The Ace for Science mixed doubles tournament at Notre Dame’s Eck Tennis Pavilion on April 26 raised nearly $8,000 to promote science education in the South Bend Community School Corporation. The event, co-hosted by the South Bend Alumni Association, involved 16 teams.
Senior biological sciences major Nicholas Pagani attended the 105th annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research held April 5-9, 2014, in San Diego, California. The meeting drew over 18,000 researchers, patient advocates, and other professionals in the cancer field from around the world. The theme for this year’s meeting was “Harnessing Breakthroughs – Targeting Cures,” which reflected on the translation of basic science into clinical advances for the benefit of cancer patients, a process that is occurring at an increasing pace.
In the fight against cancer, chemotherapy is a race against time. While chemotherapy kills the tumor, it also kills healthy tissue. So chemotherapy must do its job—eliminate cancerous growth—before the drugs become too toxic for a patient to tolerate or do too much damage to a patient’s liver, kidneys and other organs. It’s a harsh battle, one that cancer patients and their families face all too often. But if chemotherapy could be focused on only cancerous cells, leaving healthy cells largely untouched, chemotherapy treatments would deliver a significantly improved patient outcome.
Z. Başar Bilgiçer, a researcher at the Harper Cancer Research Institute, has found a way to do just that.
The Research Like a Champion competition winners were recently announced at the Harper Cancer Research Institute’s third annual research day. The donor who sponsored the competition was so impressed by the pool of research projects that he generously decided to provide funding for three projects.
The University of Notre Dame family will gather April 27 (Sunday) to celebrate the first-ever Notre Dame Day and have the opportunity to watch, connect, give and vote in a way that’s never been done at Our Lady’s University.
Approximately 90% of cancer deaths can be attributed due to metastasis, the spreading of primary tumor cells to distant organs. Siyuan Zhang’s lab works to further our understanding of the early stages of metastasis and in turn, how to treat it more effectively. Under the guidance of Zhang, undergraduates like Dennis Lee are using genetic editing tools to create lineage reporter cell lines and investigate the evolution of metastasis through intravital two photon imaging.
Jacqueline Stoneburner spent last summer working on a research project with Christine Petti, M.D., F.A.C.S., medical director of the Palos Verdes Plastic Surgery Medical Center in Los Angeles, Calif., and will be the second author on an upcoming paper about their research. The project, “Laser-Assisted Body Contouring with a Novel Fiber for Targeted Energy Delivery: A New Modality for Simultaneous Treatment of and Skin and Adipose Tissue,” was also recently presented by Dr. Petti at the 34th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Laser Medicine and Surgery in Phoenix, Ariz.
Colin Littlefield, a third-year law student at Notre Dame, has been one of several researchers testing the University’s brand new Sarah L. Krizmanich Telescope, an 0.8 meter telescope that was installed on the rooftop of Jordan Hall of Science in September 2013. Throughout the testing, he has observed an object known as CSS 081231:071126+440405. “Despite its awkward name, it's one of the more interesting astronomical objects visible from South Bend because it appears to vanish for several minutes every two hours,” he explained.
Interested in math debates, astronomy presentations, and all things geek? Notre Dame’s annual Geek Week, hosted by the Applied and Computational Mathematics and Statistics (ACMS), Math, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology Clubs, in collaboration with the College of Science, will be kicking off this Tuesday, April 22. All math and science lovers, regardless of your major, are welcome to attend any of the Geek Week events.
University of Notre Dame astrophysicist Justin R. Crepp and researchers from NASA working with the Kepler space mission have detected an Earth-like planet orbiting the habitable zone of a cool star. The planet, which was found using the Kepler Space Telescope, has been identified as Kepler-186f and is 1.11 times the radius of the Earth. Their research, titled “An Earth-sized Planet in the Habitable Zone of a Cool Star,” will be published in the journal Science on Thursday (April 17).
The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently announced the recipients of this year’s Graduate Research Program Fellowships (GRPF). Seven College of Science students and one alumnus received awards. In addition, five science students received honorable mentions.
The fellowship provides three years of support for the graduate education of students who have demonstrated the potential for significant achievements in science and engineering research. Past NSF Fellows include individuals who have made significant breakthroughs in science and engineering research, as well as some who have been honored as Nobel laureates.
Two College of Science seniors have been received prestigious Fulbright awards this year to pursue research abroad.
Professor John LoSecco has recently been named a 2014 Fermi Scholar. The goal of the Fermi Scholar Program is to include university based researchers into research and development roles at Fermilab. Professor LoSecco will use the award to work on the design of the lab's next generation neutrino beam.
The Ebola virus outbreak this week is challenging World Health Organization (WHO) officials around the world. On Wednesday, 67 WHO disease professionals have been mobilized to prevent further spread of Ebola and address the infection in hopes of stopping the outbreak in new areas of West Africa.
The students from Scientia, the undergraduate journal of scientific research, host a monthly seminar series called Talk Science, which highlights the work of undergraduate and faculty researchers at Notre Dame. This month’s presenters were senior mathematics major, Daniel Irvine, and Ani Aprahamian, the Frank M. Freimann Professor of Physics.
The Harper Cancer Research Institute would like to congratulate the Poster Session winners of the 3rd Annual Research Day.
A team with a business plan for a simple test that detects oral cancer took the grand prize of $25,000 Friday (April 11) in the Mendoza College of Business’ 15th McCloskey Business Plan Competition at the University of Notre Dame. NanDio competed against five other teams in the final round of the competition, which was sponsored by the Gigot Center for Entrepreneurship at Mendoza. The competition awarded $300,000 in cash and prizes.
W. Matthew Leevy, research assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame and director of In Vivo (biological) Imaging within the University’s Integrated Imaging Facility, has been named recipient of the 1st Source Bank Commercialization Award celebrating research that has made it to the marketplace.
This past Saturday (Apr. 5), the Department of Mathematics hosted the Midwest Women in Math Symposium in the Jordan Hall of Science The purpose of the symposium is to strengthen the network of female mathematicians in the Midwest and encourage collaborations and mentoring relationships.
Harper Cancer Research Institute’s third annual Research Day on April 14 (Monday) will gather cancer researchers from the University of Notre Dame and Indiana University School of Medicine-South Bend (IUSM-SB) in a day of exchange and discussion. The event is free and open to the public.
Senior environmental sciences major and Chinese minor Charles Cong Xu was recently accepted to the prestigious Erasmus Mundus Master Programme in Evolutionary Biology (MEME). MEME is a highly selective two-year research-oriented master’s program for students interested in studying evolution. He has also been nominated to receive a scholarship from the European Union to attend MEME and will hear the results in early May.
The College of Science is pleased to announce that Jacob Haley and Ellie Norby have been named Goldwater Scholars. They were selected from thousands of applicants nationwide to receive the prestigious Goldwater Scholarship for the 2014-15 academic year. In addition, Samantha Piekos has earned an honorable mention.
The fifth Undergraduate Library Research Award competition, with a top prize of $1,000, is accepting applications until April 10. The award is sponsored by the Hesburgh Libraries and The Center for Undergraduate Scholarly Engagement (CUSE). Last year’s top winner was Brianna Kunycky of Environmental Sciences, and other College of Science winners have come from Biochemistry and Biological Sciences.
A team of researchers led by University of Notre Dame physicist Boldizsar Janko has announced analytical prediction and numerical verification of novel quantum rotor states in nanostructured superconductors.
The international collaborative team points out that the classical rotor, a macroscopic particle of mass confined to a ring, is one of the most studied systems in classical mechanics.
