Ryan Dunk

“Asking why it is critical that students accept evolution is almost like asking why it is critical that students understand biology,” says Ryan Dunk, biology Ph.D. candidate in the College of Arts and Sciences and the paper’s lead author. Evolution’s many applications include understanding human disease and impacts of climate change, he explains.

The research was on July 17, 2017, in the open-access journal Evolution: Education & Outreach. SpringerOpen also published on the findings on Sept. 11, 2017.

Dunk surveyed introductory anatomy and physiology students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) with co-author Benjamin Campbell, UWM associate professor of anthropology. Andrew Petto, UWM distinguished lecturer of biology, and Jason Wiles, Syracuse associate professor of biology, join as co-authors.

In this study, Dunk and colleagues used statistical models to pinpoint how an individual’s understanding of science, knowledge of evolution, personality traits, religiosity and demographic traits predict student acceptance of evolution.

While previous research looked for single traits predicting evolution acceptance, Dunk combined all of the above variables into one comprehensive model. Unlike previous “one variable” models, this comprehensive approach enabled Dunk to see which variables are more important relative to each other.

“We were able to look at interactions that are actually going on in people—every individual has a level of knowledge of evolution, a level of their knowledge of nature of science, a level of religiosity, and so on,” Dunk says.

In this study, evolution acceptance was determined by student responses to a commonly used questionnaire called Measure of the Acceptance of the Theory of Evolution (MATE.) The MATE asks questions about the age of the Earth, how organisms have changed over time, how and if humans have changed over time and whether evolutionary theory is supported by historical and laboratory data.

The greatest predictor of student evolution acceptance was greater understanding of the nature of science, which includes recognizing the types of questions science can answer and how the scientific method is used to test hypotheses. Intrinsic religiosity, the extent to which an individual relies on religion for decision and opinion making, was also an important factor, but to a lesser extent.

Jason Wiles

Dunk explains that the study’s results go against the old strategy of “teach evolution better” to increase acceptance: “We know we don’t just need to teach them the facts better, because we have been working on evolution curriculum reforms for decades that have moved the needle very little on wide-scale acceptance.”

Additionally, the authors don’t see religion as a roadblock to fostering evolution acceptance. “Many religious leaders have made peace with evolution,” Wiles notes, referring to resources like the and . from the Wiles lab found that students who had become more accepting of evolution had not become any less religiously active. Wiles explains, “It may be that as students learn more about how science works, they rely more on scientific explanations for natural phenomena, but that doesn’t mean they must abandon religion in the process.”

Dunk, who recently received a $2,492 Rosemary Grant Award (RGA) for Graduate Student Research from the Society for the Study of Evolution, will continue exploring evolution acceptance with his Ph.D. advisor, Wiles. In addition to tracking evolution acceptance across Syracuse undergraduates over two years, the RGA will fund focus groups and individual interviews with select participants.

“All the people we survey are currently students. But they’re going to be educated members of the general public,” Dunk says. “Our work aims to help them have an appreciation for scientific inquiry and nature itself.”

The Ngo

Two Syracuse City School District rising seniors were welcomed to Syracuse’s campus to get a taste of lab life and to prepare for college. Full-ride scholarships to top universities for both students show the experiment was a huge success.

“Including local high school students in university research is critical to open new educational paths for local, underserved students. We want to provide a unique insight into research and academic life at Syracuse University and an introduction to higher education in general. We hope to create opportunities for these young researchers that may not exist otherwise,” says , Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and dean of the , who invited the students to join her lab and mentored them in their research and college preparations.

The students, Kim La ’20 and The Ngo, both graduated from the Institute of Technology at Syracuse Central High School—La as valedictorian in 2016 and Ngo with honors this May. Both grew up in Syracuse’s Vietnamese community, where they translated for older community members and excelled academically.

They each stood out in teacher Bobby Kunnath’s algebra 2 and pre-calculus classes. “I knew that they were both exceptionally bright and hard-working students with a passion for the sciences. I thought that getting them involved in research at Syracuse would open more doors for them,” he says.

Fortunately for La and Ngo, Kunnath has a close connection to research on campus: his wife, , research assistant professor, works in the Ruhlandt lab. Both Gillett-Kunnath and Ruhlandt were delighted to welcome such inquisitive students into the lab.

“They brought a strong work ethic and worked hard to catch up on the basics and learn synthetic chemistry. They were always willing to try new things and just dove in asking questions—it’s amazing what these students were able to accomplish,” Gillett-Kunnath says.

Kim La

La joined the Ruhlandt lab in the summer of 2015 and has worked on two different projects exploring chemical bonding behavior and synthesis of two types of naturally occurring metals. She received a full-ride scholarship through Say Yes to Education and chose Syracuse University for its campus and convenient proximity to home.

Now a rising sophomore, La looks forward to a full year of research in the Ruhlandt lab, is considering majoring in chemistry or biology, and has developed a love of communicating her work.

“My experience in the Ruhlandt lab has been amazing. I’ve learned so much and cannot wait for more research posters and presentations to come,” she says.

Ngo, who began research in the Ruhlandt lab in the summer of 2016, credits the animated television show “Dexter’s Laboratory” for his introduction to the wonderful world of chemistry. “It’s silly, but in ways, I really did want to become a Dexter,” he says, referring to the main character, who is described as a “child genius who whips up dazzling, world-saving inventions in his secret laboratory.”

After investigating a chemical compound, which could potentially be used in semiconductor wafer production, Ngo was accepted to Columbia University with a full-ride scholarship from Columbia’s Academic Success Program. The program assists first-generation college students acclimate to university culture.

As a new college student, Ngo is still exploring career options, but notes, “I do know something for sure: I want to continue to research.”

And the gratitude goes both ways: “I was continually humbled by all that they have overcome to be present everyday in the lab—to work hard with a smile, never complaining and eagerly wanting to learn,” says Gillett-Kunnath.

“We are studying new ways of understanding the cognitive and behavioral development of children and their family members in order to help change the way that mental health disorders are understood and diagnosed in the future,” says Pat Forken, senior research support specialist at SUNY Upstate. The study is co-directed at SUNY Upstate by Stephen J. Glatt, associate professor of psychiatry; and Stephen Faraone, Distinguished Professor of psychiatry.

Glatt and Faraone hope to change the current, subjective method of behavioral health evaluation to one that uses biological information. They will do this by discovering biomarkers associated with cognitive and behavioral development.

“We want to change the way neuropsychiatric disorders are diagnosed in children, moving from a subjective model to one that is rooted in biology,” Forken says.

Also involved is Avery Albert, a doctoral student in clinical psychology in the (A&S) at SU. She is currently doing an assistantship at SUNY Upstate, where she serves as a research analyst for the study.

Kristin Anders ’15 (biology and Spanish) was hired to work on the study after volunteering two semesters. She oversees eight A&S interns: Ariel Clarke ’18 (biology), Emma Cleary ’18 (psychology), Ciara Harrington ’18 (chemistry), Matthew Kahn ’18 (psychology and neuroscience), Kari Krajewski ’18 (health and exercise science), Katie Overhaug ’18 (biology), Crystal Ramos ’18 (biology, psychology) and Yvette Rother ’19 (pre-med, psychology, neuroscience). She also supervises Bryan Koes ’16, who graduated from the School of Education with a degree in health and exercise science.

The National Institute of Mental Health-funded study is open to both children with and children without mental health concerns. The testing procedure, which includes a series of questionnaires, computer-based games and the submission of a DNA sample for genetic analysis, can take up to three hours.

All families will be financially compensated for their participation and given free parking or bus passes. Visits can be scheduled during the day, early evening or the weekend. For more information, visit or .

To schedule participation contact Forken at 315.464.5619 or mailto:forkenp@upstate.edu.

James Hougland

“Given the hunger signaling pathway’s suggested role in metabolism control, molecules that control signaling may provide new avenues for treating diabetes, obesity and other conditions linked to the body’s intake and use of energy,” says , associate professor of chemistry in the and the study’s corresponding author.

The research was published online in  earlier this year. Its authors include , professor of chemistry; Kayleigh McGovern-Gooch, Ph.D. candidate and lead author; Nivedita Mahajani, Ph.D. candidate; Michelle Sieburg, Hougland lab manager; Anthony Schramm ’16; Lauren G. Hannah ’17; and Ariana Garagozzo, an undergraduate summer research intern from Dickinson College.

The Hougland lab researches ghrelin, a hormone involved in hunger signaling and metabolic activity. Ghrelin plays a role in “the balance between taking in energy, as calories from food, and using that energy to support life,” Hougland says.

Ghrelin is produced in the gastrointestinal tract and transported to the hypothalamus in the brain via the bloodstream, where it signals hunger. Ghrelin levels drop after eating to turn off the impulse to consume more.

There are a number of steps that lead to production of ghrelin—and the small molecule identified in this study could halt one. An enzyme called ghrelin O-acyltransferase, or GOAT, plays a crucial role in creating active ghrelin. GOAT acts by sticking a fatty acid onto ghrelin, which is an essential modification for ghrelin to control biological signaling.

The promising molecule identified in this study is a synthetic triterpenoid, a class of molecules naturally made by plants, which includes cholesterol. This particular molecule is a highly modified version of oleanolic acid, which naturally occurs in olive oil, garlic and other plants.

Prior to this study, all known GOAT inhibitors resembled part of acylated ghrelin, and only one had shown the ability to inhibit GOAT within cells or in animals. To find the synthetic triterpenoid identified in this paper, the authors ran 50 enzyme assays a day, working through the Diversity Set IV from the Developmental Therapeutics Program—a library containing roughly 1,600 small molecules.

“We wanted to cast our molecular net as wide as possible to look for potential inhibitor candidates,” Hougland explains.

The small molecule identified in the study prevents an eight-carbon fatty acid from being added to the ghrelin precursor proghrelin, which should stop the whole pathway in its tracks. The chemical structure of the small molecule suggests it interacts with sulfur atoms in GOAT. The sulfur atoms are part of cysteine amino acids, a standard building block of proteins. Guided by the small molecule inhibitor, Hougland and coworkers used a range of chemical probes to confirm that cysteine modification can block GOAT modification of ghrelin.

Because there are multiple cysteines in GOAT, Hougland is currently searching for the specific one affected by the inhibitory small molecule. Identifying the right player will bring the researchers one step closer to understanding how GOAT modifies ghrelin, which is essential for developing potent inhibitors of this process. Hougland is currently working with collaborators at Syracuse and other universities to develop promising lab findings into potential therapeutics.

“Our study suggests a new potential mechanism for GOAT inhibition,” Hougland says. “More broadly, our results demonstrate the ability of basic research to provide new and exciting insights into how molecules may be interacting with our bodies.”

This work was funded by the American Diabetes Association, the March of Dimes, the Foundation for Prader Willi Research (FPWR) and the National Institutes of Health.

Elliott Portnoy ’86

����������ܲ���’s�� (CFSA) recently chose nine undergraduate researchers to participate in the newly created Young Research Fellows Program (YRFP). Funding for this Universitywide program, including a two-year stipend, is made possible by a gift from Elliott Portnoy ’86 and his wife, Estee.

“An early start on independent research and creative inquiry allows students more time to navigate the inevitable twists and turns of the research experience,” says Jolynn Parker, CFSA director and assistant director of the Renée Crown University Honors Program.

Parker and Kate Hanson, former CFSA director and current deputy director of the Renée Crown University Honors Program, created the new fellowship program to both support individual research and give undergraduates an edge when applying for national scholarships.

“In advising talented students for nationally competitive awards, we both quickly noticed the importance of faculty-mentored undergraduate research to a student’s success,” says Parker.

The YRFP, inspired by similar programs at Johns Hopkins University and UCLA, recognizes five first- or second-year undergraduate students from across disciplines with outstanding potential for research or creative inquiry. Each fellow receives up to $4,000 of research funding, mentorship and supportive programming over the course of two years. Four students were selected as “honorable mentions;” they will receive up to $1,000 in research funding and will participate in the same programming as the fellows.  YRFP participants serve as student ambassadors by promoting research and creative inquiry on campus.

