Team Notre Dame College of Science has the most members (75) of all the teams in the Michiana Bike to Work Week. Goshen College is in the second place with 60 members.

The College of Science’s total mileage is in second place, behind Bosch Breakaways, who won last year’s corporate challenge. The leader of the college team said, “I don’t know how they manage, unless they bike INSTEAD OF work rather than bike TO work.” The winning team, however, is the one with the highest per member average. In this category, the high member count hurt the College of Science team.…

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James Kolata, professor of physics, was recently awarded a new, 3-year award of $1,135,000 for his project "Nuclear Reaction and Structure Studies with Radioactive and Stable Beams" from the National Science Foundation.

This project is a collaboration between physicists at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Michigan. It involves the study of nuclear reactions utilizing beams of short-lived radioactive nuclei, together with the development of instrumentation and techniques to facilitate these investigations. Specific experiments will emphasize the study of neutron- and proton-rich nuclei near the limits of nuclear stability. Several of these “weakly-bound” systems have been shown to develop an exotic “nuclear halo” structure, leading to an effective nuclear size that is much larger than expected based on the properties of more normal systems. Their interest is in the effect that this structure has on nuclear reactions induced by “halo” nuclei. The development of deuterated-scintillator neutron detectors for this project may have applications to national-security programs. 
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The DZero group, which includes Notre Dame researchers at the Fermi National Accelerator Lab near Chicago, has announced the discovery of evidence that could explain the predominance of matter over antimatter in the universe. The team found evidence for unexpectedly significant violation of matter-antimatter symmetry in the behavior of particles containing bottom quarks. The result has been submitted for publication in Physical Review D. Physicists in DZero and Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF), another team, continue to collect and analyze data.…

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The Lizzadro Magnetic Resonance Research Center operates seven different nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometers to support research at the University of Notre Dame in chemistry, biochemistry, molecular biology and related fields. Shahriar Mobashery's research group would not have been able to accomplish such breakthrough work without this facility and the use of the 800 MHz instrument.

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University of Notre Dame physics graduate student Xinghai Zhao is the winner of the 2010 Center for Research Computing award for Computational Sciences and Visualization. This prestigious award consists of a plaque and a check for $1,000. Zhao is receiving this honor for his novel simulations on the formation and evolution of curvature structure in the universe and the formation and evolution of the Local Group of galaxies.

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A new study by a team of researchers led by Jeffrey Peng, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Notre Dame, is using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), to move drug design into groundbreaking consideration of the dynamic flexibility of drugs and their targets.…

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The Fannie and John Hertz Foundation, a leading national non-profit aimed at driving young applied scientists and engineers to innovation, has provided more than 1,070 of these promising young minds with generous PhD fellowships to support their doctoral research. Recent alumnus Patrick Brown, has received one of these accommodating fellowships this year to support his graduate studies in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.…

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Richard Taylor, professor of chemistry and biochemistry who also serves as the associate dean for research, has received a grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the “Synthesis and Biosynthesis of Pyran and Spiroketal Structural Units.” The $1,480,000 grant enables the further development of synthetic methods recently discovered by members of Taylor’s research team and their application to the study of two complex natural products with exciting biological activity. Taylor’s research interests include the evolution and chemotherapeutic potential of polyketide natural products for use in the treatment of such diseases as cancer.…

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Richard Taylor, professor of chemistry and biochemistry who also serves as the associate dean for research, has received a grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the “Synthesis and Biosynthesis of Pyran and Spiroketal Structural Units.” The $1,480,000 grant enables the further development of synthetic methods recently discovered by members of Taylor’s research team and their application to the study of two complex natural products with exciting biological activity. Taylor’s research interests include the evolution and chemotherapeutic potential of polyketide natural products for use in the treatment of such diseases as cancer.…

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A group of researchers from the Notre Dame physics department, led by John LoSecco, professor of physics, has just joined the long baseline neutrino experiment, LBNE. LBNE is a joint research project between the National Science Foundation’s DUSEL underground lab and the Department of Energy’s Fermilab accelerator. The goal of the project is to study neutrino properties by transporting a beam of medium energy neutrinos from Fermilab to a detector deep underground in the former Homestake gold mine in Lead, South Dakota.…

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The Genomics, Disease Ecology and Global Health Strategic Research Initiative Program and the Eck Institute for Global Health have awarded six graduate student fellowships in the areas of Genomics and Bioinformatics for the 2010-2011 academic year. These one-year awards allow graduate students in the College of Science and the College of Engineering to pursue graduate research programs that utilize the latest approaches in genomics and bioinformatics. This program also encourages collaboration between the two colleges as it relates to making available powerful state of the art tools in the fields of genomics and bioinformatics within the newly established Genomics and Bioinformatics Core Facilities.…

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A group of researchers from the Notre Dame physics department, led by John LoSecco, professor of physics, has just joined the long baseline neutrino experiment, LBNE. LBNE is a joint research project between the National Science Foundation’s DUSEL underground lab and the Department of Energy’s Fermilab accelerator. The goal of the project is to study neutrino properties by transporting a beam of medium energy neutrinos from Fermilab to a detector deep underground in the former Homestake gold mine in Lead, South Dakota.…

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Dean of the College of Science, Gregory P. Crawford, congratulates the following seniors on their outstanding achievements, hard work and dedication throughout their time at the University of Notre Dame.

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Apryle O'Farrell, a graduate student in the laboratory of Shahriar Mobashery, and James Clancy, a graduate student in the laboratory of Crislyn D'Souza-Schorey, are the recipients of Indiana CTSI Predoctoral Fellowships. O’Farrell’s fellowship will support her graduate studies in organic chemistry and research in the development of new antibiotics. Clancy’s fellowship will support his graduate studies in translational cancer research.…

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A new paper by a team of researchers led by University of Notre Dame biologist Jeffrey Feder could herald an important shift in thinking about the genomics of speciation.

Titled “Widespread genomic divergence during sympatric speciation,” the paper appears in today’s edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.…

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The Gigot Center for Entrepreneurial Studies announced the winners of the McCloskey Business Plan Competition and the Social Venture Competition following final-round judging on April 22 and 23 at the Mendoza College of Business.

Eptics LLC received second place in the McCloskey competition. Team members included Notre Dame seniors Tyler Hulett and Michael Dean, and Notre Dame alumnus Norbert L. Wiech. Using a patented technology, Eptics LLC plans to develop and commercialize Progenitex™, a laboratory process that rapidly expands progenitor bone marrow cells collected from umbilical cord blood. The expansion results in a more clinically effective transplantation for adult cancer patients with a reduction in adverse events common to the procedure. Progenitex™ will provide a treatment for many of the 10,000 adults for whom traditional matched donor cells cannot be found in time to be most effective. Progenitex™ meets the requirements of an “orphan drug” classification and will be entitled to the business benefits of the Orphan Drug Act.
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The annual College of Science Joint Annual Meeting (COS JAM) on April 30 attracted hundreds of students and visitors to the Jordan Hall of Science, where they could see and hear 77 undergraduate presentations in Physics, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Mathematics and Biological Sciences. Twenty-six undergraduates made oral presentations and 51 students discussed their research through poster presentations, some representing groups of students and an entire class. Five guest presenters that won Spirit of Science Awards from the Northern Indiana Regional Science and Engineering Fair for elementary and high school students also were exhibited in the Galleria.…

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