Oluwatosin O. Dada, research assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, received the Best Paper Award 2010 from the journal Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry for his publication titled, “Capillary array isoelectric focusing with laser-induced fluorescence detection: milli-pH unit resolution and yoctomole mass detection limits in a 32-channel system.” Dada, a native of Nigeria, received his bachelor’s degree in industrial chemistry from Olabisi Onabanjo University in Nigeria, and a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from Utah State University. He has worked since 2008 in the laboratory of Norman Dovichi, the Grace-Rupley Professor in Chemistry and Biochemistry on ultrasensitive capillary electrophoresis instrumentation for bioanalysis.

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Malcom Fraser has been awarded a five–year, $2,989,065 grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop novel approaches to control several of the world’s most pervasive viral diseases: Yellow Fever, Dengue and Chikungunya.

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A new, state-of-the-art instrument installed in the Radiation Laboratory will support a wide range of research at the University of Notre Dame. The AP-XPS (ambient pressure X-ray photoelectron spectrometer) was designed by Franklin Tao, assistant professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, in collaboration with the manufacturer.

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Jin Ho Bang of Hanyang University, a former postdoctoral associate of Prashant Kamat, has co-authored a paper with Kamat, The Rev. John A. Zahm Professor of Science, detailing an advancing understanding of semiconductor nanocrystals and another step towards the development of a more efficient generation of solar cells.

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Olaf Wiest, professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, is serving as an associate editor of the American Chemical Society”s Journal of Organic Chemistry, the leading journal in the field with more than 91,000 citations last year. Beginning in October 2011, Wiest, who came to Notre Dame 16 years ago, will be one of 11 associate editors around the world and responsible for articles in mechanistic and computational chemistry.

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A senior biochemistry major, Ethan Ferguson, has led a team to develop a new, much more precise mass spectrometry method for the diagnosis of porphyrias.

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Dave Richeson, associate professor of mathematics at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, presented a brief history of lines and circles, “Four Tales of Impossibility,” to an overflowing crowd of students in the Jordan Hall of Science on Nov. 10. The talk, part of the Math for Everyone series, traced the millennia-long effort to prove that a circle cannot be squared, a cube cannot be doubled, not all angles can be trisected, and not all regular polygons can be constructed using only a compass and straightedge.

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A gathering of chemistry and biochemistry graduate student alumni in the Jordan Hall of Science before the Navy game launched an initiative to boost engagement with graduate students from departments across the campus. Fifteen invited alumni participated in a focus group in the morning, then attended a tailgate and the game. Sean Kassen, an academic advancement program director for the College of Science and graduate alumnus, said the event was the first and necessary step in this larger effort.

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Zachary Schafer, the Coleman Assistant Professor of Cancer Biology in the Department of Biological Sciences and member of the Harper Cancer Research Institute, has been named a 2011 V Scholar by one of the nation’s leading cancer research fundraising organizations, the V Foundation for Cancer Research. Seventeen physician/scientists will share the $3.4 million in funding given through the V Scholar program to bring science closer to finding a cure for cancer.

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The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), a federal agency which administers funding for university-based research, has appointed Philippe Collon, associate professor of physics, to a three-year term as a committee member of the Scholarships and Fellowships Selection Committee.

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Some 140 eighth graders from Edison Intermediate Center in South Bend visited the Notre Dame campus during fall break to get a taste of college life, especially science study. The annual event is part of the Campus Tours Project, a collaboration among the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Department of Physics, Department of Biological Sciences, South Bend Community School Corporation and the City of South Bend.

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The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry has announced a mini-symposium, “For the Love of Enzymes,” to celebrate the service and retirement of Thomas Nowak, professor emeritus of chemistry and biochemistry. The conference will be Saturday, Nov. 5 at the Notre Dame Conference Center and is organized by Anthony Serianni, professor of chemistry and biochemistry.

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Most winners of the DREAM Challenge, an international competition in systems biology, are teams of Ph.D.-level scholars—computer scientists from major universities as far-flung as Singapore, Switzerland, Italy, and Sweden. This year, the winning team is from Notre Dame. They are the Fighting Irish Systems Team, or FIrST, led by biology graduate student and 2009 Eck fellow Geoffrey Siwo. The team includes biology graduate student Richard Pinapati, computer science graduate student Andrew Rider, and laboratory technician Asako Tan who, with Siwo, are all affiliated with the Interdisciplinary Center for Network Science and Applications (iCeNSA).

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Researchers from the laboratory of Robert Schulz, the Notre Dame Chair of Biological Sciences, have discovered that common genetic factors control the fate of stem cells in the development of the reproductive system and the blood cells of the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster), a model genetic organism. Their work is published in the September 15 issue of the journal Development.

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Notre Dame––Ryan Robinson, a senior at the University of Utah, won top honors and a $5,000 prize at the inaugural NDConnect undergraduate nanoscience and nanoengineering research competition at the University of Notre Dame.

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Peter Garnavich, professor of physics at the University of Notre Dame, was a member of the High-Z Supernova Search Team whose leader, Brian Schmidt, shared in the Nobel Prize in physics announced Tuesday (Oct. 4). Garnavich wrote the team's first paper that included supernovae data from the Hubble telescope.

