Matthew Eng, a doctoral student in the laboratory of University of Notre Dame’s Professor of Biological Sciences David Severson and Director of the Eck Institute for Global Health, is the recipient of a Grants-in-aid-of-research (GIAR) given by the Sigma Xi Research Society. His grant titled, “Deciphering host factors for dengue infection in Aedes aegypti mosquito,” was funded as one of only 17% of applicants. Dengue is the most common mosquito-borne viral disease in the world, with no available vaccines or drug treatments. Mosquito control remains the primary disease control mechanism.

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In a breakthrough approach, solving this problem that was open for nearly thirty years, a team led by physics professor Zoltán Toroczkai has provided an understanding of the degeneracy problem and discovered a way to eliminate it. Their paper, “Reducing Degeneracy in Maximum Entropy Models of Networks,” was published this month in Physical Review Letters. Coauthors with Toroczkai are Szabolcs Horvát (first author) and Éva Czabarka.

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The University of Notre Dame’s Eck Institute for Global Health is partnering with the Peace Corps to offer financial help to returned Peace Corps Volunteers. The joint program will provide an annual scholarship of $12,000 to qualifying returned Peace Corps Volunteer accepted into the Master of Science in Global Health program beginning Fall 2015.

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Department of Physics graduate students Anna Woodard and Matthias Wolf received an award for their poster presentation at the 21^st International Conference on Computing and High Energy Nuclear Physics (CHEP 2015) in Okinawa, Japan, April 13-17. Their poster, titled “Exploiting Volatile Opportunistic Computing Resources with Lobster,” was about a software package that they wrote together to enable high energy physicists on the CMS experiment to make use of a broader set of computing resources then they can usually access.

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Enlightened Diagnostics, a start-up company run by students from the University of Notre Dame, won three prizes and $19,000 at the 2015 Rice Business Plan Competition, the largest and richest competition of its kind in the world.

From among 42 teams from the U.S., Europe, and Asia invited to Rice University in Houston, Texas, Enlightened Diagnostics received awards for the quality of its presentations and the promise of the company’s novel 3D tumor imaging platform to radically improve cancer diagnostics in the future.

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The Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship Foundation recently announced that Michael Dinh has been named a 2015 Goldwater Scholar.  Dinh, a junior biological sciences and psychology double major and member of the Glynn Family Honors Program, was one of 260 scholarship recipients selected from over 1,200 applications.

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The Notre Dame Integrated Imaging Facility (NDIIF) is pleased to announce two awards for best imaging publications for the 2014 calendar year.

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Department of Physics graduate student Anthony Ruth has been selected as a recipient of the 2015 NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship (NSTRF15). His application was titled, “Hybrid Van Der Waals materials in next-generation electronics.”

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On Monday April 20, Kevin Struhl, David Wesley Gaiser Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School, gave a Nieuwland Lecture Series presentation titled, "An epigenetic switch linking inflammation to cancer and the use of metformin as an anti-cancer drug."

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Over the past few years, extracellular vesicles, or membrane sacs secreted from cells, have emerged as important mediators by which cells communicate with their surroundings to regulate a diverse range of biological processes. In addition, specialized roles for extracellular vesicles are beginning to be recognized in various diseases including cancer, infectious diseases and neurodegenerative disorders. Moreover, engineered extracellular vesicles are likely to have applications in drug delivery.

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This past Saturday (Apr. 18), Notre Dame hosted the 18th annual Expanding Your Horizons (EYH) career conference for middle school girls that focused on activities in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).  The main goal of the conference is to attract more young females to STEM careers and help them realize that they have the potential to become innovative and creative thinkers ready to meet 21st century challenges.

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Access to high-quality medicine is a basic human right, but more than four billion people live in countries where many medications are substandard or fake. Marya Lieberman of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Notre Dame and Abigail Weaver, a postdoctoral associate in the University’s Department of Civil Engineering and Environmental and Earth Sciences, took up the challenge of how people in developing countries could detect low-quality antimalarial drugs without expensive equipment and without handling dangerous chemicals.

The solution they developed involves using paper cards, embedded with reagents, that carry out 12 colorful chemical tests all at once on a solid sample. The colors show whether a medicine contains the expected ingredients and whether fillers or substitute drugs have been added.

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Two new papers from the lab of Zach Schafer, Coleman Assistant Professor of Cancer Biology at the University of Notre Dame, offer insights into how breast cancer cells avoid anoikis, which is cell death induced by detachment from the extracellular matrix (ECM).

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The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently announced the awardees of the 2015 Graduate Research Fellowships Program (GRFP). Eight College of Science students and two alumni received awards. In addition, several students and alumni received honorable mentions. There were over 16,000 applications for this year's GRFP with 2,000 awardees nationwide.

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.

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Insect-borne diseases — such as malaria, dengue, West Nile and the newly emerging chikungunya — infect a billion people every year; more than a million die each year and many more are disabled. The effects of climate change, according to Edwin Michael, professor of biological sciences and member of the Eck Institute for Global Health at the University of Notre Dame, mean these deadly diseases are no longer reserved for the developing world.

