NASA has awarded Justin R. Crepp, the Freimann Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of Notre Dame, with an Early Career Fellowship. He is the only awardee in the nation to receive the fellowship in the Origins of Solar Systems program. Crepp’s project, “Working at the Diffraction Limit: New Exoplanetary Science in the Era of ‘Extreme’ Adaptive Optics,” was selected through a competitive proposal process, followed by peer review in a second round of evaluation.

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Ke Min originally came to Notre Dame in 2011 as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Although she is passionate about chemistry and has over 10 years of experience as a chemist, she wanted to explore other career opportunities and found the Master of Science in Patent Law (MSPL) program to be a great fit.

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A group of Buddhist monks recently visited Notre Dame from November 18-21 to construct a peace sand mandala. As part of their visit, they gave a presentation about the power and practice of compassion called, Taking in Harshness and Giving out Kindness. The primary presenter, Arjia Rinpoche, director of the Tibetan Mongolian Cultural Center in Bloomington, Ind., was accompanied by seven monks from the Labrang Tashi Kyil Monastery in Dehra Dun, India.

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David Lodge, The Ludmilla F. and Stephen J. Galla Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame and a world-renowned expert on invasive species, has accepted a nomination to join the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Science Advisory Board (SAB).

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Last Friday (Nov. 15), Crislyn D’Souza-Schorey, professor of biological sciences, participated in the Jefferson Educational Society’s Global Summit in Erie, Pa.  She gave a presentation titled, “New Insights into Cancer Progression: Biology and Clinical Promise.”  Established in 2009, the Global Summit is a week-long series of presentations about broad range of global issues that aim to engage nearly 2,500 attendees in high-level dialogue about these issues.

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The students from Scientia, the undergraduate journal of scientific research, host a monthly seminar series called Talk Science that highlights the work of undergraduate and faculty researchers at Notre Dame. This month’s presenters were senior mathematics major Mitchell Faulk and Nitesh Chawla, the Frank Freimann Collegiate Associate Professor of Engineering in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

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This past Saturday (Nov. 16), over 210 University of Notre Dame undergraduate and graduate students from across the university gathered in the Jordan Hall of Science for Diversity, Culture, Religion in Science, a one-credit, one-day course offered by the College of Science. The course aims to introduce students to the role of cultural and religious diversity in science, its importance in an era of globalization, and the interesting questions that it raises. To do this, the course invited speakers from diverse backgrounds to talk about how these issues have shaped their respective careers, and how these issues are shaping the future.

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The University of Notre Dame Initiative for Global Development (NDIGD) was recently awarded a $375,000 contract from the Millennium Challenge Corp. (MCC) to conduct an evaluation of MCC’s water project in Ghana.

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The University of Notre Dame’s Ruth M. Hillebrand Center for Compassionate Care in Medicine, the College of Science and the Harper Cancer Research Institute will host Arjia Rinpoche, director of the Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center in Bloomington, Ind., and seven Tibetan Buddhist monks from Labrang Tashi Kyil Monastery in Dehra Dun, India, for the construction of a peace sand mandala and a presentation on compassion from Nov. 18-21 (Monday-Thursday).

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Katia Fernandez Soto and Andjela Pehar, two science students researching in Jenifer Prosperi’s lab at the Harper Cancer Research Institute, are making strides in the quest to understand the role of the APC tumor-suppressor in breast cancer.

At the Harper Cancer Research Institute, Jenifer Prosperi, assistant professor of biochemistry & molecular biology at the Indiana University School of Medicine - South Bend and adjunct assistant professor of biological sciences at the University of Notre Dame, is up against a formidable opponent: metaplastic breast cancer. Fortunately, she’s bringing reinforcements.  

Since 2012, when Prosperi arrived at Harper, two Notre Dame undergraduates have researched cancer alongside her: junior Katia Fernandez Soto and senior Andjela Pehar.

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This past Thursday (Nov. 7) at the Math for Everyone lecture series, Alex Kasman from the Department of Mathematics at the College of Charleston gave a presentation about soliton theory, which combines algebra and geometry with the study of waves and elementary particles.

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New research from a team led by Shahriar Mobashery, Navari Family Chair in Life Sciences at the University of Notre Dame, offers an insight into cell wall recycling and virulence of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, an important human pathogen. The research provides a road map for how the post-genomic analyses of biochemical processes will take place to elucidate important metabolic processes.

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Notre Dame’s Department of Biological Sciences ranked 13 in the first Top 25 Grad Biology Programs ranked by Graduate Programs, a student-based service that provides ratings and reviews of programs across the country. The rankings are based on reviews posted by more than 40,000 students in more than 1,300 graduate programs in the year that ended Sept. 30.

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This past Wednesday (Nov. 6), the John A. Lynch Lecture Series and Department of Physics welcomed Juan Maldacena, a professor from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ for a presentation titled, “Strings, Gauge Theories and Gravity.”

In one of the most-cited papers in the history of physics, Maldacena discovered a hidden relationship between Einstein’s theory of gravity, which describes black holes and the universe as a whole, and quantum field theories, which describe the interactions of subatomic particles. He is now using that relationship to connect our understanding of nuclear physics to black holes, and to connect string theory to cosmology.

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The University of Notre Dame will host a regional final of the Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology, the nation’s premier science research competition for high school students, Friday and Saturday (Nov. 8 and 9).

The New Jersey-based nonprofit Siemens Foundation created the competition to enhance science and mathematics education in America.

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Umesh Garg, professor of physics, has been appointed to the Committee on Constitution and Bylaws (CCB) of the American Physical Society (APS) by President-elect Malcom Beasley. Garg’s three-year term will begin January 1, 2014.  The CCB consists of six appointed members who are responsible for recommending actions concerning the Constitution and Bylaws of the society and of its divisions, topical groups, forums, and sections.

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This past Saturday (Nov. 2) Keri Oxley, M.D., M.P.A., a 2004 Notre Dame graduate in preprofessional studies and philosophy, gave a presentation organized by the Dooley Society in the Jordan Hall of Science called, "Suffering Transfigured: Insights into Personalisms in the Doctor-Patient Relationship."

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A paper published in a special edition of the journal Science proposes a novel understanding of brain architecture using a network representation of connections within the primate cortex. Zoltán Toroczkai, professor of physics at the University of Notre Dame and co-director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Network Science and Applications, is a co-author of the paper “Cortical High-Density Counterstream Architectures.”

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This past Thursday, October 31, more than 400 students gathered at the Jordan Hall of Science for the annual Fall Undergraduate Research Fair to learn about getting involved in undergraduate research at Notre Dame and other locations. The fair began with a research internship information session led primarily by biological sciences students; followed by student poster presentations of summer research projects and information tables of organizations that provide or support undergraduate research; and concluded with an information session for undergraduate research opportunities in chemistry.

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Jenifer Prosperi, a researcher at the Harper Cancer Research Institute, is studying how to treat breast cancers that evolve when a crucial tumor suppressor gene goes silent.

Over the past 15 years, the scientific community has come to understand that breast cancer is a monster with many faces.

Some cancers have one of three special indicator molecules (HER2, estrogen receptors and progesterone receptors) that can guide targeted anti-cancer treatments. But another set of breast cancers, the “triple-negative” types, lack those three indicator molecules that can guide treatment. And even now, the question remains: How can doctors better target and treat triple-negative cancers? And how can they keep up the treatment when breast cancers fight back?

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