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Most Recent News

Monday, January 30, 2023

MCS Graduate Student Conference Funding Award Winners Announced

Four winners have received the Mellon College of Science Graduate Student Funding Award for winter conferences.
Friday, January 20, 2023

Moroccan Service Trip Sets Senior's Sights on Medicine

Volunteering at the Clinique La Capitale in Rabat, Morocco, brought greater clarity to Veronique Wright's future.
Friday, January 06, 2023

Senior Folds Machine Learning into DNA Origami Research

Carnegie Mellon University senior Peter Sauer is offering a technological take on a biological problem.
Monday, January 02, 2023

New Expansion Microscopy Methods Magnify Research's Impact

Unprecedented views of the interior of cells and other nanoscale structures are now possible thanks to innovations in expansion microscopy.
Thursday, December 22, 2022

Shrinking Hydrogels Enlarge Nanofabrication Options

Researchers have developed a strategy for creating ultrahigh-resolution, complex 3D nanostructures out of various materials.
Monday, December 19, 2022

Tartans Celebrated for Their Exceptional Academic Standing

Excellence in academics and athletics is not mutually exclusive at Carnegie Mellon University.
Wednesday, December 07, 2022

CRISPR Mini Course Rearranges Students' Ideas About Genetics

Carnegie Mellon's Department of Biological Sciences has a course called Genome Editing Biotechnology, where students learn more about CRISPR-Cas9.
Friday, December 02, 2022

Dark Therapy Shows Promise in Addressing Lazy Eye Condition

CMU neuroscientists have found after a week after transient dark exposure, the brain's neural networks adjust the way they process visual information.
Thursday, November 17, 2022

Alex Hsu Earns Biological Sciences Fellowship

Alexander Hsu was awarded the Glen de Vries Fellowship for the Biological Sciences for his research using computational methods to analyze neuroscience data.
Monday, November 07, 2022

Biology Professor Receives Grant for Autism Research

Kate Hong received a Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative grant to research sensory processing in individuals with autism spectrum disorder.
Wednesday, October 26, 2022

Khetarpal and Pomerantz Win Outstanding Recent Alumni Award

MCS alumni Susheel Khetarpal and Alex Pomerantz will receive the 2022 Outstanding Recent Alumni Award at Carnegie Mellon's annual Alumni Awards.
Wednesday, October 05, 2022

Researchers Nanoprint Electrodes for Customized Treatments of Disease

The new array holds the potential to transform how doctors are able to treat neurological disorders.
Tuesday, October 04, 2022

Kuang Receives NIH Director's New Innovator Award

The award is part of the NIH's High-Risk, High-Reward Research program, which is supported by the Common Fund.
Thursday, September 22, 2022

Junior Studies Genetics and Sleep In Dream Research Project

CMU junior Ruby Redlich uses computational tools to investigate genetic markers that influence sleep in mammals.
Wednesday, September 21, 2022

Bridges Named a Blavatnik Awards Finalist

The announcement for the 2022 Blavatnik Regional Awards for Young Scientists came during the celebration of National Postdoc Appreciation Week.
Tuesday, September 13, 2022

Remembering Marcel Bruchez

Marcel Bruchez, professor of biological sciences and chemistry and director of the Molecular Biosensor and Imaging Center at Carnegie Mellon University passed away on Aug. 27, 2022 after a four-year hard-fought and courageous battle with glioblastoma.
Thursday, September 08, 2022

Sophomore Eyes Big Ways To Make Microscopic Discoveries Easier

Aramchan Lee and others in CMU’s Zhao Biophotonics Lab are developing protocols to enable the nanoscale visualization of a common fungal pathogen.
Wednesday, September 07, 2022

Spelman, CMU Alumni Earn Biology Postbaccalaureate Fellowships

Spelman alumna Tahirah Moore and CMU alum Josiah Saunders are participating in the Postbac Research Fellowship in Quantitative Biology Research.
Tuesday, August 30, 2022

Emily Jordan Sees High Rewards in Addiction Research

Carnegie Mellon University junior Emily Jordan uses computational tools to investigate how risk and reward mechanisms affect addiction outcomes.
Monday, August 29, 2022

New academic year sees highest enrollment at Carnegie Mellon Qatar

Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (CMU-Q), a Qatar Foundation partner university, has enrolled the highest number of students in campus history. There are 467 students from 60 nations registered at CMU-Q for the 2022-23 academic year.
Wednesday, August 24, 2022

