FACULTY NEWS

Vasanthi Jayaraman, PhD, Associate Professor and Director of the BMB Graduate Program, was elected to serve on the Executive Board of the Biophysical Society for a two-year term. The Executive Board is the governing body of the Society.

Michael Blackburn, PhD, Professor, has been named the winner of this year’s Paul E. Darlington Award for Outstanding Mentoring by a GSBS Faculty. This prestigious award is given by the GSBS in recognition of outstanding, excellent, and prolonged mentoring to a faculty member who has graduated and is currently mentoring GSBS students.

Eric Wagner, PhD, Assistant Professor, has been named the winner of this year’s T.C. Hsu Faculty Research Award in Genetics/Cell Biology for his research on RNA metabolism and function. This prestigious award is given by the GSBS to a young GSBS faculty member whose research and graduate education activities are valued for the area of cell biology and/or genetics.

Vasanthi Jayaraman, PhD, Associate Professor, and her student Anu Rambhadran along with collaborators in Rice University have published an article in Nature Chemical Biology (Feb 2011, online). This article was highlighted in the News and Views section of the journal in Yahoo news as well as in Futurity newsletter.

Yang Xia, MD, PhD, Associate Professor published a paper in the January, 2011 issue of Nature Medicine concerning the adenosine receptor and sickle cell disease which was also highlighted in the "News and Views" section.

Ann-Bin Shyu, PhD, Professor, published a paper in Nature Structural & Molecuar Biology (October, 2009) concerning microRNA-mediated RNA turnover.

Pawel Penczek, PhD, Professor, published a paper in Nature describing the use of cryo-electron microscopy of ribosomal complexes to elucidate the role of elongation factor 6 in the translation process.

The annual BMB Spring Retreat was held at Camp Allen on March 10 & 11. As in the past years, we gathered to discuss science, network with our peers and play. Such a high level of active participation by program members bespeaks our commitment to excel and provide the best training environment. Congratualtions to all who participated and presented. A list of the competition winners can be found on the retreat page.

STUDENT NEWS

Congratulations to Anu Rambhadran (Jayaraman lab) for being one of the recipients of the 2011 Medical School Dean’s Award.

Congratulations to Kari Brewer for being inducted into Sigma Xi scientific research honorary as an associate member and also for winning the 2011 Shohrae Hajibashi Memorial Leadership Award.

Congratulations to Anu Rambhadran for winning 1^st place in the John P. McGovern Award for Presentation Skills sponsored by GSBS.

Mesias Pedroza (Blackburn laboratory) won 2nd place in the 2011 GSEC poster competition. 2010 winners were Yang Zhou (Blackburn lab) and Anu Rambhadran (Jayaraman lab).

Anu Rambhadran, a BMB graduate student in Dr. Jayaraman's lab won the highly competitive 2010 President's Research Scholarship from GSBS. Past winners from the BMB program have been Yong Zhou from Dr. Blackburn's lab (2009) and Xi Mo from Dr. Renhao Li's lab (2007).

Congratulations to Dr. Xu Wang (Putkey lab) for being one of the two winners of the UT postdoctoral travel award and Anu Rambhadran (Jayaraman lab) for obtaining a travel award from the Biophysical Society, where less than 10% of the applicants are awarded.

Nader Ezzeddine won 1^st place in the postdoctoral candidate category and Anu Rambhadran won 2^nd place in the graduate student category in the 17^th annual poster competition of the Neuroscience Research Center at UT-Houston.

Kari Brewer (Chun Li laboratory) received the 2008-2009 Andrew Sowell and Wade Huggins Scholarship in Cancer Research.