The inaugural fellows and honorable mentions are:

• Jett Cloud: English & textual studies; television, radio, film
• Shin Hyuk Bang: bioengineering, member of the Renée Crown University Honors Program
• James Lu: information management security, member of the Renée Crown University Honors Program
• Maizy Ludden: biology, geography, member of the Renée Crown University Honors Program
• Natalia Rice: English & textual studies, sociology, member of the Renée Crown University Honors Program
• Joshua Schiowitz: political science, film
• Nathan Shearn: anthropology, Russian, member of the Renée Crown University Honors Program
• Jacob Urban: finance, energy and its impacts, member of the Renée Crown University Honors Program
• Bethanie Viele: biology, member of the Renée Crown University Honors Program.

“As a first-year undergrad student, I never imagined I would have the opportunity to pursue my own research interests so early in my academic career,” says Rice, recounting the moment she learned of her award.

Natalia Rice

The Buffalo, New York, native will be exploring racial identity in contemporary America from a sociological perspective. She is particularly interested in what she terms “casual segregation” in young millennials, a demographic group recognized for their more progressive views.

“I genuinely believe that the generous aid and guidance that the YRFP offers will allow me and the rest of my cohort to produce information with the potential to catalyze change,” Rice says.

Enthusiasm for the fellows’ proposed work is contagious: “Supporting the SU Young Research Fellows is a huge privilege, as these students demonstrate a degree of creativity, intellectual rigor and entrepreneurial zeal that is hugely compelling. Each of the fellows demonstrates the spirit and academic curiosity that makes me so excited to continue supporting these outstanding students through the Center for Fellowship & Scholarship Advising,” Portnoy says.

For more information about the program or to apply in the future, visit the YRFP website or contact Parker, 315.443.2759, jmpark02@syr.edu; or Hanson, 315.443.2759, khanso01@syr.edu at CFSA.

After-School Kids Camp students observe zebrafish brought by Katharine Lewis to the Westcott Community Center.

Local elementary and middle school students dove head first into science with help from Syracuse biologists—and a few fishy friends. Associate professor and lab members brought a bevy of zebrafish to the Westcott Community Center this May as part of an ongoing science outreach program, organized by biology Ph.D. candidate .

“We wanted to show the students that they can do science and that it’s loads of fun,” says Lewis.

Lewis is no stranger to outreach, having previously organized experiments addressing developmental biology questions using zebrafish, her lab’s research animal. Past outreach includes partnering with and developing a biology apprenticeship experience for local high school students, which has been offered nine times, reaching 154 students from four . When McDonough emailed faculty members to get involved with programming at the Westcott Community Center this spring, Lewis jumped at the chance.

Katharine Lewis

“This was the first time we have worked with a younger age group, and it was a lot of fun and very rewarding,” Lewis says. “I think we had a big impact on the participants, including the staff and parents.”

The science outreach program is a student favorite at the Westcott Community Center’s , which serves local 8- to 14-year-olds. At the Kids Club, run by Mitch Cyrus and Matt Stevens, Syracuse City School District students receive targeted tutoring, followed by enriching activities from 3-6 p.m. every school day, free of charge.

Zebrafish, a tropical, freshwater fish commonly kept in home aquariums, provided a great introduction to ideas about development and how physical features can vary in a single species. Lewis lab members, including grad students, postdoctoral researchers, technicians and several undergrads, brought five activity stations for the students to explore.

Zebrafish

Students followed the complete zebrafish lifecycle, from embryo to adult, with some colorful surprises along the way. In addition to the naturally striped fish, Lewis brought albino and differently pigmented adults and embryos, as well as embryos that had been genetically engineered to glow fluorescent green.

Lewis fondly recalls one young woman looking through a microscope and jumping back with a surprised “wow,” followed by imploring friends to come take a look at the vibrant fish on view.

“I hope that by providing these experiences we can increase students’ confidence and interest in science,” Lewis says. “The goal is to encourage them to think of themselves as scientists, rather than feeling intimidated or put off by science.”

At the day’s conclusion, parents arriving at the center to pick up their children were engrossed by the fishy visitors too.

“I love it when the adults also get drawn in. Getting parents involved in the students’ enthusiasm is another way to increase the impact of the activities. I also think it is more powerful when the parent’s involvement arises from natural curiosity, like it did here at the Kids Club,” Lewis says.

Kids Club programming has concluded for the school year, but McDonough, Cyrus and Stevens will bring back science outreach this fall. If you are a researcher who is interested in participating, contact McDonough via email.

“Grad school is a very stressful and mentally challenging experience for a lot of people, myself included,” Negoita says.

A screenshot of the smartphone application for HabitU from the website. The program is currently looking for beta testers.

To combat the all-too-common stressors of academic life, Negoita tested a smattering of the 80,000 wellness apps on the market, but found them too prescriptive, or even too stressful, to use. Taking notes from his own journey and leveraging student entrepreneurial services on campus, he created : a new mobile application to help users develop desired habits while reducing stress in the process.

“I had this epiphany that my stress was linked to feeling out of control. I realized that doing a few things in particular, even as simple as spending five minutes washing the dishes, brought back some of the control I was missing,” Negoita says

After tracking habits in spreadsheets for over a year, Negoita decided to turn his personal tinkering into a publicly available tool. To go from concept to app, he tapped into Syracuse’s free entrepreneurial resources, including mentorship and professional business services from the ’s and the at Bird Library.

The end product is an easy-to-follow path to self-improvement, Negoita says. HabitU is simple to use: just make a list of tasks that your “ideal self” would do daily, assign tasks a difficulty rating and tally your progress—the app takes care of encouraging you to improve over time.

“Habit-tracking applications are fantastic tools for staying organized, being more productive and building healthy habits, but can often be complicated or stress-inducing,” says mental health promotion specialist Kristelle Aisaka from Syracuse’s . “HabitU takes those useful habit-tracking features and integrates them into an easily navigated, low-stress interface.”

A compassionate and personalized approach separates HabitU from other available habit tracking apps, Negoita says. HabitU employs an algorithm to suggest daily point goals shaped by an individual’s past performance, including cutting users some slack when appropriate.

“HabitU pushes you by learning from your successes and providing progressively more challenging goals over time—but it does this in a very kind way. If you don’t complete a task one day, that’s fine. You can do another in its place, or just skip it for now. HabitU pushes you with personalized daily goals that account for the fact that we all have bad days.” Negoita says.

An early tester of the app, biology Ph.D. student Alex Ebert, echoes HabitU’s unique approach: “This is exactly the way a good habit-building app should work: it doesn’t feel like a chore, it doesn’t guilt me for having a bad day, and the flexibility keeps me excited about fulfilling the items on my list!”

For now, Negoita is seeking for HabitU, beefing up the website with developer Max Matthews ’16 and designer David Badillo; and finishing up his dissertation work for May 2018. Ultimately, he envisions HabitU growing into “the go-to app for personal development,” with the ability to integrate data from niche wellness apps, like Headspace and Fitbit. And with a couple local start-up competitions under his belt, including an award for Student Entrepreneur of the Year from the Entrepreneurship and Emerging Enterprises program at the Whitman School, he is headed in the right direction.

“The early beta we’ve seen from Luka and his team has been very promising,” says Aisaka. ”We’re looking forward to see how HabitU continues to grow and evolve.”

Poster presentations line Milton Atrium in the Life Sciences Complex.

On a recent Saturday biologists from the region—and as far afield as Toronto—gathered at Syracuse University with one mission: to talk about all things zebrafish.

“The conference was invaluable for facilitating research collaborations, building community, and exposing students to areas of research outside their home labs,” says , associate professor of biology, and one of the organizers of the inaugural CNY Zebrafish Conference.

Joining Lewis in organizing the conference were , associate professor of cell and developmental biology at SUNY Upstate Medical University, and , associate professor of biology and neuroscience at Colgate University.

The April 22 conference drew participants from 15 different institutions, representing nearly 20 individual laboratories, Lewis says. The day was a mix of student and faculty talks, poster presentations and opportunities for socialization.

“I was so impressed with the turn out. Both the number of scientists and the number of different institutions represented at the conference exceeded my expectations,” Amack says.

The diversity of zebrafish research topics presented demonstrates the importance of this little aquarium fish in understanding vertebrate development. Talks covered development of the inner ear, brain and spinal cord. Presentations also delved into the topic of how the body designates a right versus left side during development and the phenomenon of retinal regeneration.

“The conference was excellent for graduate and undergraduate students to get experience the diversity of research that occurs on zebrafish,” Meyers says.

In addition to intellectual stimulation, participants swapped best practices on caring for zebrafish and new technologies, including a seminar by Samantha England, research assistant professor, on the hot new gene editing tool known as CRISPR.

Unlike many conferences, the CNY Zebrafish Conference was free to attend, thanks to sponsorship from research technology companies LPS, Carl Zeiss Microscopy, Krackeler Scientific and NIGHTSEA. This unique opportunity meant more students, including undergraduates, could afford to attend. Indeed, Lewis reports that half of the attendees were students.

Although it’s too soon to point to specific collaborations resulting from the CNY Zebrafish Conference, Lewis notes that a number of new project ideas developed from the gathering.

And Lewis is just getting started: she plans to make the conference an annual event.

“Continuing the conference will help zebrafish researchers across this region be even more successful by widening their network, interacting with potential collaborators, giving student feedback on their research, and building community.” Lewis says.

“I am thrilled to be a part of this new community. My hope is that we can attract even more local scientists to attend future meetings,” says Amack.

Students present their research in the Milton Atrium of the Life Sciences Complex during the 2016 REU poster session.

For more than 15 years, Syracuse University’s Department of Chemistry has welcomed summer undergraduate researchers. Thanks to a new three-year, $297,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to chemistry professors and , the immersive program will continue. The Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program will support 11 young scholars for the summer in each of the next three years.

“Having a large group of young researchers in the summer brings a lot of energy to the department and is widely recognized as a benefit to everyone,” says Sponsler, the grant’s principal investigator.

Chemistry professors Michael Sponsler and Bruce Hudson

This will be Sponsler’s first year overseeing the program. He has managed day-to-day activities and served as co-principal investigator with , distinguished professor of chemistry and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, since 2003.

“We started the Chemistry REU program to give students hands-on research experience and to support young STEM scholars from diverse backgrounds,” Ruhlandt says. “By giving students a taste of academic research we fulfill two goals: enriching the STEM undergraduate experience and helping students decide, risk free, if grad school could be a good fit.”

Each year, hundreds of students from across the country apply for a spot in the highly competitive REU program, which is “harder to get into than med school,” Sponsler says. Participants are joined by two local high school teachers; a half dozen students from the in Austria; and Syracuse undergrads, whose research is funded by other mechanisms.

Dean Karin Ruhlandt listens as a 2016 REU student, Kim La, discusses her research project.

REU students are fully immersed in the research process from designing and conducting experiments under faculty mentorship to communicating their results. Participants hone communication skills during a summer research poster session and often present their work again at regional or national conferences, for which they are partially reimbursed by the REU grant.

Aside from gaining their research “sea legs,” all summer research students are included in social opportunities to build their networks and take a break from the grind. These include research presentation luncheons, a day trip to Niagara Falls, and the ever-popular glassblowing class presented by veteran artistic and scientific glassblower .

Sponsler and collaborators focus recruitment efforts on underrepresented groups, including veterans, to enrich all participants’ experience.

“Veterans, even those who took science courses a few years before, tend to shy away from science when getting back into school, “ Sponsler says. “The REU program is a great way for veterans to immerse themselves in a supportive scientific environment and demonstrate that they can succeed in science.“

Most participants come from liberal arts colleges, including local students from Le Moyne College. After the summer’s end, local students often continue their research at Syracuse, like Le Moyne senior, Brian Wilson whose work in the Ruhlandt lab began during the 2014 summer REU program.

“I have learned so much and have been greatly prepared for graduate school,” Wilson says. “I am forever grateful to Dr. Ruhlandt for allowing me to work in her lab and to everyone in the lab for teaching me so much.

“I’ll be pursuing a Ph.D. in chemical engineering at Northwestern University in the fall,” Wilson says. “I hope to one day become a professor and mentor students as I have been mentored at Syracuse University during the REU program and beyond.”