Mysterious Genes Survive Marine Organisms' Evolutions

CMU researcher Saoirse Foley and colleagues found 14 genes that could provide insight into the origins of marine life.
Wednesday, August 03, 2022

Review of Microfluidic Tools Shows Flow of Innovation

A new paper in Nature Communications entitled, “Microfluidics for Understanding Model Organisms,” aims to encourage both engineers and biologists to develop microfluidics methods that can be widely used.
Monday, August 01, 2022

Developing New Skills Doesn’t Disrupt Old Knowledge

For years, researchers have been trying to find ways to allow people who lose limbs to learn how to use new robotic prostheses. Though researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have made progress, they were concerned that gaining use of these new robotic limbs would affect existing networks of neurons within patients’ brains.
Tuesday, July 19, 2022

The Science of Safety

Carnegie Mellon University alumna Candace Bever is a biological detective — using science to uncover chemical markers that reveal life-saving information. Armed with a sample and a small plastic cassette resembling an at-home pregnancy or COVID-19 test, Candace’s research focuses on the rapid detection of infectious agents, toxins and pollutants.
Wednesday, July 06, 2022

Biology Welcomes New Faculty

Carnegie Mellon University's Department of Biological Sciences welcomed two new faculty members, En Cai and Zheng Kuang. Both professors, who began last fall, are passionate about their research and are excited to share their knowledge with Mellon College of Science students.
Wednesday, June 29, 2022

Biology Sophomore Sonja Michaluk Dives Into Conservation Research

By the time sophomore Sonja Michaluk arrived at Carnegie Mellon University, she had already begun exploring a passion in ecology, particularly wetland and forest conservation. Though Michaluk has been water monitoring near the Delaware River in New Jersey since she was six years old, she has been gaining the tools to further develop her research through her majors in biology, statistics and machine learning and with the help of her advisor Amanda Willard, director of undergraduate studies for the Department of Biological Sciences.
Tuesday, June 21, 2022

Biological Sciences’ Joshua Morrow Receives Gilman Award

Joshua Morrow (S 2022) received the Mellon College of Science Gilman Award, which is presented to MCS seniors each year for their commitment to the MCS Core Education. Morrow, a biological sciences and psychology double major with a minor in biomedical engineering, embraced the tenants of the Core Education, which fosters student growth as scholars, professionals, citizens, and people. He eagerly participated in courses, research, teaching assistantships and other extracurriculars. Underlying all of his work is his desire to foster interpersonal relationships.
Tuesday, June 21, 2022

CMU-Q Graduate Wins MCS Gilman Award

Ayah Salameh, a biological sciences graduate from Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (CMU-Q), a Qatar Foundation partner university, has been named one of two MCS Gilman Award winners for 2022. Salameh’s award was announced at the Class of 2022 graduation ceremony on May 9, 2022. Salameh is the first student from the Qatar campus to receive the award.
Tuesday, June 14, 2022

En Cai Receives Curci Foundation Grant to Support T-Cell Research

En Cai, assistant professor of biological sciences at Carnegie Mellon University, has received a grant from the Shurl and Kay Curci Foundation. The grant provides funding for two years and will help Cai to jumpstart her lab that studies T-cell communication at the Mellon College of Science.
Monday, May 23, 2022

CMU Qatar Students Spend Semester in Pittsburgh

Five Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar students spent their Spring 2022 semester at the Pittsburgh campus. The diverse group of students, all juniors in the Department of Biological Sciences, were able to attend laboratory classes at the Mellon College of Science.
Thursday, May 19, 2022

Carrie Doonan Receives the Richard Moore Award

The new, award-winning Biological Sciences course “Frontiers in Analysis and Discovery” is a perfect example of Carrie Doonan’s vision for how to motivate, excite and educate budding scientists. First-year students in the class gain valuable laboratory research experience and get to work with juniors and interact with faculty, many of whom the students would not otherwise meet until their junior and senior years. This approach gives students something invaluable — a sense of belonging at MCS.
Wednesday, May 18, 2022

CMU and Columbia Researchers Magnify Hidden Biological Structures with MAGNIFIERS

A research team from Carnegie Mellon University and Columbia have combined two emerging imaging technologies to better view a wide range of biomolecules, including proteins, lipids and DNA, at the nanoscale. Their technique, which brings together expansion microscopy and stimulated Raman scattering microscopy, is detailed in Advanced Science.
Wednesday, May 11, 2022