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A one–day course on Scientific and Medical Leadership, organized by Dean Gregory Crawford, brought top scientists, entrepreneurs, physicians, and academic, military, business and innovation leaders to address a large lecture room filled with undergraduates in the Jordan Hall of Science. The 10–hour event, with nine presentations followed by discussion, was held Oct. 1. Crawford said the leadership course, like a one–day ethics course offered last year, is part of an increased focus on practical opportunities in science.

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Robert Stahelin, assistant professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Indiana University School of Medicine — South Bend and adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Notre Dame, has been appointed to the editorial board of the journal Chemistry and Physics of Lipids. The journal is expanding its concentration on lipids in disease and lipid signaling. Stahelin, who will review manuscripts in the field, has published more than 50 peer–reviewed articles in other journals.

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The Napoleon Telescope, an antique instrument freshly refurbished and housed in a modern dome atop Nieuwland Science Hall, will focus on the moon and maybe Jupiter during Astronomy Night, on Oct. 3 from 8–10 p.m. (later in the week in case of clouds or rain). More modern telescopes will be set up in the North Quad. The first 300 students will receive t-shirts and doughnuts. Organizer Peter Garnavich, professor of physics, operated the Napoleon Telescope during a near approach of Mars in 2004.

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Department of Biological Sciences faculty Mary Ann McDowell and Frank Collins recently represented Notre Dame at a National Institutes of Health workshop, "Neglected Tropical Diseases [NTDs]: Defining Opportunities to Accelerate Translational Research." McDowell and Collins presented at the session "Surveillance, Diagnostics and Genomics: Applications to development of interventions"; Collins gave the overview, while McDowell discussed vector research and genomics.

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Masaru “Ken” Kuno, associate professor of chemisty and biochemistry, has recently published a textbook,Introductory Nanoscience Physical and Chemical Concepts. The book is aimed at upper-level undergraduate and graduate students and asks key questions about the quantitative concepts that underlie this new field. Topics include how the optical and electrical properties of nanomaterials are dependent upon size, shape, and morphology and how nano–metersized objects are constructed. Complete with solved examples throughout the chapters, and reinforcement of fundamental concepts via end–of–chapter problems and further reading, Kuno’s book shows to what extent we may predict the behavior and functionality of nanomaterials by understanding how their properties change with scale.

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ND LIGHTS— Notre Dame Laboratory Instrumentation Giving Hope To Students — recently completed its first year of collecting and sending donated laboratory equipment to limited–resource schools across the country, mostly in the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) program. The equipment comes complete with instructions and materials for conducting high school classroom experiments. Each ACE teacher received individualized training during their summer on campus to prepare them to use the equipment. The program is a collaboration between the College of Science, the Office of Sustainability, and Procurement Services.

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Jessica Choi, senior, has been selected by the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) as a 2011 recipient of the ASM Undergraduate Research Fellowship. This fellowship is aimed at highly competitive students who wish to pursue graduate careers (Ph.D. or M.D./Ph.D.) in microbiology. Fellows have the opportunity to conduct full–time summer research at their institution with an ASM mentor and present their research results at the 112th ASM General Meeting in San Francisco, CA if their abstracts are accepted.

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John Gensic, a Notre Dame extended Research Community (NDeRC) K–12 Lead Teacher, has been named a 2011–2012 Jacobs Educator by the Indiana University School of Education. As a Jacobs Educator, Gensic will receive a $1,000 equipment budget for materials to assist him with implementing technology–enhanced activities in the classroom, and a $1,500 stipend at the end of his tenure as a Jacobs Educator. He will share his expertise in the use of technology to support teaching and learning with School of Education faculty and staff who sometimes visit the classroom.

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In a rare opportunity for scientific connections with Cuba, David Severson lectured this summer at the 12th International Dengue Course at the Pedro Kouri Tropical Medicine Institute (TPK) in Havana. It was the third time Severson, director of the Eck Institute for Global Health and a professor of Biological Sciences, lectured at the biannual event since he met an organizer at a Biology of Disease Vectors course in Colorado a decade ago.

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Julie Bourguet, a master’s candidate at the Université Paris Diderot, is spending the summer at Notre Dame in an internship with Nicolas Lehner, research assistant professor in the Department of Physics.

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The University of Notre Dame London Centre hosted a Workshop on Biomedical Modeling held on July 18–19, 2011, gathering researchers in biomedical engineering and mathematical and computational biology from the United States and the United Kingdom for discussions of possible future collaboration. The Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Biocomplexity (ICSB) and Department of Applied and Computational Mathematics and Statistics (ACMS) from Notre Dame and the Centre for Mathematical Biology and the Oxford Centre for Collaborative Applied Mathematics from the University of Oxford organized the event.

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Through a competitive process the Eck Institute for Global Health has selected four outstanding University of Notre Dame PhD candidates who will receive fellowships for the 2011–2012 academic year. Selection of fellows was based on the student’s academic standing, scholarly activities, merit of their research program and its relevance to the mission of the Eck Institute. The fellowship will allow students to focus on their global health-related research projects, and thereby contribute to bringing new knowledge to global health solutions. Students will also participate in Eck Institute for Global Health activities, allowing them to become part of a greater global health research community.

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Kevin Towle ‘12, a biological sciences major, is completing a competitive summer fellowship to research the effects of climate change on New England ant ecology.

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