Kari Segraves

“I’ve historically studied a mutualistic system with only two partners—a moth and a plant—but most mutualistic interactions involve many partners,” Segraves says. “Using basic genetic approaches, we created a more complex community of unique yeast strains that we will use to test ideas about how natural communities function.”

Mutualisms are important for functions as diverse as growing crops to human digestion. Agriculturally, relationships between plants and pollinating insects, as well as roots and helpful below-ground fungi, all keep plants growing and healthy. Bacteria residing in animal guts, including the roughly 1,000 species in ours, aid digestion while gaining nutrients from what their hosts eat.

Joining Segraves are co-principal investigators Assistant Professor and Research Assistant Professor David Rivers. Segraves and Althoff will manage the project, including recruiting students and overseeing experiments. Rivers will bring his experience with yeast to train all personnel in proper handling and culturing techniques. The Segraves lab is also recruiting a new postdoctoral researcher to collaborate with Chris Moore, an assistant professor at Colby College, to mathematically model community stability.

Using yeast strains that need specific nutrients to survive, the team will identify factors important to community survival. Segraves and colleagues will create different communities of multiple yeasts, where individual types either produce nutritional resources for the community to use, or suck up resources without contributing. Changing up the number and type of community members while tracking species survival will reveal what’s required to keep communities afloat in the face of cheaters.

David Althoff

To move beyond yeast communities, Moore and the new postdoctoral researcher will use experimental observations to create computer models that predict community stability more broadly. These models can then be used to test multi-mutualist communities in nature and predict their persistence.

Segraves predicts that having redundant nutrient suppliers will improve community stability in yeast—and beyond. “If you think about it, the more pollinator species a plant has, the more likely that it will be pollinated, even if some of its partners fail to pollinate,” she explains. “If the same plant were dependent on a single pollinator species, there is an increased risk of catastrophic failure.”

The yeast-mutualist system will also feature in high school teaching modules to be developed in conjunction with the Syracuse City School District and Syracuse University Project Advance (SUPA)—new and welcome collaborations, Segraves says. SUPA certifies high school instructors to teach Syracuse University courses for college credit during the standard school day. The two-week course, which supplements ongoing SUPA courses, will introduce students to concepts like the scientific method and population dynamics.

“Any time students engage in hands-on research to understand the natural world around them, the better,” says SUPA director Christina Parish.

“We know that students, particularly in high school, benefit from applying classroom knowledge for a deeper understanding of those concepts, and educational outreach projects like Kari’s may even help students discover an interest in biology and encourage them to pursue those interests in higher education and beyond,” Parish says.

Pamela Ronald (Photo by Kris Krüg)

, distinguished plant pathology professor at the University of California, Davis, will present the annual Jack and Pat Bryan Life Sciences Lecture. Ronald, a rice geneticist and advocate of ecologically responsible crop development, will speak about the future of genetic technology in agriculture.

Ronald will deliver a public lecture, “The Future of Food: Advances in Plant Genetics” Wednesday, April 26, in Life Sciences Complex room 001 at 4 p.m. A reception with refreshments and a poster session will follow immediately in the Lundgren Room (106 LSC), where attendees will have the opportunity to speak with Ronald.

World renowned for her work on rice genetics, Ronald has genetically developed rice strains that are resistant to disease and tolerant of flooding. Disease and flooding are two challenges facing efficient production of rice, which is the world’s largest food staple.

Ronald is a proponent of using genetic engineering and sustainable farming practices to feed the ever-expanding world population. Her on the subject has nearly 1.5 million views. Additionally, Ronald and her husband, organic farmer Raoul Adamchak, coauthored the book “.”

Ronald also founded the Genetic Resources Recognition Fund (GRRF) at UC Davis to give back to developing nations. On numerous occasions, plant material from such countries has led to major research breakthroughs. The GRRF collects licensing fees associated with these breakthroughs and directs a portion of the royalties back to source countries in the form of fellowships, land conservation efforts or other supportive projects.

For those who wish to learn more about plant genetics and pathology, Ronald will also deliver a research lecture, “The rice immune receptor XA21 recognizes a tyrosine-sulfated protein from a Gram-negative bacterium,” on Thursday, April 27, in the Lundgren Room at 10 a.m.

Both lectures are free and open to the public. If you require accommodations please contact Caitlin McDonough at cemcdono@syr.edu.

The lectures are co-presented by the Biology Graduate Student Organization and the Department of Biology. Ronald’s visit and lectures are made possible by a generous gift from Pat Bryan in memory of her husband, Jack, a longtime member of the department’s faculty who was deeply committed to graduate education and research.

“To make new neurons from stem cells you need to understand how those neurons are normally made,” Lewis says of her lab’s research focus.

Katharine Lewis

Founded in 1998, SCIRB supports research in New York state that promises to lead to new treatments for spinal cord injuries through its granting arm, the New York State Spinal Cord Injury Research Program. The program awarding Lewis’ research, titled Institutional Support for Spinal Cord Injury Research, requires labs to have prior federal funding. In Lewis’ case, SCIRB funding will add new directions to related projects supported by a prestigious , a part of the National Institutes of Health.

Research in the Lewis lab focuses on how neuronal circuits develop in the spinal cord, specifically how neurons attain their unique identities. All neurons have a specific role to play in the circuits that carry messages up and down the body. The Lewis lab is trying to figure out how each of these players gets assigned their role during development.

Zebrafish, a type of tropical fish that is popular in aquariums, are an excellent model for spinal cord development, Lewis says. Because the transparent embryos develop outside the mother, key events can be easily observed in live, developing fish. Most importantly, spinal cord development in zebrafish proceeds much the same as spinal cord development in mammals.

Zebrafish in the Lewis lab.

“Development is very similar between zebrafish and mammals—including humans,” Lewis says. “Nearly all of the same cell types exist and are influenced by the same genes.”

Lewis’ SCIRB award funds research on a group of excitatory neurons that encourage signaling. This group of neurons also plays an important role in locomotion. With the SCIRB funding, Lewis lab members will look for the genetic signals that cause developing neurons to adopt this role.

By uncovering the details of how specific neuron types normally develop, Lewis hopes to inform new treatments for damaged spinal cords. Previous zebrafish research suggests hope for this approach.

“Evidence so far shows that when neuronal regeneration occurs, which does happen to some extent in zebrafish, the original developmental processes and genes are reactivated,” Lewis says.

Her SCIRB-supported research could take this regenerative strategy one step closer to a reality.

The funding will be used to launch a new program called “The Strategic Undergraduate STEM Talent Acceleration Initiative” (SUSTAIN), as well as research the program’s effectiveness.

“Supporting a diverse student body is a priority for the College of Arts and Sciences, particularly in areas with low retention rates, like the STEM fields,” says grant co-recipient , distinguished professor of chemistry and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

“Because the country as a whole does not produce enough trained STEM personnel, supporting recruits is both a critical service to STEM students, as well as an important piece in national strategic workforce development,” she says.

Karin Ruhlandt

Ruhlandt

Joining Tillotson and Ruhlandt in implementing the SUSTAIN program are , associate professor of biology, and , associate dean for advising and career services in the College of Arts and Sciences.

The SUSTAIN grant builds upon “a wealth of experience,” Ruhlandt says, pointing to numerous individual research and outreach projects from all collaborators. Past projects include a longstanding research experience for undergraduates program in chemistry and a grant to Tillotson and Wiles that provided scholarships to high-achieving, underrepresented STEM students.

SUSTAIN aims to recruit 30 underrepresented biology and chemistry students—including ethnic minorities, women, first-generation college and low-income students—to the uniquely supportive program. Ruhlandt explains that biology and chemistry were singled out because of the differences in gender makeup and retention, where biology features more women and higher retention of underrepresented groups. The team hopes to include physics and Earth sciences students in future years, should they receive follow-up grants.

“Attracting a diverse pool of undergraduates to pursue a STEM major has proven daunting given the limited numbers of underrepresented minorities, women and low-income students from disadvantaged backgrounds who opt to pursue these majors at a national scale,” says Tillotson. “A greater challenge still is retaining these students in the STEM pipeline during their undergraduate programs.”

Across all groups, up to half of STEM majors will leave their programs—a problem further exacerbated in underrepresented groups, Tillotson says. Reasons for not completing a STEM degree range from insufficient academic preparation to difficulty acclimating to the institutional STEM culture. “As part of the SUSTAIN project, our goal is to provide 360-degree wraparound support that addresses all of these factors,” Tillotson says.

(l-r) John Tillotson, Kandice Salomone, Jason Wiles

SUSTAIN will implement programming to improve student retention. Participating students will live in the “STEM Professional Living and Learning Community,” and they will be in a special section of First Year Forum exploring the nature of science, led by Tillotson and Wiles. Ruhlandt is to oversee STEM faculty mentoring, and Salomone will direct support intervention services.���� ����

Outside the classroom, students will be provided social opportunities and career support, such as an internship and a job-shadowing program through partnering organization Technology Alliance of Central New York. First-year students and sophomores will also participate in “early-immersion” lab research at the University, along with ongoing faculty mentoring—an opportunity often reserved for upper classmen.

“Previous STEM education research suggests that research experiences develop students’ knowledge and confidence to achieve success in STEM research,” Tillotson says.

To further bolster SUSTAIN students, all participants will be guaranteed Peer-Led Team Learning experiences in introductory STEM courses. Wiles’ shows that this learning and teaching style benefits achievement, recruitment and retention of students in STEM fields, particularly for underrepresented groups.

SUSTAIN will also promote the college’s commitment to developing innovative teaching strategies through a Faculty Professional Development Workshop series for STEM faculty from the University and other Central New York institutions. The series, led by Tillotson and Wiles, will promote active learning approaches within introductory STEM courses, ensuring that the benefits of SUSTAIN extend beyond the students selected for the program.

A final piece of the grant supports research on the program itself. Tillotson and Wiles will collect data on SUSTAIN’s effectiveness on underrepresented student retention. Should the program prove successful, it could then be repeated at the University or even implemented at other institutions.

“By combining SUSTAIN programming for students and faculty, we foresee this project further establishing SU as a leader in promoting innovation and excellence in STEM teaching,” Tillotson says.

Sandra Hewett

“Neuroscience Research Day is our once-a-year opportunity to shine a spotlight on the broad spectrum of contemporary neural science research conducted by Syracuse faculty and students alike,” says Sandra Hewett, Bishop Professor of Neuroscience and executive director of the Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Studies Program.

This year’s Research Day will highlight work from the fields of biology, communication sciences and disorders, psychology, public health and the Upstate Concussion Center.

Presentations will include a keynote lecture, faculty research talks, and graduate and undergraduate student oral and poster presentations. Students wishing to present a poster must submit an abstract by the March 24 deadline. There will be an award for the best poster, as judged by Syracuse faculty members.

Keynote speaker Akiva Cohen, research associate professor of anesthesiology and critical care at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School Of Medicine, researches the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying cognitive impairments associated with traumatic brain injury. His lab studies how post-traumatic changes in neuronal excitability affect learning and memory.

Akiva Cohen

Members of the Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Studies Program, host of Neuroscience Research Day, examine the relationship between brain and behavior from numerous angles. Faculty conduct research on topics ranging from molecular and cellular mechanisms of brain and spinal cord development and function, human cognitive development and artificial nerve regeneration. The group includes researchers from the , the , the and the .

“Not only does this event highlight the range of neural research done at the University, it provides an environment to forge collaborations, foster new research ideas, and get feedback on current projects,” Hewett says. “All of that cross-fertilization of ideas—plus socialization with fellow researchers.”

The Third Annual Neuroscience Research Day will take place from 8:30 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. on Friday, April 7. Registration closes on Friday, March 24, and can be accessed on EventBrite . Student poster abstracts, also due March 24, can be submitted via Google Forms .

More information can be found on the event’s webpage  or by contacting Shikha Nangia, biomedical and chemical engineering assistant professor, at 315.443.0571, or Aesoon Park, psychology associate professor, at 315.443.2391.

“There is a massive amount of data that is not being considered, simply due to our limited capability as human beings,” says Michael Marciano, FNSSI research assistant professor, explaining why they’re counting on computers to make data-driven predictions.