Biological Sciences Departmental Awards Showcase Graduate Student and Postdoc Accomplishments

Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Biological Sciences has selected six graduate students and two postdoctoral fellows to receive awards funded through endowments from Margaret Carver and Semon Stupakoff. Four $5000 awards provide funding for research enrichment and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, and $1000 awards are presented to candidates who have published outstanding papers in the last year.
Thursday, April 28, 2022

Maggie Braun Wins University Advising Award

Maggie Braun received the 2022 University Advising Award at the Celebration of Education.
Thursday, March 17, 2022

Research Reveals Ways Neurons are Regenerated in Starfish

Carnegie Mellon University biologists have discovered a mechanism that underlies the regeneration of neurons in starfish, showing for the first time that starfish can regenerate their nervous system.
Wednesday, March 09, 2022

Expanding Minds

CMU alumna Meredith Schmehl advocates for better science policy and communications to create a more informed future.
Sunday, February 13, 2022

Biological Sciences' Kristin Donegan to Compete in Jeopardy! National College Championship

It’s a lifelong dream come true for Kristin Donegan. The senior biological sciences major and self-proclaimed trivia nut will compete on Jeopardy! National College Championship at 8:30 ET, Tuesday, February 15 on ABC and streaming on Hulu.
Monday, December 20, 2021

Memory Storage and Synaptic Plasticity Can Occur Without an Engram in the Sensory Cortex

Memories may not be stored in the brain’s somatosensory cortex in the same way they are stored in other areas of the brain according to a study published by Carnegie Mellon University neuroscientists in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Wednesday, December 15, 2021

Carnegie Mellon Biologists Awarded Grants from Pittsburgh Foundation’s Kaufman Fund

Three Carnegie Mellon Department of Biological Sciences faculty members have received grants from The Charles E. Kaufman Foundation, part of The Pittsburgh Foundation, which today announced $2.1 million in funding to support scientific research at institutions across Pennsylvania.
Tuesday, December 07, 2021

Bruchez Named National Academy of Inventors Fellow

Marcel Bruchez, professor in the Departments of Biological Sciences and Chemistry and director of the Molecular Biosensor and Imaging Center at Carnegie Mellon University’s Mellon College of Science has been elected a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.
Friday, November 12, 2021

Carnegie Mellon Mourns Glen de Vries

The Carnegie Mellon University community is mourning the loss of alumnus and Trustee Glen de Vries, who died tragically on Nov. 11 in an airplane crash in New Jersey.
Wednesday, October 20, 2021

Students and Science Flourish at ComSciCon

MCS graduate students, postdocs, faculty and staff participate in flagship science communication workshop.
Thursday, October 07, 2021

Research Shows Promising Results for Parkinson's Disease Treatment

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University have found a way to make deep brain stimulation (DBS) more precise, resulting in therapeutic effects that outlast what is currently available. The work, led by Aryn Gittis and colleagues in CMU’s Gittis Lab and published in Science, will significantly advance the study of Parkinson’s disease.
Tuesday, August 31, 2021

Machine Learning Algorithm Revolutionizes How Scientists Study Behavior

A new unsupervised machine learning algorithm developed by Eric Yttri and Alex Hsu makes studying behavior much easier and more accurate. The researchers published a paper on the new tool, B-SOiD (Behavioral segmentation of open field in DeepLabCut), in Nature Communications.
Monday, August 30, 2021

Carnegie Mellon University and Emerald Cloud Lab to Build World’s First University Cloud Lab

Carnegie Mellon University and Emerald Cloud Lab (ECL) have entered into a partnership to build the world’s first cloud lab in an academic setting. The remote-controlled lab will provide a universal platform for artificial intelligence-driven experimentation and revolutionize how academic laboratory research and education are done, accelerating the pace of discovery as part of Carnegie Mellon’s $250 million investment in state-of-the art science facilities. .
Friday, August 27, 2021

Introducing Assistant Professors En Cai and Zheng Kuang

Two new professors opened up their labs in the department this spring. We are excited to introduce you to assistant professors En Cai and Zheng Kuang.
Friday, August 13, 2021

Karina Mueller Brown Wins De Vries Fellowship

Biological Sciences Ph.D. student Karina Mueller Brown has received the Glen de Vries Fellowship. The fellowship, made possible by the generosity of MCS alumnus, Carnegie Mellon trustee and founder of Medidata Solutions, Glen de Vries, recognizes outstanding research achievement and potential among Ph.D. students in biological sciences.
Monday, July 26, 2021

