Biological Sciences Blog

Category: News

New faculty announcement – Dr. Ebenezer Tumban

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Faculty Edition in Tech Today

by Monica Lester, student writing intern

Meet Michigan Tech’s new faculty and existing faculty who have now accepted tenure-track and lecturer positions.

For more about new faculty, see the PowerPoint slides presented at the New Faculty Orientation.

Ebenezer Tumban, PhD
Ebenezer Tumban joins the Department of Biological Sciences as an assistant professor. Tumban comes to Michigan Tech from the University of New Mexico.

He received a PhD in Molecular Biology from New Mexico State University and a master’s in biology from New Mexico Highlands University.

Tumban has done research with virus-like particles to try to increase the immunogenicity of less immunogenic human papilloma virus (HPV) antigens. He has developed two candidate vaccines for prevention of HPV.

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Sachin Teotia awarded BRC travel grant

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BRC Travel Awards for Fall 2014

The Biotechnology Research Center has announced its fall 2014 Travel Awards. The award recipients follow:

Post-doctoral Research Scientist Presentation

  • Sachin Teotia (Bio Sci), Plant and Animal Genome XXIII Conference (poster)
  • Lijun Zhang (Bio Med), TERMIS–AM 2014 (podium)

Graduate Student Presentations

  • Suntara Fueangfung (Chem), 248th ACS National Meeting and Exposition (poster)
  • Maria Gencoglu (ChE), 2014 AIChe Annual Meeting (podium)
  • Maryam Khaksari (ChE), SciX 2014 (podium)
  • Hao Meng (Bio Med), BMES 2014 Annual Meeting (poster)
  • Sandra Owusu (SFRES), IUFRO World Congress (poster)
  • Durga Pokharel (Chem), 248th ACS National Meeting and Exposition (poster)
  • Yu Wang (Bio Med), IEEE International Ultrasound Symposium (poster)
  • Jingtuo Zhang (Chem), 248th ACS National Meeting and Exposition (poster)

    Undergraduate Student Presentation

  • Mitchell Tahtinen (Bio Med), 2014 BMES Annual Meeting (poster)

From Tech Today

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Medical School Early Assurance Program

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Medical School

Early Assurance Program

What is it?The MSU College of Human Medicine (CHM) has partnered with Michigan Technological University to provide early assurance of medical school admission and enriched experiences for undergraduate students interested in becoming physicians in an underserved region or with an underserved population.

For more information see:

Early Assurance Program 2014 Announcment

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Dr. Rupali Datta new Departmental Graduate Director

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Please join me in welcoming our new Graduate Program Director, Professor Rupali Datta.

Dr. Datta joined Michigan Tech as an associate professor in 2008 under prestigious SFHI program. She has proved herself to be a true leader in the field of sustainability with special reference to environmental remediation. Her fields of specialization are Biochemistry, Plant-Microbe Interactions, Phytoremediation, Environmental Remediation and Toxicology. During her life time, she has published over 70 peer reviewed papers, 15 book chapters and two edited books. In addition, she has done over 150 presentations. Please contact Dr. Datta hereafter for any questions regarding our graduate programs.

I also want to thank Professor Nancy Auer for serving as our Graduate Program Director since 2010. During last four years, our graduate program has grown significantly and became highly visible on our campus and beyond. Dr. Auer has been a member of Michigan Tech family since 1984. She has an active research program in the areas of large lake research and restoration of native fish species. She has published many papers, as well as authored several book chapters and recently published a book with David Dempsey – The Great Lake Sturgeon.

We all are grateful to Professor Auer for her outstanding service as Graduate Program Director.

 

Shekhar Joshi, Chair
Department of Biological Sciences

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Lake Superior Joint Monitoring program

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Researchers associated with Michigan Tech, MTRI and Biological Sciences ride the RV5501

YouTube video

Photos

Great Lakes Research Vessel NOAA RV 5501 at Michigan Tech: Lake Superior Joint Monitoring Program July 2014

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) provided the boat and crew and Michigan Tech provides the people who do the sampling as part of NOAA’s Great Lakes Monitoring program. Michigan Tech and NOAA share in the analysis and discovery.
RV 5501 is a vessel of the NOAA – National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL); The Boat Engineering Branch of the United States Coast Guard (USCG) Engineering Logistics Center designed the 55′ ANB (Aids to Navigation Boat). The Coast Guard Yard completed the detailed design and contracted the initial production of 55′ ANB. The 55′ ANB is designed primarily to service aids to navigation within the inland waters, bays, sounds and harbors of the United States. It is capable and equipped to support multi-mission operations.

Crew: Beau Braymer, Captain of RV5501; Bob Harvey, Mate of RV5501; Dr. Gary Fahnenstiel, Senior Scientist, Great Lakes Research Center and Michigan Tech Research Institute; Dr. Foad Yousef, Post doctoral research Michigan Tech and Erin Cafferty Michigan Tech Research Institute, research in freshwater biology phycology.

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Guiliang Tang and Hairong Wei awarded NSF $2.5M NSF grant

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PI Guiliang Tang (BioSci) and Co-PI Hairong Wei (SFRES) were awarded $2,499,979 from the National Science Foundation for their three-year project “Targeting microRNAs for Destruction in Crops by Short Tandem Target Mimic (STTM).”

From Dr. Joshi, Chair, Department of Biological Sciences:

Heartiest congratulations to Dr. Guiliang Tang and his team on receiving a $2.5 million grant from NSF Plant Genome program for the project titled “Targeting microRNAs for destruction in crop plants by Short Tandem Target Mimic (STEM) “.

This is one of the biggest grants Biological Sciences Department has received in recent years that brings our new external funding in this fiscal year close to $3.5 million.

In the current era of limited funding for University research, this is a great achievement and all the credit goes to dedication of our faculty, staff and students in pursuing and publishing high quality research.”

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Dr. Sue Bagley awarded Society of Industrial Microbiology Award

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This award recognizes those member(s) who have an outstanding record of sustained service to the Society for a period of seven or more years in various capacities such as a Society officer, chair of a standing or presidential committee, SIMB News editor-in-chief, JIMB editor-in-chief, Developments editor-in-chief, program chair, or other service to the Society acceptable to the committee and board; and have been an active member of SIM for 10 or more years.

Susan T. Bagley. PhD, is Professor Emerita of Environmental Microbiology in the Department of Biological Sciences at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, MI. She has over 35 years’ experience as an environmental microbiologist, working in academia and government (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) on microbial-based treatment of air, waterborne, and industrial organic wastes, microbial production of bio-based fuels, and mutagenicity and toxicity of environmental pollutants.

More at Charles Porter Award

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