Marciano and Jonathan Adelman, FNSSI research assistant professor, have developed a new method to predict the number of people contributing to mixed DNA samples, the results of which are ahead of the journal’s March issue.

Additionally, the duo’s method, dubbed Probabilistic Assessment for Contributor Estimate (PACE), is patent pending. The SU-owned intellectual property is newly licensed to NicheVision, a forensic software company based in Akron, Ohio.

In order to “deconvolute” or separate a mixed DNA sample into individuals’ genetic information, current technology requires the analyst to identify how many people contributed to the sample. Marciano likens the challenge of predicating contributor numbers to looking at a jar of colored candies, where two or three colors may be easy to spot, but more colors may be hidden in the center of the jar.

To predict the number of individuals included in a mixed sample, Marciano, a trained molecular biologist with a background in forensic DNA analysis, teamed up with Adelman, a computer scientist and statistician. Together, they applied an established computer science method called machine learning to the problem of untangling mixed DNA samples.

Machine learning, a branch of artificial intelligence, uses existing data to train computers how to solve problems on their own with new data. The method works best with complex problems and in cases with a lot of example data for the training phase, making machine learning a great match for the DNA analysis challenge, Adelman says.

While machine learning has been used extensively in other fields, from stock market trading to spam filtering, Adelman and Marciano say they’ve never seen it applied to forensics science. To arrive at this novel application took “two people with different backgrounds and a white board,” Marciano says.

After training their algorithms on massive amounts of data from the New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and the Onondaga County Center for Forensics Sciences, PACE’s prediction powers were put to the test identifying the number of people included in mixed samples with known numbers of contributors—and it passed with flying colors.

As detailed in their upcoming journal article, PACE improved prediction accuracy of three- or four-person mixed samples by 6 percent and 20 percent, respectively, over current methods. What’s more, PACE is able to accurately classify the samples in a matter of seconds, as compared to the up to nine hours required for current methods.

PACE represents a major leap forward in DNA analysis, Adelman says. “Incremental improvements happen in technology development all the time, but this could completely change how the problem of ‘deconvoluting’ mixed samples is solved,” he says. “It looks like disruptive technology.”

Kevin Antshel

Antshel, joined by psychology associate professor and professor are using the two-year, $96,150 grant to create a new “prevention intervention” program to be implemented during freshman orientation. The program’s goal is to head off inappropriate stimulant use before it ever starts.

“Colleges across the country are already equipped to do prevention interventions for alcohol and for marijuana, but there really are not any for stimulant misuse in undergraduates,” Antshel says.

Stimulant misuse has risen greatly in the past decade as a result of the ease in obtaining the drugs and its perception as a harmless academic performance enhancer, Antshel says. But contrary to its perceived function as an “academic steroid,” stimulant misuse is associated with lower grades and other indicators of reduced academic success.

“Because ADHD is a psychiatric disorder diagnosed by symptoms, it is relatively easy to fake. As such, there’s a fairly high rate of conscious feigning of the disorder to access Adderall, or other stimulants,” Antshel says.

To combat stimulant misuse in undergraduates, the researchers plan to use two behavioral interventions: motivational interviewing and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Motivational interviewing draws on each student’s skills to identify personal prevention strategies and address ambivalence toward stimulant misuse.

“This technique makes the assumption that people are experts on themselves. As such, we don’t have to come up with all the good ideas—the freshmen develop ideas based on their own strengths, motivations and resources. It really is person-centered,” Antshel says.

While current alcohol preventative interventions often draw on motivational interviewing, the researchers are also including CBT to further support the program. Because most students who misuse Adderall and related stimulants do so in the hopes of improving their academic performance, CBT will focus on the development of academic skills for success. The hope is that when armed with tools to avoid procrastination and improve time management, students won’t feel the pull to turn to stimulants.

Aesoon Park and Stephen Maisto

The prevention intervention is currently being developed and later this fall Syracuse University seniors will be trained as peer interventionists. Upperclassmen will conduct motivational interviewing and CBT with small groups of first-year students in introductory psychology courses. At the end of the fall semester, freshmen will participate in focus groups to further shape prevention intervention methods.

After adjusting the prevention intervention based on focus group feedback, a full, randomized, controlled trial will be conducted over the following three semesters to gather pilot data for a larger, University wide study. During the trial, freshmen will participate in the prevention intervention at the beginning of each semester and report on their stimulant use behavior at the semester’s conclusion.

“In freshmen orientation, students discuss relationship violence, alcohol misuse and other risky behaviors. Our goal is to include stimulant misuse in the discussion,” Antshel says, adding “This isn’t an issue that’s specific to Syracuse University—this is a big issue on all college campuses.”

Simon Catterall

“It’s very gratifying to see that one’s research is appreciated by the wider community of physicists. This is work that I have been pursuing for more than a decade, and it’s been exciting. We have made a lot of progress and its nice to see that it is well recognized,” Catterall says.

The APS is a nonprofit organization that aims to promote physics through publishing top-notch physics journals, sponsoring scientific meetings and performing outreach. Catterall’s work has been published in APS journals including Physical Review D and Physical Review Letters. The organization elects fellows based on an APS member’s “exceptional contributions to the physics enterprise.”

“This is well-deserved recognition for Simon’s invention of new ways to simulate the physics of subatomic particles using supercomputers,” says Alan Middleton, professor and department chair. “It is most impressive that Simon made these contributions while also being an outstanding teacher and serving administratively as associate chair.”

Catterall’s recognized work focuses on the use of lattice field theory methods to explore extensions of the so-called Standard Model of particle physics, which describes the most elementary particles of nature and their interactions. For example, because the nucleus of an atom is made up of even smaller particles, known as quarks, lattice field theory can describe the structure of an atom’s nucleus based on the quark’s interactions.

“Understanding how the nucleus of an atom works can be used to predict the behavior of matter at extreme densities and pressures—such as in neutron stars or at times shortly after the Big Bang,” Catterall says.

Beyond that, Catterall’s work attempts to reconcile two areas of study in physics: general relativity, which describes the universe at large scales, and quantum mechanics, which deals with the very, very small. To this end, he works on theories of quantum gravity, which take into account quantum fluctuations of gravity. Recently, this has included using numerical simulations to study a newly conjectured spacetime symmetry called “supersymmetry,” which connects particles mediating forces with matter particles.

“Efforts to look for new physics beyond the Standard Model are concerned with really big questions, like ‘What is the origin of mass for fundamental particles? Are there extra dimensions of space? How do we merge quantum mechanics with Einstein’s theory of general relativity?’ Lattice gauge theory methods are useful in answering all of these questions,” Catterall says.

Catterall belongs to a four-faculty-member theory group, with two post-doctoral scholars and nine graduate students as well as undergraduate researchers. They are funded by a Department of Energy grant supporting research ranging from Catterall’s specialty of lattice gauge theory to exploring physics at play in the early universe to explaining experimental results from the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).

Catterall is the 21^st professor in Syracuse’s lauded physics department to be awarded this honor since the first fellow was elected in 1949. Current Syracuse APS Fellows include physics professors Marina Artuso, Mark Bowick, Duncan Brown, Cristina Marchetti, Alan Middleton, Peter Saulson, Eric Schiff, Tomasz Skwarnicki, Paul Souder, Sheldon Stone and Gianfranco Vidali, as well as engineering and computer sciences professor Mark Glauser.

An award from the U.S. Department of Education will support the chemistry department’s goal of increasing the program’s graduated student diversity.

A Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need (GAANN) award from the U.S. Department of Education to the chemistry department will support the program’s quest to increase graduate student diversity. Through aggressive recruitment and programming to support retention of women and minorities in the field, co-principal investigators Nancy Totah and John Chisholm, both associate professors, aim to increase diversity in chemistry both at Syracuse University and in the field as a whole.

“Diversity enhances creativity and scientific productivity. If we want to compete effectively in the global market, then we need to take advantage of the benefits that diversity brings,” Totah says.

GAANN program director Totah and teaching coordinator Chisholm were awarded the $738,195, three-year grant, which includes a 25 percent match from the College of Arts & Sciences to fund students’ tuition. This is the second GAANN award Totah has nabbed, with the first supporting momentum gained over the department’s decade-long pursuit to increase diversity. During that time period the proportion of underrepresented minority chemistry graduate students has more than doubled to 14 percent. Totah hopes to see that number rise to 25 percent.

“We hope to use funding from this grant to further increase the number of women and underrepresented individuals who pursue a Ph.D.,” Chisholm says. “We also hope that we can mentor more female and minority Ph.D. students to consider faculty positions, as these groups are still underrepresented in chemistry faculty.”

Nationwide, fewer than 10 percent of chemistry Ph.D.s are awarded to underrepresented minorities, who represent roughly 4 percent of tenured/tenure-track faculty. Alternately, women are relatively well represented at the Ph.D. level (38 percent in the U.S. in 2012), but make up only 18 percent of chemistry faculty.

When Totah began her career, she says she frequently heard prospective graduate students remark that she was the first female chemistry professor they had met. “Fortunately, I do not hear this much any more, but there remains a need to expand the number of women chemists in faculty positions,” Totah says.

The GAANN program works to ameliorate underrepresentation through recruitment of future graduate students and mentorship of current grads. “A big part of recruiting is simply to let people know that the fellowships are available, and then to provide information about what makes our department special,” Totah says.

She plans to recruit externally from Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Hispanic Serving Institutions, as well as draw on support from Syracuse chapters of the national organizations and .

Nancy Totah and John Chisholm

As teaching coordinator, Chisholm will offer support to GAANN students participating in the graduate school’s Future Professoriate Program, which aims to prepare graduate students for a career in academia. Specifically, students will complete the requirements for a Certificate of University Teaching, which provides the students a valuable credential for their CV, while simultaneously assisting the preparation of materials needed to apply for faculty positions, such as statements of teaching philosophy.

“As our nation becomes increasingly diverse, the need to ensure that new scientific talent is nurtured, recognized and supported across all demographic groups also increases,” Chisholm says. “Researchers from diverse backgrounds balance and broaden the perspective in setting research priorities. Achieving diversity in the field is about ensuring that the most creative minds have the opportunity to contribute to advances in chemistry.”

Robert Doyle

“The symposium will showcase research going on across the sciences—from philosophy of science through physics, chemistry, forensics, engineering, materials science and beyond. It’s really a full gambit of research investigations,” Doyle says.

Undergraduates who have conducted one full semester of research and are eligible for participation in SU’s or programs are encouraged to apply before 5 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 7, To be considered for inclusion, students simply need to submit a 400-word abstract of previous research on the .

Doyle was named a Meredith Professor in spring 2016. “It’s a huge honor to be in the company of the other recipients—you can see many great teachers on that list,” he says. An endowment from the prestigious professorship supports the symposium, as well as $2,500 prizes for the symposium’s two best speakers, who will also be named Meredith Scholars. The prizes will fund the students’ travel, along with their research mentors, to present their research at a national conference of their choice.

“The awards are set up to both support and showcase the students’ research nationally, as well as make sure they’re mentored and supported from day one, all the way through a national conference,” he says.

By focusing on two populations that are underrepresented in many scientific fields, particularly at the faculty level, Doyle hopes to increase diversity in science. “The symposium is a way of recognizing that there are more barriers for some student groups than others—we really want to show that we are behind them and their science,” he says.

The unique challenges of being a first-generation college student are not new to Doyle, who was the first in his family to go to college. “We need to put support structures in place to help students through college because, as in my experience, their parents might be really encouraging but not fully understand college’s pressures.”

Encouraging diversity in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) is equally important to the symposium’s mission. “STEM fields have become increasingly important as they impact our national security, health, global competiveness and long-term economic growth,” says Christabel Sheldon, director of the McNair program and member of the symposium selection panel. “Yet, people of color and women are greatly underrepresented in many STEM fields. Diversity generates a wide breadth of perspectives and improves problem solving. Lack of diversity means that we’re missing out on great opportunities, brain power and talent.”

Doyle adds, “You only have to look at my own field of chemistry—there’s only been one female Nobel laureate in the past 50 years. Chemistry has the reputation of being an old boys club and sufficient long-term support for women just isn’t there.”

