Institute, is a recipient of a 2019 seed grant from the Brain Research Foundation. The Yttri lab will use the funding for work on a new project to understand how value guides which behaviors we perform.

Monday, September 30, 2019

MCS Welcomes Its First Tartan Scholars

This semester, Carnegie Mellon University welcomed its first cohort of Tartan Scholars to campus. The Tartan Scholars program seeks to build a community of support and leadership among incoming first-year students who are academically high-achieving and come from low-income backgrounds.

Friday, September 13, 2019

MCS Faculty Honored with Professorships

Six Mellon College of Science (MCS) faculty members have been honored with professorships to support their work in biological sciences and physics. Alison Barth, Luisa Hiller, Veronica Hinman, Benjamin Hunt, Sandra Kuhlman and Curtis Meyer were recognized at a reception Sept. 12 in the Mellon Institute.

Wednesday, September 04, 2019

MCS Students Seek to Make an Impact as Fifth Year Scholars

Cory Bird and Miranda Mlincek have something in common — they felt that Carnegie Mellon University was missing something and they had an idea for how to change that. To accomplish their goals, the pair will be returning to campus this fall as part of the university’s Fifth Year Scholar program.

Friday, August 30, 2019

Huaiying Zhang Receives Kaufman Foundation New Investigator Award

Carnegie Mellon University Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences Huaiying Zhang has received a New Investigator Award from the Charles E. Kaufman Foundation. The $150,000 grant will support her research on the physics and chemistry of liquid condensation in live cells, which could inform the development of new treatments for cancer

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

3D Printing Nanoparticle Neural Probes

Carnegie Mellon University’s Rahul Panat and Eric Yttri have received a R01 grant of $1.95 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to use a low-cost, rapid additive manufacturing method to create a new class of high-density neural probes to record neurological data.

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Runaway Mitochondria Cause Telomere Damage in Cells

Using a technology developed by Carnegie Mellon University's Marcel Bruchez, researchers at UPMC Hillman Cancer Center have provided the first concrete evidence for the long-held belief that sick mitochondria pollute the cells they're supposed to be supplying with power.

Monday, July 29, 2019

Jason D’Antonio Selected to AMCAS Advisory Committee

Jason D’Antonio, director of the Health Professions Program and Biological Sciences assistant teaching professor, was appointed to the American Medical College Application Service (AMCAS) Advisory Committee.

Monday, July 29, 2019

Molecular Sensor Scouts DNA Damage and Supervises Repair

In the time it takes you to read this sentence, every cell in your body suffers some form of DNA damage. Without vigilant repair, cancer would run rampant, and now scientists at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University have gotten a glimpse of how one protein in particular keeps DNA damage in check.

Monday, July 22, 2019

Veronica Hinman Appointed Head of Department of Biological Sciences

Veronica Hinman, an expert in the field of evolutionary and developmental biology and a member of the Carnegie Mellon University faculty since 2006, has been named head of the Department of Biological Sciences in the Mellon College of Science.

Friday, July 12, 2019

Ph.D. Candidates Awarded 2019 Glen de Vries Graduate Fellowship

Andrew Wolff and Surya Aggarwal, Ph.D. candidates in the Department of Biological Sciences, have been named recipients of the 2019 Glen de Vries Graduate Fellowship.

Tuesday, July 09, 2019

Carnegie Mellon Research Identifies New Pathways for Sensory Learning in the Brain

A research team led by Carnegie Mellon neuroscientist Alison Barth has used the automated technology to identify new, previously unidentified pathways activated when the brain rewires its circuits in response to experience. Their findings are published online in Neuron.

Thursday, June 13, 2019

Microscopy and VR Illuminate New Ways to Prevent and Treat Disease

A combined research team from Carnegie Mellon University and Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason is pairing a nanoscale imaging technique with virtual reality technology to create a method that allows researchers to “step inside” their biological data.

Thursday, May 16, 2019

Study Finds Direct Oxidative Stress Damage Shortens Telomeres

A new study from the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, published in Molecular Cell, provides the first smoking gun evidence that oxidative stress acts directly on telomeres to hasten cellular aging.

Monday, May 06, 2019

Senior Lauren Nazzaro Receives Carnegie Mellon Women’s Association Scholarship

Senior Lauren Nazzaro's dedication as a leader and mentor have earned her an early graduation gift from the Carnegie Mellon Women's Association (CMWA). She was honored, along with six of her peers from each of the university's colleges, at the CMWA’s Spring Awards Reception with a $1,000 scholarship.

Monday, April 22, 2019

CMU Team’s Creation Reveals How Mechanical Forces Control Genes

Carnegie Mellon University researchers have developed a device they believe is “a new milestone” in studying how mechanical forces influence gene expression in fruit fly embryos. The work was featured this month on the cover of the journal Lab on a Chip, the editors of which labeled the research “in the top 10 percent of innovation and impact.”

Friday, April 05, 2019

Alumna Shefali Umrania Works to Reduce Diagnostic Errors in the Health Care Industry

In an office building above the bustling streets of New York City, recent MSCB alumna Shefali Umrania brainstorms novel machine learning ideas that could aid in the diagnostic care of millions of patients. Umrania works at Imagen Technologies, a startup company whose goal is to reduce diagnostic errors from radiology.

Friday, March 29, 2019

Senior Cristina Bañuelos Presents at Two Major Neuroscience Conferences

Biological sciences senior and Andrew Carnegie Society Scholar Cristina Bañuelos recently presented her research at two major neuroscience conferences.

Thursday, March 28, 2019

MCS Announces Recipients of DSF Block Grants

The Mellon College of Science has announced four projects that will be funded through an innovative block grant program for interdisciplinary basic life science research. The grant program is funded by a generous $4 million gift from the DSF Charitable Foundation.

Tuesday, March 05, 2019

Symposium at Mellon Institute Highlights Advantages of 'Open Science'

Researchers and students from a variety of disciplines at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh gathered last fall at the Mellon Institute to share tips and challenges around open science with experts from other U.S. universities and companies.

Monday, February 25, 2019

Star Student-Athlete is on Track for Medical Career

Bhanja, a student in the Mellon College of Science who is graduating with a degree in neuroscience with a concentration in neurobiology and a minor in biomedical engineering, is hoping to end her undergraduate career strong in the classroom and as a captain of the women's track and field team.

Wednesday, February 20, 2019

Finding Common Ground in the Regeneration Process

Sea stars are able to undergo whole-body regeneration, including at their larval stage: once bisected, each half can regrow the missing half. But how is this achieved? In a recent paper, published in BMC Biology, members of the Hinman lab examined regeneration in sea star larvae to better understand how this process works.

Wednesday, January 09, 2019

Two MCS Students Win Martin Luther King, Jr. Writing Awards

Biological sciences sophomore Hannah Daniel and Science and Humanities Scholar first-year student Qianou (Christina) Ma both placed first in their respective categories for the 2019 Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Writing Awards.

Monday, January 07, 2019

Impact Proteomics receives NSF Small Business Innovation Research Award

Impact Proteomics, co-founded by Biological Sciences Professor Jonathan Minden and Ph.D. candidate Amber Lucas, has received a $225,000 Phase I Small Business Innovation Research award from the National Science Foundation for further development of their universal proteome sample preparation technology.