Pneumococcal Extracellular Vesicles Modulate the Immune Response

Small vesicles secreted by bacterial cells play a role in recruiting immune cells but surprisingly also might help to protect the pathogens, according to a new study from Carnegie Mellon University researchers published in mBio. The study is one of the first studies to look at the role of extracellular vesicles released by the pathogen pneumococcus in vivo and may provide a new avenue for vaccine development.
Monday, June 14, 2021

The Wonder of Biology

The past year reminded Mellon College of Science alumnus Amit Srivastava of an earlier period in his life, during which he also worked unceasingly on the task in front of him. But this time, instead of working on a Carnegie Mellon University Ph.D. in biological sciences, his sleepless nights and rushed meals contributed to the efforts to give the world a light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel.
Tuesday, June 08, 2021

New Course Bridges Divide Between Art and Science

A new class taught by Rich Pell, an associate professor in the School of Art, and William Hatleberg, a postdoctoral researcher in biological sciences, aims to dispel the false dichotomy between art and science and show students how these two disciplines can work together.
Friday, May 21, 2021

DJ Brasier Receives Julius Ashkin Teaching Award

Associate Teaching Professor of Biological Sciences Daniel "DJ" Brasier has received the college’s 2021 Julius Ashkin Teaching Award for his engaging and accessible teaching.
Thursday, May 20, 2021

Carnegie Mellon, Richard King Mellon Foundation Announce Historic Partnership to Accelerate CMU’s Science and Technology Leadership and the Transformation of Hazelwood Green

Carnegie Mellon University and the Richard King Mellon Foundation today announced that the two longtime partners will together make a transformational investment in science and technology leadership at the university; in a more vibrant future for the Hazelwood neighborhood; and in Pittsburgh’s ongoing economic renaissance.
Thursday, May 06, 2021

Biology in Your Basement

This spring, Lynley Doonan offered the newly designed course Biology in Your Basement as a seven-week mini elective.
Tuesday, April 27, 2021

Senior Grace Wolczanski Receives Carnegie Mellon Women’s Association Scholarship

Grace Wolczanski was honored, along with six of her peers from each of the university's colleges, at the CMWA’s Spring Awards Reception with a $2,000 scholarship.
Friday, April 16, 2021

Tarantula’s Ubiquity Traced Back to the Cretaceous

Tarantulas are among the most notorious spiders, due in part to their size, vibrant colors and prevalence throughout the world. But one thing most people don’t know is that tarantulas are homebodies. Females and their young rarely leave their burrows and only mature males will wander to seek out a mate. How then did such a sedentary spider come to inhabit six out of seven continents? An international team of researchers, including Carnegie Mellon University’s Saoirse Foley, set out on an ancestry.com-like investigation to find the answer to this question.
Wednesday, March 31, 2021

How pathogenic bacteria weather the slings and arrows of infection

Infectious diseases are a leading cause of global mortality. During an infection, bacteria experience many different stresses — some from the host itself, some from co-colonizing microbes and others from therapies employed to treat the infection. In this arms race to outwit their competition, bacteria have evolved mechanisms to stay alive in the face of adversities. One such mechanism is the stringent response pathway. Understanding how the activation of the stringent response pathway is controlled can provide clues to treat infection.
Friday, March 12, 2021

A Tartan Team Effort

Jon Minden, professor of biological sciences, worked closely with the Tartan Testing Program to help put testing processes and protocols in place during the creation of the facility.
Wednesday, February 24, 2021

Strengthening the Chain

First, it was PPE. Then hand sanitizer. Now, it’s a vaccine that must be kept under extreme refrigeration. Whatever the material needs are for a global pandemic or other health care challenge, alumna Nicolette Louissaint finds a way to connect supplies with those who need them.
Monday, February 15, 2021

A Driving Force

Alumna’s push to advance equity and inclusion has been with her since her time as an undergrad
Tuesday, February 02, 2021

Scoring a Goal with STEM

In the Fall 2020, Soccer and Science launched in the greater Pittsburgh community, bringing fun, easy, interactive science experiments to children of refugees and immigrants.
Friday, January 29, 2021

Switches and Kernels Allow for Novelty in Early Development

To understand how changes, or novelty, is incorporated into early development without impacting viability, Veronica Hinman’s lab assembled the gene regulatory network of the sea urchin and compared it to the previously described gene regulatory network of the sea star.