The Meredith Symposium will take place on Saturday, Oct. 22, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in Breed Lecture Hall (room 105) of the Life Sciences Complex. More information, including details on two keynote speeches from Syracuse alumni Nerissa Viola G’09 and Anna Kahkoska ‘13, can be found on the .

“Even if students think they don’t fit they should still apply—we’re going for eclectic here, we want to see many viewpoints,” Doyle says.

Victoria Tumanova

“It’s great to see Dr. Tumanova rebuild a strong stuttering research program. In the ’80s and ’90s SU was one of the top stuttering research programs in the country,” says department chair, Karen Doherty. She explains that a former SU professor, Edward Conture, and an alumna, Patricia Zebrowski, mentored Tumanova prior to her accepting an assistant professorship at SU in 2013 and kicking off research in 2014. “Thus, it comes full circle for Dr. Tumanova to be the person to rebuild the stuttering lab,” Doherty says.

Stuttering is a speech disorder that first arises in children around the age of three. A majority of children recover, sometimes without therapy. However, others experience stuttering into adulthood. The condition is known to disproportionately influence boys and is thought to have a genetic component. It was previously thought that parents caused stuttering, but in fact the opposite is true: parents can support a child’s fluency through modifying their linguistic interactions.

“I have two friends, including a childhood best friend, who stutter, so I was familiar with the condition on a personal level,” Tumanova says.

Tumanova’s work focuses on factors that contribute to the development of stuttering in preschool-aged children. Specifically, she investigates how temperament, linguistic and speech motor control abilities influence the development of stuttering.

“Motivated by current theoretical models, I have been studying the association between emotional processes and developmental stuttering in early childhood,” she says.

Over the past 11 years Tumanova has investigated emotional and physiological reactions to word production, which is a challenge to children who are just learning to speak. Additionally, she has tracked motor control in stuttering adults through the use of movement tracking technology—a processes Tumanova is currently adapting to enable similar studies in young children.

Tumanova is now focusing on how preschoolers react when they stutter or produce other speech errors. The researchers measure psychophysiological reaction signals, including heart rate and skin conductance, which is a physiological response to an emotionally arousing stimulus. These tools are paired with motion capture to track speech motor control abilities.

“Several studies have shown that children who stutter are more reactive and less able to regulate their reactivity and attention than nonstuttering children. We’re trying to uncover how these differences in emotional reactivity and regulation may affect speech production, specifically speech fluency in these children,” Tumanova says.

The stuttering research lab is also recruiting preschoolers for current and future studies. They’re looking for children who do and do not stutter. Tumanova says, “the studies are fun for the kids and parents get valuable information about their kids’ speech and language development.” To participate in a study, contact Tumanova via email at vtumanov@syr.edu.

Ellyn Riley

“Dr. Riley has done an excellent job developing the aphasia lab, which brings a new area of research to our department, and fits in well with the neuroscience integrated learning major program at SU,” says department chair Karen Doherty.

Aphasia is a common language disorder that, in addition to stroke, can be caused by other attacks on the brain’s language centers, such as traumatic brain injury, infection, brain tumor or neurodegenerative diseases. The condition causes sufferers to have difficulty expressing and understanding language. Diagnosis by a speech-language pathologist or neurologist involves brain imaging and speech and language tests. Speech therapy is the primary treatment, but Riley will be investigating additional, supportive modalities to aid recovery.

Riley’s interest in aphasia was sparked when her grandmother experienced a stroke, leading to aphasia, “She recovered quite well, but I remember the difficulty she experienced with communication, which was particularly frustrating for her as a former writer,” Riley says.

In her 11 years of research in the aphasia field, Riley has worked on linguistic complexity theory, specifically a model called “Complexity Account of Treatment Efficacy” (CATE). The model turned current speech therapy strategy on its head, suggesting language therapy first focus on producing more difficult sentences, words, or speech sounds. “Because of the way we think language is organized in the brain, when you learn to produce more difficult language structures, your brain is able to make connections to related structures without having to build each piece separately. The net result of this is more efficient learning—clients are able to learn simpler structures without additional training.” Riley says. Riley’s previous research expanded CATE from speaking to reading when she successfully developed a new “complex first” treatment for acquired alexia, a reading disorder that can develop following stroke.

Current work in the Riley lab, which includes four undergraduate and four master’s students, focuses on identifying influences of patients’ personal factors on aphasia recovery. “Most aphasia treatment research focuses on figuring out what to do differently within the therapy session to make treatment more effective. However, relatively little is known about how other factors can influence an individual’s recovery or how they might predict outcomes of treatment,” Riley says.

Riley explains that treating aphasia’s co-occurring sleep disorders, like sleep apnea, may hold the key for improved speech therapy outcomes. “We know that poorly managed sleep disorders can lead to reduced cognitive function, but that treating sleep disorders can help cognitive function in general. But we don’t know what effects this might have on aphasia recovery—perhaps treating an underlying sleep disorder could result in faster, greater improvements during therapy,” she says.

Riley hopes that her new lab will inspire more students in the department to pursue research careers. “Dr. Riley has made an impressive effort to include many undergraduate and graduate students in her lab, which has been a terrific experience for the students,” Doherty says.

Riley adds, “I encourage my students to be involved in all aspects of the research process and think about our research as a piece of a larger puzzle. Many students in our field seem to think research is only for Ph.D.s, but I want them to realize that research doesn’t have to be inaccessible.”

By virtually modeling the way atoms interact at a solid surface, College of Engineering and Computer Science researchers suggest that passive liquid flow could serve as a highly efficient coolant-delivery mechanism without the need for pumps.

“We were surprised at the strength of the passive liquid flow we obtained, which showed that it can used to remove a large amount of heat over a very small surface area,” says , assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and senior author on the new study.

Surface-driven passive liquid flow is different from the more widely known capillary action. Capillary action, where liquid is seemingly sucked up into very narrow spaces, is primarily governed by vapor-liquid interactions and has been studied extensively. Capillary action can be seen in man-made and natural systems, including water wicking up a piece of fabric or paper.

Alternately, surface-driven flow arises from molecular interactions between a solid surface and the liquid. The current research found that surface-driven flow is much stronger than capillary action. “It presents an opportunity to design technological systems that can benefit from these stronger flows,” Maroo says of the study’s practical applications.

In the current study, Maroo and then-Syracuse Ph.D. student Sumith YD, lead author of the study, computer simulated interacting atoms of liquids and solid surfaces to better understand how passive flow works at an atomic level. (YD is now a post-doc at the University of Georgia.) “These simulations provide valuable insight into the process, and can help us in designing experiments to realize heat removal devices for cooling electronics,” Maroo says.

As electronics have gotten smaller, the problem of cooling next-generation technology has become more difficult, Maroo says. For new devices, like integrated circuit chips, transistors and concentrated photovoltaic devices, heat needs to be dissipated at a greater amount per surface area. For example, a household iron generates roughly 5 watts per squared centimeter of heat. Next-generation devices can create up to 1,000 watts of heat over the same area.

Building off this research, Maroo aims for creation of cooling devices that can dissipate the massive amount of concentrated heat generated by small-scale devices through surface-driven passive flow. Liquid would continually evaporate at the hot surfaces, while simultaneously being continually drawn to the areas requiring cooling by the passive flow mechanism.

“Advancements in high heat flux removal through passive flow techniques are critical for developing next-generation energy and electronic devices,” Maroo says. “Nanoscale evaporation heat transfer, coupled with surface-driven passive flow, can combine high heat flux removal with passive liquid supply; hence, pursuing this potentially disruptive technology is of critical importance.”

Yuan Yuan

The geometry you may have learned in high school describes three-dimensional objects that can be observed in the world we live in. Complex geometry can further be used to explain abstract phenomena in physics, Yuan says. “It has been used in string theory and quantum field theory in order to describe elementary particles for physicists.”

Yuan was invited to the seventh ICCM to present his work on holomorphic isometries, a subclass of holomorphic maps, which describe the relationship between two spaces while preserving complex geometric structure as well as the measurement of distances.

The triennial ICCM brings together illustrious Chinese mathematicians from all over the world to discuss advances in pure and applied math. This year’s conference included over 1,500 attendees. “The invited speakers in ICCM are leaders in their fields—their names include most of the well-established Chinese mathematicians across many subfields,” Yuan says. “It is a very big honor to give an invited lecture at this event.”

A Simons Collaboration Grant from the Simons Foundation, a funder of basic sciences and mathematics, will support Yuan in furthering his research. The $35,000 grant will support five years of investigation on the rigidity of holomorphic maps and complex Monge-Ampère equations. Both of these areas have implications in additional fields of mathematics and physics.

In physics, rigidity describes the property of an object to resist to being bent or deformed. Yuan will be looking at a similar property in complex geometry. “It is of great interest to understand the algebraic and differential geometric structure of Hermitian symmetric spaces, which serve as basic models not only in differential and algebraic geometry, but in mathematical physics, number theory and other fields,” he says.

Similarly, the geometric objects admitting solutions to classes of complex Monge-Ampère equations can serve as models of extra dimensions of spacetime in superstring theory in physics.

“These equations are indispensable tools to study various canonical Kähler metrics and formation of singularities on the complex algebraic manifolds, which not only reveals the mysteries of deep, unified and fundamental intrinsic structures in mathematics, but also plays a crucial role in understanding physical laws,” Yuan says.

Joshua Woods

Joshua Woods, a senior chemical engineering major in the and chemistry minor in the , was awarded a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The fellowship was awarded based on his research proposal titled “Synthesis, Characterization and Application of Heterobimetallic Compounds for Chemical Vapor Deposition” and will support his upcoming graduate research on chemical processes involved in the creation of advanced electronics at Cornell University.

Woods’ research mentor, and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, , says, “I am very proud of Josh winning a NSF graduate fellowship. These are highly competitive, and a wonderful expression of Josh’s capacity and promise as a researcher.”

“In addition to thanking Professor Ruhlandt for all of her guidance and support, I would like to thank my graduate student mentor Catherine Lavin and , both of which have provided me with indispensable guidance in synthetic chemistry, crystallography and life in graduate school,” Woods says.

The NSF fellowship is awarded to early-career graduate students and provides a three-year stipend. This stipend enables grads to focus solely on research during the fellowship years. Due to Woods’ combined interests in chemistry and chemical engineering, the award will also support him in working with professors in both of those departments.

“I remember when my advisor suggested that I apply for the award. I had never dreamed that I would be awarded the fellowship,” Woods says. He continues: “When I opened the email I immediately called my parents, even though it was 5 in the morning, because I was so excited!”

Since his sophomore year at Syracuse, Woods has conducted research in Ruhlandt’s chemistry lab. The research group focuses on a class of elements called the alkali and alkaline earth metals. “These are the most reactive metals on the periodic table and explode when they come in contact with any air or moisture,” Woods explains. Aside from their dramatic chemical interactions, this class of elements has far-ranging applications in areas including medicine, high-tech electronics and batteries.

Additionally, Woods investigated the creation of compounds that could be used in energy storage—think batteries and solar panels—under at the Technical University of Graz in Austria.

Of the multiple projects Woods has worked on, he is particularly drawn to the particulars of a process called chemical vapor deposition. This process is used to lay down thin coats of material and is a key step in the production of cutting-edge electronics, including superconductors and advanced computer memory devices, Woods explains.

For his graduate work, Woods proposed to address one of the limitations of the deposition process. “Problems arise when trying to deposit more than one metal at a time onto the desired substrate. A way around this could potentially be to use compounds containing two, three or even more metals in a stoichiometrically controlled manner,” Woods says. He also proposed to use this technology to fabricate new electronic devices. By both synthesizing and characterizing these materials, and investigating their applications, Woods is combining his interests of chemistry and chemical engineering.

Aside from a strong research plan, the NSF fellowship also requires that proposals incorporate additional benefits to those outside the academic science community. To this end, Woods proposed a program similar to “Excellerators” at Syracuse University, where undergraduates volunteer with recruiting and outreach. “I feel that there are a lot of people who could be recruited into the sciences if they understood how awesome the field really is,” he says. “People are often scared away from science and math in high school and I want to work towards including those people and getting them excited.”

