Author: Sunny Charpentier

In Print – Thomas Werner Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology

Dr. Thomas Werner and a team of researchers recently published a paper in the Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology B: Biology.

This team is comprised of Ph.D. students Adenike Olowolagba and Dilka Arachchige, Research Scientist Sushil Dwivedi (Chem), undergraduate students Ashlyn Colleen Beatty and Joseph Peters, high school students Crystal Wang and Alicia Guo, Associate Professor Thomas Werner (BioSci), and Associate Professor Rudy Luck and Professor Haiying Liu (both Chem).

The title of the paper is “Dynamic Insights into Mitochondrial Function: Monitoring Viscosity and SO2 Levels in Living Cells.”

This research was funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, National Institutes of Health, through Award Numbers 2R15GM114751 and R15GM114751 (Liu), and R15 GM146206-01 (Liu and Luck). The National Science Foundation also provided support through Award Number 2117318, which made it possible to purchase a new NMR spectrometer for the characterization of the chemical structures of the fluorescent probes, with Liu as a co-PI. High-performance computational calculations for the fluorescent probes were completed using the infrastructure at Michigan Tech.

About Thomas Werner

Thomas Werner
Thomas Werner

Very broadly defined, Dr. Thomas Werner is an entomologist who works on different biological questions in drosophilids (“fruit flies”) and lepidopterans (butterflies and moths). One quarter of his research has been published in the journals: Nature, Science, Cell, and PNAS. Werner has received more than $900,000 in total funding, most of which came from the NIH and NSF. He has research-mentored 107 undergraduate students and 7 graduate students. He was bestowed with the state-wide Michigan Distinguished Professor of the Year Award 2021. Dr. Werner has also won Michigan Tech’s Distinguished Teaching Award twice (only three other faculty have won it twice in the history of Michigan Tech) for teaching Immunology, Genetics, Genomics, and Developmental Biology. He also discovered a new species of fruit fly, which he named after his student Tessa Steenwinkel, who won 9 research awards (e.g., the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and the Barry Goldwater Fellowship) and published 15 articles/books under Thomas’s mentorship. The species is called Amiota tessae. Furthermore, Dr. Werner is the founder of the open-access book series “The Encyclopedia of North American Drosophilids”, which serves the Drosophila research community, students, and teachers with currently three published volumes and nearly 10,000 worldwide downloads. These books transformed two campus libraries (U. of Rochester, NY and Michigan Tech) into open-access book publishers, promoting science and education at no cost.

About the Biological Sciences Department

Biological scientists at Michigan Technological University help students apply academic concepts to real-world issues: improving healthcare, conserving biodiversity, advancing agriculture, and unlocking the secrets of evolution and genetics. The Biological Sciences Department offers seven undergraduate degrees and three graduate degrees. Supercharge your biology skills to meet the demands of a technology-driven society at a flagship public research university powered by science, technology, engineering, and math. Graduate with the theoretical knowledge and practical experience needed to solve real-world problems and succeed in academia, research, and tomorrow’s high-tech business landscape.

Questions? Contact us at biology@mtu.edu. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for the latest happenings.

2024 Songer Research Award for Human Health Recipients

Vaishali Sharma, a Biological Sciences Ph.D. student, and Xinqian Chen, a previous MTU Biological Sciences graduate and now Integrative Physiology Ph.D. student, have received this year’s Songer Research Award for Human Health.

Vaishali Sharma
Vaishali Sharma

Vaishali Sharma is currently working under Dr. Stephen Techtmann (BioSci) and Dr. Caryn Heldt (ChE/HRI) on a project titled “Antiviral efficacy of amino acid-based surfactants: A proposal for advancing human health by breaking the chain of viral infection.” Xinqian Chen graduated with a M.S. in Biological Sciences, and is now working under Dr. Zhiying Shan of Kinesiology and Integrative Physiology on a project titled “Exploring the role of brain-derived extracellular vesicles in salt-sensitive hypertension.”

To read more about Sharma, Chen, and their research, visit the College of Sciences and Arts Newsblog.

Xinqian Chen
Xinqian Chen

About the Biological Sciences Department

Biological scientists at Michigan Technological University help students apply academic concepts to real-world issues: improving healthcare, conserving biodiversity, advancing agriculture, and unlocking the secrets of evolution and genetics. The Biological Sciences Department offers seven undergraduate degrees and three graduate degrees. Supercharge your biology skills to meet the demands of a technology-driven society at a flagship public research university powered by science, technology, engineering, and math. Graduate with the theoretical knowledge and practical experience needed to solve real-world problems and succeed in academia, research, and tomorrow’s high-tech business landscape.

Questions? Contact us at biology@mtu.edu. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for the latest happenings.

In the News – Charles Kerfoot and Buffalo Reef Stamp Sands

Charles Kerfoot, Biological Sciences Emeritus Research Professor, and Professor Emerita Carol MacLennan of Social Sciences appeared in a Great Lakes Now episode titled “Reef Rescue and Wild Edibles.” The episode included a segment on Copper Country’s Buffalo Reef — a high-value fish spawning ground in Superior Grand Traverse Bay. Kerfoot and others explained in the segment how threatened the reef is by millions of tons of stamp sands, also known as mine tailings, and summarized what’s been done so far. The Buffalo Reef Task Force put together a long-term multiphase plan of action this year, which was also featured in the Great Lakes Now episode.