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Congratulations to the 2015 Research Like a Champion awardees!  The winning proposals received $12,500  in support summer student stipends, research supplies, and travel throughout the upcoming academic year and summer.

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University of Notre Dame researchers led an international team to identify a molecular mechanism responsible for making malaria parasites resistant to artemisinins, the leading class of antimalarial drugs.

According to the World Health Organization’s 2014 World Malaria Report, there are an estimated 198 million cases of malaria worldwide with 3.3 billion people at risk for contracting the infection. Although the impact of malaria is still significant, the statistics reflect a considerable reduction in the global malaria burden. Since 2010, disease transmission has been reduced by 30 percent and mortality due to malaria has decreased by almost half.

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The University of Notre Dame family will come together on campus and around the globe on April 26-27 (Sunday-Monday) to celebrate Our Lady’s University during the second annual Notre Dame Day.

The celebration will launch at 18:42 (6:42 p.m. EDT), referencing the University’s founding year, on April 26 and end at midnight on April 27. The 29-hour live broadcast from LaFortune Student Center will share compelling Notre Dame stories from around the world, live interviews, celebrity guests, musical performances and much more. It also provides the Notre Dame family the opportunity to give back to specific areas of the University they love most through an online fundraising competition.

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On Saturday April 25, the College of Science and the South Bend Alumni Association will host the 2^nd annual Ace for Science tennis tournament at Notre Dame's Eck Tennis Pavilion. Students, faculty, staff, and community members are invited to join the three-flight doubles tournament raising money for K-12 science programs in the South Bend Community School Corporation.

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In January 2015, the Notre Dame QuarkNet Center received its second Luksic grant from Notre Dame International to enhance the Masterclass Institutes Collaborating in the Americas (MICA), a collaboration between Pontifica Universidad Católica (PUC) in Santiago, Chile, and the University of Notre Dame particle physics education and outreach programs.

Adam Martin, assistant professor of physics, and Trinity School physics teacher Patrick Mooney ’78, ’86 Ph.D., lead teacher at QuarkNet, traveled to Santiago, Chile in February to host a two-day Masterclass for Chilean high school teachers.

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A group of researchers, led by Jon Camden, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry, has reported the first nanoscale mapping of the flow of energy between light-harvesting plasmonic nanoparticles and semiconductor substrates. This work demonstrates an exciting new method for researchers to use in probing competing energy transfer mechanisms in nanoparticle on semiconductor systems.

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Karen Deak, PhD., director of the Master of Science in Patent Law, recently wrote an article for the Global Success Club.

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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 the University. This semester, Talk Science events focus on research that can be applied in innovative ways. This month’s presenters were senior physics major Christopher Barnes and Michael Flavin, Ph.D., managing director of Flavin Ventures LLC and CEO of Shamrock Structures.

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The 11th annual Relay for Life at the University of Notre Dame will take place from 6 p.m. to midnight April 17 (Friday) in the Compton Family Ice Arena.

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Each year, aquatic invasive species cost the United States economy billions of dollars. It is imperative to quickly identify new invasions and respond accordingly. In 2034, the threat from invasive species will be greater than today due to increasing domestic and international trade. This will be a significant concern since the arrival and establishment of invasive species can compromise ecosystem structure and function.

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Whether you know your way around the Hesburgh Libraries, or need to get to know them better, undergrads can show off or shore up their research skills for the sixth Undergraduate LibraryResearch Award (ULRA) competition. The event, featuring a top prize of $1000, is sponsored by the Hesburgh Libraries and the Center for Undergraduate Scholarly Engagement (CUSE).

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Have you ever spent time in the courtyard between Hayes-Healy Center and Hurley Hall? When warmer weather and sunny skies finally return to Notre Dame, you’ll often find friends eating lunch, students studying, or even little ducklings running around.  The courtyard is enjoyed by many around campus, but few know the history behind this treasured space.

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The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced Monday (March 30) that it is renewing funding for a University of Notre Dame-led institute dedicated to the of study the broad range of nuclear processes in the universe that control stellar evolution, trigger supernova events and lead to thermonuclear explosions observed as novae and X-ray and Y-ray bursts.

The Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics (JINA) was established and funded in 2003 as a NSF Physics Frontier Center between Notre Dame, Michigan State University, the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory to address critical questions about the origin of heavy elements in nature or nuclear processes on compact stellar objects.

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University of Notre Dame applied mathematician Mark Alber and environmental biotechnologist Robert Nerenberg have developed a new computational model that effectively simulates the mechanical behavior of biofilms. Their model may lead to new strategies for studying a range of issues from blood clots to waste treatment systems.

“Blood clotting is a leading cause of death in the United States at this point,” said Alber, who is The Vincent J. Duncan Family Professor of Applied Mathematics in the College of Science and an adjunct professor of medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine, South Bend. “We can now use a very fast and biologically relevant computational model to study deforming structures of the clots growing in blood flow.”

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This past Saturday, March 21, the College of Science held a course on Scientific and Medical Leadership in Jordan Hall of Science. This day-long event brought together scientists and physicians from a variety of fields to address relevant topics facing contemporary leadership roles.

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