All of his passion is reflected in Ruhlandt’s thoughts on Woods, “Josh is a wonderful example of what we are looking for in a student: smart, dedicated, hard working and caring. I am so proud of him, and wish him all the best as he moves to the next phase in his life, graduate school in chemistry at Cornell University.”

Snigdha Chatterjee

Chatterjee is the only undergraduate in the nation to be awarded this year’s ASPB travel grant. “I could not believe it,” she says of her initial reaction to the news. Her mentor, , credits Chatterjee’s strong application. He explains, “Selection of these awards is primarily based on the abstract submitted by the student, which means the selection committee was impressed with what Snigdha is doing and will be presenting at the meeting.”

The travel grant will support Chatterjee to attend the ASPB meeting in Austin, Texas, this July, where she will present her research on plant defense systems. The Raina lab, Chatterjee included, investigates the role of epigenetics in plant defenses against disease. Epigenetics concerns changes in the expression of genes by modifying the three-dimensional shape of DNA through a process known as chromatin remodeling. Or, as Chatterjee explains, “Epigenetics is the heritable change in gene expression that is not due to a change in the actual DNA sequence.”

Chatterjee’s project involves a gene that controls drought and disease resistance. She found that the gene, DDR1, is involved in plant cell death, drought resistance and defense when plants are exposed to harmful bacteria. “To the best of our knowledge, DDR1 is the first chromatin remodeler that has been shown to regulate drought tolerance and cell death in plants, and that is very exciting.” She further explains that a long-term goal of the research is to “develop novel approaches to create crop plants that have enhanced resistance against pathogens and drought.”

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship will support Chatterjee’s further investigations into epigenetics and plant disease responses. The fellowship, which was awarded to only 15 students this year, provides a stipend, funding for research supplies and additional travel funds for ASPB’s 2017 conference in Honolulu.

Chatterjee, a native of East Syracuse, is working on majors in biotechnology and biophysical science, in addition to a minor in chemistry. She has been with the Raina Lab since her freshman year.

“He asked me about research and I had told him that I was interested, but did not know where to start,” she says. Raina then offered her a position is his lab, which she enthusiastically accepted. “I wanted to try it out because it is a molecular biology lab and I was interested in molecular biology since high school,” she continues.

While not studying and researching, Chatterjee also finds time for community service. She serves as master of ceremonies and service co-chair of the professional chemistry fraternity, Alpha Chi Sigma. Additionally, Chatterjee tutors refugee children for the Young Scholars through the Office of Engagement Programs on campus.

After graduating next May, Chatterjee is interested in continuing her epigenetics research at a graduate school. Raina suggests her passion for research will take her far, “Snigdha is one of the most dedicated, committed and organized undergraduate students I have had in my lab. She is very passionate about research,” he says.

An international team of researchers, including Syracuse postdoctoral researcher Holly Root-Gutteridge, discovered that different canids, a group including wolves, coyotes and domestic dogs, all have their own ways of howling.

A southern drawl or a cockney accent can quickly pinpoint where a person grew up. Researchers have found that regional vocalization patterns aren’t just for humans—dialects can likewise differ among groups of wolves.

Holly Root-Gutteridge

An international team of researchers, including Syracuse postdoctoral researcher , discovered that different canids, a group including wolves, coyotes and domestic dogs, all have their own ways of howling. Root-Gutteridge says, “I’ve been known to compare American wolves to jazz singers because they move around a lot vocally. European wolves are more like classical singers, where they hit a note and hold it.” The results from this study have implications for the conservation of the critically endangered red wolf.

Researchers, led by University of Cambridge Herchel Smith Research Fellow Arik Kershenbaum, compared recordings of over 2,000 howls from 13 different species and subspecies to look for group-specific differences. Recordings were accumulated from international acoustic libraries, recordings from wolf researchers and even YouTube. Domestic dogs were included in the study thanks to one tenacious intern who sifted through “many, many hours” of YouTube clips of howling pets.

The team compared vocalizations of different canids to identify differences in howling frequency. As Root-Gutteridge explains, the researchers “followed the notes wolves ‘sing.’” She continues, “For example, if you sing ‘do-re-mi,’ you’re hitting different frequencies.”

Red wolf howl courtesy of British Library Sound Archive

Differences were often found in the notes wolves howled, or how quickly they moved through them. Surprisingly, two different species, red wolves and coyotes, shared many common howl characteristics. These two species not only share overlapping ranges in the American southeast, but they have also been known to mate with one another. Hybrid matings are a major problem for protecting the genetic purity of the critically endangered red wolf. Root-Gutteridge suggests that the overlapping vocalization types of the two species may be due to their mixed genetics.

Root-Gutteridge aims to map even finer-scale differences in vocalization patterns in the future, down to regional dialects within subspecies. She says, “As an analogy, if someone has an American accent, most people recognize, ‘Oh it’s American’, but there are finer differences in dialects from North Carolina versus Texas versus Virginia. You might have to listen a little harder to pick out the latter.”

Her future plans represent a heightened level of resolution than Root-Gutteridge’s earliest research on wolf vocalizations. Prior to her Ph.D. research, she volunteered with a team investigating southern European wolves. “We’d go to the top of these Italian mountains and we’d howl at the wolves using a machine. Then we’d stand there and listen and start arguing about how many wolves were howling back to us.” While nights with no replies were easy to record, when multiple wolves responded she found it increasingly tricky to identify how many wolves and of what ages were in the area.

“From Italian mountaintops to Cambridge professors, it’s been quite a ride,” Root-Gutteridge says.

The team’s paper was recently published in Behavioural Processes and can be accessed .

Coyote howl courtesy of British Library Sound Archive

Scientist-astronaut Harrison Schmitt, Apollo 17 lunar module pilot, collects lunar samples. (Image: NASA 1972)

Perhaps we don’t realize when we look into the night sky at the moon that we are observing some of the most ancient surfaces known within our solar system. The formation of the moon is linked to the early stages of Earth’s evolution, and therefore understanding the evolution of the moon is of interest to Earth scientists as well.

Moon rocks preserve the lunar history in their minerals and textures. As it turns out, researchers don’t need a large sample to gain interesting insights. A small scoop of lunar surface material (i.e., regolith) collected from the Apollo 17 mission is bringing researchers one step closer to understanding how the lunar surface formed.

, Earth sciences postdoctoral researcher and lead author of a new study in Earth, Planets, and Space, explains that “Even the smallest lunar grain can reveal a wealth of information.”

Das and Earth sciences Professor , along with Professor , their collaborator from University at Albany, were able to extract information from tiny samples of lunar regolith. These samples were collected 44 years ago on the surface of the moon by Apollo 17 astronauts. The project is part of an investigation carried out in collaboration with the New York Center for Astrobiology.

The team examined 11 fragments, which, when combined, weigh less than a grain of rice. The scientists were able to determine the age of the fragments, as well as how long the grains had been on the surface of the moon and their source on the surface of the moon.

The samples came from the base of the Sculptured Hills, located north of the Taurus-Littrow valley where Apollo 17 landed in 1972. During their last traverse on the surface of the moon, Apollo 17 astronauts dug a 25 cm-deep trench at the bottom of the Sculptured Hills. For their study, Das and his colleagues acquired material from the top 6 centimeters of the trench.

The team established the age of the tiny rock fragments by using the ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar radiometric method. By measuring ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar ratios using a highly sensitive noble gas mass spectrometer, the team determined minimum ages of crystallization for the small rock fragments. The samples were found to be 4.1-4.4 billion years old. The ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar ages are the first ages determined for the regolith sample that was collected at the base of the Sculptured Hills.

Surprisingly, although the individual fragments came from the same 6 centimeter-deep scoop, they spent different durations on the surface of the moon. The duration spent on the lunar surface was determined by using ³⁸Ar, an isotope of argon that is produced when minerals are exposed to highly energetic cosmic rays (mostly protons) from the sun and other stars. Using the rate of ³⁸Ar production, Das and colleagues determined that neighboring particles had been at, or near, the lunar surface between 1 and 24 million years.

Das suggests a few explanations behind the range in time estimates for the rock fragment’s surface exposure. The first explanation comes from an active process known as reworking of material on the surface. Das explains: “The fragments are so fine that under the electromagnetic field of the sun, they actually jump around on the surface and you can measure the difference in the duration the fragments spent on the moon’s surface.” The other possibility is that some of the fragments may have rolled down slope from the Sculptured Hills, resulting in a different amount of time exposed on the surface.

By combining the results of ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar ages and chemical compositions of the 11 fragments, Das and his colleagues were also able to determine that the fragments were derived from the highland rocks and not from the impact basins.

“We wanted to use the noble gas (argon) to determine not only how old the rock fragments were, but also how long they had been lying on the surface of the moon,” Baldwin says.

This study serves as a confirmation that valuable information can be gathered from < 1 mg samples. “We wanted to design our experiments to retrieve as much information as we could,” Das says. Das also hopes that these protocols will be useful in future space missions, with a specific nod to NASA’s upcoming OSIRIS-REx mission, the mission slated to gather samples from Bennu, a near-Earth asteroid 101955.

Part of the lunar surface

“When you’re doing fieldwork on Earth, most of the time you can collect plenty of samples for analysis—that’s not the case on planetary missions,” Das says. Fortunately the protocol used by Das and his colleagues shows that even the smallest rock fragment can yield great insights about lunar processes.

The funding for this study was provided by the NASA Astrobiology Institute (grant NNA09DA80A) and Syracuse University.

Das, Baldwin and Delano’s paper can be read in its entirety .

Saposin B, a protein found in the cell’s lysosome bound to the anti-malarial drug Chloroquine

The drug chloroquine has long been used to treat malaria, but it is not without side effects. Chloroquine kills malaria by causing the pH in certain parts of the parasite’s cell to increase, preventing important biochemical reactions. Unfortunately, excessive use of the drug can be toxic to humans too. Long-term use of chloroquine can lead to side effects from gastrointestinal distress all the way up to chemical harm to the heart and death.

To better understand how chloroquine toxicity occurs, Doyle and his team set out to investigate what the drug binds to in human cells. Doyle had a hunch that chloroquine might be acting with a particular protein, saposin B, found in the lysosome of cells. Lysosomes break down and remove waste from cells, including excess lipids. People without saposin B develop a fatal, incurable condition, illustrating the importance of this protein in the cell.

“I was studying saposin B interaction with a natural lipid found in cells. It occurred to me that the lysosome is where the anti-malarial drug chloroquine also localizes after you ingest it. Since saposin B can remove damaged lipids, I wondered if it might bind chloroquine and reduce the drug’s toxicity as a consequence,” Doyle says.

The team was pleasantly surprised to find that saposin B does bind chloroquine. This result was unexpected because saposin B is known to bind lipids—and chloroquine is not a lipid. “This is a new class of molecule for saposin B to bind,” Doyle says.

Doyle, Huta and Nie confirmed the binding activity with collaborators at SUNY Potsdam. In addition, collaborators in France determined the physical structures involved in binding. “The fact that we obtained a structure of the saposin B with chloroquine bound was also wonderful, since up until now there has been no structure of saposin B with any bound molecule,” Doyle says. “Quite a first, and a testament to the skills of our collaborators in France.”

This new knowledge of chloroquine binding offers a suggestion as to the drug’s toxicity. Because saposin B binds both lipids and the drug, prolonged use of the drug may keep saposin B busy binding chloroquine instead of removing damaged lipids from the cell, Doyle says.

Now that the team knows that saposin B binds more than just lipids, the door is wide open to investigate other conditions in which the protein may play a role. “The results suggest that saposin B might be up to a lot more than originally thought. We think that it might have a role in play in certain lysosomal storage diseases and have started a new collaboration to explore this approach,” Doyle says.

The study, lead authored by Huta, was featured on the cover of the journal ChemMedChem. The full article can be found .

Caitlin McDonough

Steve Dorus, associate professor of biology and McDonough’s co-advisor, says the award is well deserved. “It allows Caitlin to reach her ambitious research goals,” he adds.

Scott Pitnick, the Weeden Professor of Biology and McDonough’s other advisor, agrees: “She is phenomenally smart and driven, and is among the best graduate students I have had the privilege of working with.”

McDonough takes the praise in stride, saying it’s all “pretty incredible … [and] still mostly overwhelming.”

As for her research, it turns out that mating is not the end of reproduction: a lot happens within the female reproductive tract after mating, too.

McDonough studies proteins secreted by females that interact with sperm, as well as other proteins that males transfer during mating. She is particularly interested in a tiny pair of organs known as parovaria, found in female insects. “It’s about the size of the point of a needle, but its size changes a lot, depending on whether or not it’s filled with proteins,” she says. “When the parovaria is full, you can see the faint outline of all of these different cells, which is really pretty.”

Parovaria are largely a mystery to scientists—one McDonough hopes to crack. She says that previous research suggests that female-produced proteins play an important role in reproductive events, such as moving sperm into specialized storage organs, fertilizing eggs and laying them. However, it’s difficult to nail down the jobs of different secretions from different organs. “The problem is that there’s just so much going on in the female reproductive tract. It’s really hard to parse out what exactly is happening and what the female is contributing,” McDonough says.

To identify what female proteins are important for reproductive processes, she compares levels of RNA in mated and unmated females of the fruit fly, which is the standard work-horse for genetic studies. RNA is the intermediate player in translating the genetic code into active proteins. If the level of RNA changes drastically after mating, it’s a good indicator that the protein the RNA encodes is a player in reproductive processes.

McDonough explains that many different animals produce the same proteins—from tiny flies to humans. “Research like this has implications on proteins that might be secreted by the human female reproductive tract, as well,” she says. By identifying the role of specific proteins in fruit flies, McDonough implies we may better understand how reproduction works in our own bodies.

Beyond studying the sex life of flies, McDonough is interested in the intersection between biological studies of sex and sexuality and gender studies in humans. “I’m really interested in thinking about our biases and how, especially in the reproductive field, we butt heads a little bit with issues of sensitivity towards issues of sexuality and gender,” she says.

McDonough thinks considering our definitions of male and female roles (e.g., the presumption of active males and passive females) can improve research. For instance, it can get scientists thinking of new questions about animals that fall outside standard human gender roles. “I think it could really use a shakeup. It’s definitely happening in the scientific community, and I think it will happen faster if scientists and groups outside the scientific community talk to each other,” she says.

Meanwhile, McDonough has many flies to dissect and many proteins to measure, all with enthusiastic support from her advisors. Adds Dorus: “We’re excited to see where her research leads us. I’m confident that this isn’t the last newsworthy accomplishment in store for Caitlin during her time at Syracuse.

A geological engineer prepares sampling tool for drilling aboard a scientific drilling barge on Lake Malawi. (Photo by Christopher Scholz)

Earth sciences professor Christopher Scholz and former Ph.D. student Robert Lyons have an unprecedented glimpse into the past of a lake with explosive biodiversity. Along with colleagues from six other universities, Scholz and Lyons have unearthed a 380-meter-deep time capsule from Lake Malawi.

Lyons says the core shows that “East African moisture history over the last 1.3 million years is a lot more complicated than was previously postulated.”

The team’s observed variation in lake level also gives an explanation for the lake’s unrivaled diversity of fishes. The lake hosts about 1,000 unique species of brightly colored fish called cichlids, some of which you may have seen in a home aquarium. “The cichlids had to deal with repeated changes in lake level. We think this environmental forcing had a big impact on speciation and diversification of these fish,” Scholz says.

Bordered by Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania, Lake Malawi is roughly the size of two Lake Ontarios and, at 700 meters, is deeper than One World Trade Center is tall. Because of the lake’s great depth and local climate conditions the lake is stratified into an upper, oxygenated portion, and a lower, oxygen-deprived zone, much like Central New York’s Green Lakes, though for different climatic and chemical reasons.

Christopher Scholz

According to data from the core, at various points throughout its history, the lake has cycled down to less than half its current 700-meter depth. During these times, a significant portion of the lake was not covered with water, but in grasslands or even deserts. “There were times when we had two distinct water bodies, which would have further promoted geographic separation of groups of fish and enhanced the generation of new species,” Scholz says.

Scholz and colleagues were able to determine past lake levels by looking for sediment traits associated with modern-day shallow lakes in the Rift Valley. Shallower lakes don’t have Lake Malawi’s characteristic two layers; rather, oxygen is found all the way to the lake bottom. The lack of oxygen in the lower level of today’s Lake Malawi means that carbon-rich remains of life that settle to the lake bottom won’t be as broken down as they would in the presence of oxygen. By looking at how well preserved carbon debris is in different depths of the core, the researchers can determine whether lake levels in the past were deep enough for two or just one layer. This data is reinforced by other measurements of the sediment’s chemical makeup, indicating when tiny invertebrates were living at the lake bottom and leaving behind traces of calcium carbonate.

Turning the hundreds of meters of deep core into a timeline required a collection of clever methods from the paper’s many collaborators. Top levels of the core were dated with radiocarbon dating, the tool commonly used to date fossils. For deeper layers, however, the team turned to signals from volcanoes and the Earth’s changing magnetic field. The team connected layers of ash to eruptions of known dates from a local volcano—or in one case, shards of microscopic glass thrown all the way from Indonesia from one of the largest eruptions the world has experienced. The deepest layers of the core were assigned dates by comparing known changes in the Earth’s magnetic field to the observed magnetic field in samples of the core.

In addition to changes in the depth of the lake, the lake’s shoreline also had a varied history, Scholz explains. Seismic data of the current lake bottom shows that different depths are more rocky, sandy or a mix of sand and mud. As the water level changed, these different areas would be exposed. Because fish tend to live in the upper parts of the lake and often near its edges, changing shorelines would lead to repeatedly changing environments for Lake Malawi’s fish. This in turn provided pressure on the fish to adapt to local conditions—a key component in the development of new species.

The core has yet more information to offer. Lyons says, “This paper will pave the way for future publications from collaborators on the project. It provides a foundational data set for other researchers to build upon.”

Scholz, Lyons and their collaborators’ paper detailing Lake Malawi’s changing levels will be published in PNAS.

Jennifer Schwarz

, assistant professor of physics in the , is developing new insights into biological structure, thanks to a $315,000 grant award from the (NSF). She is using the three-year award to study the organization of an internal “skeleton” of cells and how its structure affects the overall mechanics of cells and larger biological structures, as well as the physical organization of nonliving systems.

Schwarz’s work focuses on rigidity transition in nonliving systems. Rigidity occurs when particles in a fluid, flowing substance become so tightly packed that they form a solid. For example, in a partially filled jar of pennies, coins may slosh around when shaken. But if more coins are packed into the jar, the mass of pennies will become rigid and no longer freely flow.

Schwarz studies this transition process to understand how a solid collection of randomly packed particles can return to a fluid, with the deletion of only one particle. Such understanding may help predict characteristics of nonliving systems, such as how sand avalanches occur.

Her grant project also seeks to understand how the principles of rigidity extend into biological systems. “Understanding the mechanics of these disordered systems, whether they are inside a cell or brain tissue, and how these systems are organized could have interesting implications,” she says.

Cell movement is ripe for investigations into rigidity. Cells are more than stationary “bags of water,” Schwarz says. In fact, cells use interior filamentous supports, collectively known as a cytoskeleton, to maintain their shape.

A digital rendering of a filament network

“All of these filaments can intermingle and connect—you can think of it as a little erector set structure in a cell,” she says. Cell filaments then undergo dynamic remodeling to acquire and lose rigidity to enable movement. Existing filaments at the front end of a moving cell can send off small branches of new filament to inch the entire cell forward. Cancer cells use this type of movement to spread themselves throughout the host’s body, making this line of inquiry particularly important.

Schwarz also plans to investigate the mechanics of complex organs such as the brain. Brain tissue is composed of different cell types, including neurons and support cells called glial cells. Glial cells have an interesting trait—when compressed, they stiffen. Schwarz says this is opposite to the intuitive expectation that applying force to the many tiny filaments would make them buckle, making the cell more squishy. She hopes to figure out what explains the stiffness of glial cells, as well as the mechanics underlying why the brain is grooved in general.

Schwarz will employ computer modeling to investigate these complex biological questions in a more tractable way. By controlling physical influences on theoretical systems, she will be able to get down to the basics of how rigidity arises and is maintained in living systems, and how rigid structures respond to external pressures. This approach would enable her to systematically study the role of different forces that contribute to rigidity, such as friction, which would be impossible to avoid in a physical system.

This grant award follows Schwarz’s receipt of a 2007 NSF CAREER award, which recognized her exemplary research and teaching record. She has been a member of the physics department since 2005.

Scott Pitnick

His long-standing love for life science has led to a soon-to-be-published paper with 19 undergraduate coauthors, as well as his appointment as the inaugural Weeden Professor at Syracuse University.

The professorship is named after SU alum Morris Skiff Weeden ’41 and his wife, Jane, whose generosity made this professorship possible.

“Professor Pitnick is a world-renowned evolutionary biologist. His appointment as the inaugural Weeden Professor recognizes the impact his research has had in this area. We are thrilled that he was chosen for this recognition,” says biology department chair and professor Ramesh Raina. “We are fortunate to have him on faculty.”

“There’s nothing like getting moral support from your family, and that’s what this feels like,” says Pitnick about his recent appointment.

Pitnick says of his new role, “There’s a certain bar that’s been raised that makes me want to live up to the honor. It motivates me to think bigger, beyond just my laboratory, but about my role at the University, and to engage in bigger science.”

Animal behavior has long been an interest of Pitnick’s. “My parents were big city,” he explains, “I grew up as a black sheep of the family, because all I was interested in were insects.” He describes himself as one of the lucky few who are able to parlay a lifelong passion into a career.

Pitnick’s research today takes a peek into the sex lives, and sex organs, of insects. He notes that as an evolutionary biologist his “job description” is to explain the diversity of life. As such, turning to the incredibly diverse world of sperm was a clear choice.

There’s more to sperm than the wriggly, tadpole-like cells in humans. Sperm from other animals can be very long, even over an inch, as compared to human sperm, which measure 1/500^th of an inch. Sperm from other animals might have multiple tails, or no tails at all. Pitnick explains, “Sperm are the most variable, rapidly evolving cell type there is and when I look at that variation I want to explain it. That gets me excited.”

One of Pitnick’s professional goals is to bring his enthusiasm about biodiversity to his students. Since arriving at the University in 1996, he has mentored over 50 undergraduates in his research lab. “There’s never been a time in my career that they didn’t play a substantive role in the lab,” Pitnick says.

Teaching a course in animal behavior is another outlet for Pitnick to bring biology to undergraduate students. The class, co-designed by Pitnick and former biology professor J. Albert Uy, aims to introduce students to what it’s really like to “do biology.”

“Faculty members all get contacted by a lot of smart, motivated students, but there just aren’t enough opportunities for them to do independent research in the department,” Pitnick says, explaining a motivator for the class’s immersive design.

Students begin by exploring the woods and pond at Pitnick’s home in Manlius, searching for project ideas in a very hands-on way. Current teaching assistant and Ph.D. candidate in the Pitnick lab Brian Gress explains, “We’re not handing the students a project, we’re all out looking together and asking questions together.”

Pitnick says, “We try to take the mystery out of research so they realize that anyone can go out in their backyard and see animals, especially insects, doing interesting things, or curious things, that you can ask about.”

“Right now we have stink bugs in the lab and spiders with lots of spiderlings in their webs; last year we had praying mantises. It’s very fun to have all this diversity of science going on every fall,” Pitnick says, identifying the animal players in some of the students’ projects.

Demystifying science has yielded great results. Notably, Pitnick and Gress coauthored a manuscript with 19 undergraduate students from the animal behavior class. This brings the total number of undergrads that Pitnick has coauthored papers with up to 33. The paper will be published soon in the British journal Behaviour. The new paper is the second publication to spring from the class. Both articles have relied on data gathered by undergraduate students during class projects.

Aside from giving the students a leg up on graduate school applications, Pitnick points to an additional benefit of authorship to the students—“The students got to see that the science they were doing actually is science.”

Gress adds, “They were very excited to be participating in a study where Scott and I didn’t know what the end result was going to be.”

A very small male, which wouldn’t have much luck on a dung pat, finds a mate on apple pulp. Photo by Scott Pitnick

The end result uncovered details of an unusual mating behavior in the yellow dung fly. Yellow dung flies are aggressive predators, or as Pitnick describes them, “the Bengal tigers” of the cow pat, where they mate and lay their eggs. This aggression extends to mating behavior, where large males elbow out smaller ones as they all try to meet a mate on the cow patty.

Both papers published in conjunction with the class show that contrary to over 50 years of research on this fly’s well-studied mating system, sometimes the little guy has more luck finding mates. The trick is in where the flies look. In addition to mating on dung pats, flies need to find sources of protein and sugar. Fresh-pressed apple pulp, a byproduct of cider making and feeding supplement for cows, turns out to be an excellent source of fly nutrition. What’s more, the scientists found that small males on this unique resource, males even smaller than the females themselves, are better at pairing up than the usually successful large males.

Describing the first time he encountered this small male mating advantage Pitnick says, “It’s one of those aha moments where I thought, ‘Wow, this shouldn’t be happening. There’s something really unusual going on.’”

Pitnick’s commitment to undergraduate education and mentorship is well recognized by his colleagues. “He exposes uninitiated undergrads to some of the weird and wild organisms that are out there, right under their noses, whether it’s bombardier beetles that set off explosions in their butts, or fruit flies that dance and sing a courtship song before mating,” says biology professor John Belote, explaining how Pitnick gets undergraduates hooked on biology.

Pitnick says, “It’s exciting to see them get caught up in the research.”

Conventional wisdom has long held that more wrinkles in the brain means better memory, but new research by Syracuse University’s Paul Gold and SUNY Upstate Medical University’s Huaiyu Hu is starting to question that.

When it comes to brains, wrinkly is good for the memory. Or so conventional wisdom holds. Certain human genetic conditions can lead to a smooth brain, without any of the normal grooves—something that tends to come with decreasing mental capacity. That many animals have naturally wrinkle-free brains but are still able to learn complex tasks suggests wrinkles aren’t all there is to intelligence.

Paul Gold

“We don’t know if smooth brains necessarily mean retardation,” says , a professor in the . An expert in aging, as well as learning, memory and plasticity, he says there are documented cases of people born with smooth brains with above-average IQs. These observations suggest that there’s more to the story than just smoothness.

Gold has been awarded a grant from the Research Foundation of State University of New York to investigate the way brain anatomy influences mental function at a fine scale. He will collaborate with , associate professor of neuroscience and physiology at , to study the impact of neuron morphology on learning and memory in mice, which naturally have smooth brains.

Central to their project—and Hu’s own research—is a type of muscular dystrophy called dystroglycanopathy, which leads to smooth brains in humans. With this disorder, improperly formed structures on the outside of cells prevent the latter from making physical contact with other objects. Poor cell connections can lead to not only smooth brains, but also changes in the way neurons connect to one another, mental retardation and other phenomena.

Even though dystroglycanopathy causes both smooth brains and reduced mental abilities, Hu and Gold question whether or not overall brain structure leads to mental impairments. Using naturally smooth-brained mice, they intend to focus on the effect of neuron connections on mental abilities. “Not being able to make and break connections between neurons is the real issue,” Gold says, underscoring the study’s objective.

Gold and Hu bring considerable expertise in behavioral testing and brain anatomy, respectively, to the project, as they look for connections between neuron structure and learning and memory. They also will take advantage of mice missing a critical gene, resulting in dystroglycanopathy. Hu will compare the fine structure of neurons in gene-deficient mice to those that have received gene therapy to replace the missing genetic information. After neuron structure differences are established between the groups, Gold will test their learning and memory.

Testing for mental deficiencies in mice with dystroglycanopy is relatively new to Gold, who, along with Donna Korol, associate professor of biology, investigates factors such as stress, aging and neurological disease on memory. His and Korol’s research is aided by a team of postdoctoral researchers, graduate students and undergraduates (more than 20 of them), resulting in a lab that crackles with activity.

As for his latest collaboration, Gold is excited about working with Hu, and embarking on a new challenge. “It’s a really novel way to think about the world, and I appreciate that,” he says, regarding his study of dystroglycanopathy. “I also think it’s a way for both institutions to enhance their research programs.”

Jason Fridley works in the University’s Climate Change Garden.

Fridley explains that species have a couple of options to deal with stress associated with environmental change: they can pick up and move to more favorable areas, or they can stick it out and adapt to the new challenges. This ability to adapt to climate changes was the main focus of the researchers’ study

Ribwort plantain and sheep fescue, two plants common in the study site, show signs of being able to respond to induced climate challenges. “There is evidence of genetic differentiation with a long term climate treatment,” says Ravenscroft, explaining that genetic differences have built up between climate-treated versus untreated plants in the study site.

What’s more, the gene-level changes have happened remarkably fast. Because these grasses are perennial species, meaning they live and reproduce for multiple growing seasons, Fridley estimates there have only been around 10 generations of plants over the 15-year experiment. While that may sound like a lot of generations if you think back to your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparent, genetic splits happen on an evolutionary timescale—think in terms of hundreds or thousands of years.

To identify how plants responded to environmental changes, the team looked for genetic differences in climate-treated versus untreated plants. Specifically, the researchers investigated random areas of the plant’s genomes to see how many of those locations differed in genetic makeup in the treated versus untreated plants.

“Do you have changes in genetic diversity with respect to treatment or do you have differentiation with respect to treatment?” says Ravenscroft, outlining the main questions of the study. “The answer in terms of these grasses is ‘yes’ and ‘yes’.”

Patterns of differentiation and the rapid genetic changes suggest that both species started with a pool of genetic variation. Standing genetic diversity offered the plant populations resilience to a rapidly changing world. This result illustrates that pre-existing genetic variation can benefit plants in light of imposed climate challenges. “It reinforces the idea that diversity supports resilience in the face of climate change,” Ravenscroft explains, but she is quick to point out that not all species may be so lucky.

The plants’ capacity to respond to challenges may point to their future persistence in the study’s ecosystem. “Eventually species are going to show up that are more drought adapted and push the system in a new direction, unless some species, like the plants used in the experiment, have drought-adapted physical traits,” Fridley explains, adding that this is a process that occurs across the globe in response to climate change.

This climate change research was conducted in the English countryside at a long-term ecological research site. More than 15 years ago, a group of British scientists set up the experiment to uncover the effects of climate change by artificially controlling temperature and water availability across many 3×3-foot plots of land. An international team has maintained the research area, located on a previous munitions storage site from World War II, since the experiment’s initiation.

Speaking to the unusually long length of the experimental site Fridley says, “there’s nothing else like it in the world.”

The original article was published in Global Change Biology and can be viewed .

Allen Miller, professor emeritus of physics, and Sam Sampere, an instructional lab manager, have received $7,500 from the John Ben Snow Foundation to underwrite the costs of teaching supplies and materials. They are using the award as part of their ongoing work with the Physics Alliance of Central New York, an educational partnership between the University and area high schools.

Allen Miller

“The award help supports ‘make-and-take’ workshops, in which teachers construct experiments that, in turn, become property of their respective schools and demonstrate key principles of physics,” says Sampere, the alliance’s coordinator. “The workshops not only provide useful information and resources, but also give teachers hands-on training.”

One such workshop, slated for this fall, involves the building of linear acceleration simulators. “They’re used to illustrate various conservation laws of physics via analysis of collisions,” Miller says.

Hosted by the University, alliance workshops attract teachers from as far away as Rochester and Ithaca. Miller says the value of the workshops extends well beyond the experiments taken back to the teachers’ schools.

“Most high schools have only one physics teacher,” he says, “so these sessions provide a special opportunity for them to engage with their counterparts and to discuss best practices.”

Adds Sampere: “The workshops are educational for us, too. The learning goes both ways.”

Syracuse undergraduates also benefit by serving as work-study students. In this capacity, they perform myriad roles, including helping with the building and construction of experiments.

Organizers hope that the Physics Alliance will grow to include a mobile educational unit. Sampere envisions a “Physics on the Road” van, filled with instruments and equipment that can be showcased at public venues. “It would provide graduate and undergraduates students more opportunities to participate in research, while educating the general public about the value of physics,” he says.

Sam Sampere

Meanwhile, the opportunity to provide professional development to area teachers is something Sampere and Miller feel strongly about, in light of today’s austere funding climate. “It’s gratifying to know that what we do is appreciated,” says Miller, alluding to the Jon Ben Snow Foundation’s largesse.

Miller co-founded the Physics Alliance in 1991 with two local high school physics teachers. Four years later, Sampere signed on as a coordinator. The alliance sponsors professional development workshops, lectures and a lending library of books and equipment (including a hair-raising Van de Graaff generator) that, in most cases, are too expensive for high schools to purchase.

A local supporter of educational and humanitarian projects, the John Ben Snow Foundation has a long history of supporting the Physics Alliance. The foundation awarded it two grants in the 1990s.

James Hougland

James Hougland, assistant professor of chemistry, has received an additional $76,000 from the Foundation for Prader-Willi Research to build on his previous study of insatiable hunger associated with PWS. He plans to use the extension to investigate biochemical signaling in hunger, in hopes of finding a treatment for PWS.

Hougland says that people afflicted with PWS know all too well the intense desire to eat, independent of how much food they consume. “You know what it’s like to have an itch in the middle of your back that you can’t scratch?” he asks. “Imagine that’s hunger. Even if they eat enough, PWS patients still feel hungry.”

Insatiable hunger in PWS is of particular concern to Hougland because it can lead to morbid obesity. In fact, cardiovascular conditions resulting from obesity have been a source of PWS-associated mortality.

The Hougland Lab focuses on the biochemical pathway underlying hunger signaling. Much of their work involves the “hunger hormone” ghrelin, which is produced by cells in the gastrointestinal tract. Ghrelin then enters the bloodstream and is transported to the hypothalamus in the brain, where it signals hunger. Only when one eats do ghrelin levels drop, thus turning off the impulse to consume more.

With PWS, insatiable hunger results when ghrelin signaling has gone awry: levels remain high and don’t cycle down after eating. One way to tackle this problem, Hougland says, is to stop the manufacture of the mature ghrelin protein.

This is done with an enzyme called ghrelin O-acyltransferase (GOAT). Before ghrelin can tell the brain it is hungry, GOAT tacks on a fatty acid chain to the signaling molecule. Hougland is using his grant award, as well as its extension, to figure out how to inhibit GOAT from adding this fatty acid.

“Because PWS is a genetic syndrome, you can’t cure it, but you can certainly treat the symptoms,” he says. “Even if PWS patients are overproducing ghrelin, we can try to block the enzyme that activates ghrelin. This will cause them to pump out an inactive form of it to blunt the hunger signal.”

Kayleigh McGovern

Under the original grant, the Hougland Lab identified a number of molecules that block GOAT from activating ghrelin. Kayleigh McGovern, a Ph.D. candidate in chemistry, recalls screening a library of different molecules for their potential to block GOAT activity. “I was very excited to identify a new inhibitor out of this library screen and to start figuring out which components of the molecule are important for inhibition,” she says.

The PWS grant extension enables the Hougland Lab, along with collaborators at Purdue University, to take the information they have learned about molecules that stop GOAT’s action to create synthetic blockers that work even better. “We’ve moved beyond identifying inhibitors, and are now working on optimizing and creating the next generation of them,” Hougland says.

McGovern looks forward to investigating how GOAT performs the fatty acid transfer to ghrelin under the grant extension. “If we can figure this out, we’ll be better equipped to design inhibitors based on its mechanism,” she says.

McGovern is part of the team studying GOAT signaling, which has included a total of four graduate students and seven undergraduates from the Hougland Lab. “We’re one of the leading groups studying GOAT and ghrelin biochemistry,” Hougland says, adding that the team has built “considerable momentum” with their work. “The grant extension will keep pushing us forward, developing research tools and enhancing the discoveries we’ve made.”