Charles Kerfoot in the field near Buffalo Reef.
Charles Kerfoot

About the Biological Sciences Department

Biological scientists at Michigan Technological University help students apply academic concepts to real-world issues: improving healthcare, conserving biodiversity, advancing agriculture, and unlocking the secrets of evolution and genetics. The Biological Sciences Department offers seven undergraduate degrees and three graduate degrees. Supercharge your biology skills to meet the demands of a technology-driven society at a flagship public research university powered by science, technology, engineering, and math. Graduate with the theoretical knowledge and practical experience needed to solve real-world problems and succeed in academia, research, and tomorrow’s high-tech business landscape.

Questions? Contact us at biology@mtu.edu. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for the latest happenings.

Undergrad Research – Abe Stone Functional Forest Fungus

Abe Stone is an undergraduate majoring in ecology and evolutionary biology. He came to Michigan Tech’s Biological Sciences Department, already with a great interest in learning more about and working with fungus. Once he enrolled at MTU, he decided to get involved in undergraduate research and start down his fungus research path.

Abe Stone in forest working with invasive buckthorn and propagated fungus.
Abe Stone in the field.

Through his research, Stone found a way to effectively and practically propagate silver leaf disease—a fungal forest pathogen—and use it as an herbicide to attack the invasive tree species, buckthorn, while sparing native species. Stone has been working with Biological Sciences’ Dr. Erika Hersch-Green to learn more about how plants and fungi interact with each other, as well as advisors in the College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science (CFRES).

To learn more about Abe Stone, how he began this journey, and his work, visit Abe’s “Fungus Among Us…” story—featured on MTU’s Unscripted Research Blog.

About the Biological Sciences Department

Biological scientists at Michigan Technological University help students apply academic concepts to real-world issues: improving healthcare, conserving biodiversity, advancing agriculture, and unlocking the secrets of evolution and genetics. The Biological Sciences Department offers seven undergraduate degrees and three graduate degrees. Supercharge your biology skills to meet the demands of a technology-driven society at a flagship public research university powered by science, technology, engineering, and math. Graduate with the theoretical knowledge and practical experience needed to solve real-world problems and succeed in academia, research, and tomorrow’s high-tech business landscape.

Questions? Contact us at biology@mtu.edu. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for the latest happenings.

New Funding – Jill Olin and Stony Brook University Shark Research

Jill Olin (BioSci/GLRC) is the principal investigator (PI) on a project that has received an $82,917 research and development contract from Stony Brook University.

The title of the project is “Defining foraging hotspots of finfish and sharks in the New York Bight: linking trophic dynamics with spatiotemporal trends in species distributions.”

James Junker (GLRC) is a co-PI on this potential two-year project.

Jill Olin
Jill Olin

Jill Olin is a community ecologist who studies the processes that affect the stability and structure of ecosystems. She studies these issues in freshwater and coastal marine ecosystems because of the diversity and economic importance of species inhabiting these environments; and, toward the fact that they are under threat from anthropogenic influences. Olin uses community assembly, food web, and fisheries theory to explore the following research areas; (1) the intra- and inter-species interactions and trophic structuring of communities within a hierarchical construct; (2) the distribution patterns of organisms and the mechanisms that drive these patterns and; (3) the relative influence of anthropogenic threats and climactic drivers on ecosystem dynamics and resilience. She combines dietary biomarkers techniques with ecological and modeling approaches to explore questions with the overriding aim of providing data for conservation across multiple levels of organization.

Currently Jill teaches courses in Marine Ecology, Ecology and Evolution, and Ecogeochemical Tracer Techniques.

About the Biological Sciences Department

Biological scientists at Michigan Technological University help students apply academic concepts to real-world issues: improving healthcare, conserving biodiversity, advancing agriculture, and unlocking the secrets of evolution and genetics. The Biological Sciences Department offers seven undergraduate degrees and three graduate degrees. Supercharge your biology skills to meet the demands of a technology-driven society at a flagship public research university powered by science, technology, engineering, and math. Graduate with the theoretical knowledge and practical experience needed to solve real-world problems and succeed in academia, research, and tomorrow’s high-tech business landscape.

Questions? Contact us at biology@mtu.edu. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for the latest happenings.

2024 Alumni Award Recipient – Danna Kasom

The Office of Alumni Engagement has announced the recipients being honored with the 2024 Alumni Awards. Amongst the award recipients is Biological Sciences’ alumni, Danna Kasom. Kasom has earned the 2024 Humanitarian Alumni Award, which recognizes volunteer leadership or service that has enriched or improved the lives of others and the welfare of humanity, and whose accomplishments bring honor to their Alma Mater.

Danna Kasom
Danna Kasom

Danna graduated from Michigan Tech’s Biological Sciences program, magna cum laude, in 2014 and now holds a position as a health science specialist at the Department of Veteran Affairs. Before her current position, Kasom had a variety of job experiences, including coaching youth soccer teams for nonprofit organizations, Detroit PAL and DC Scores, writing articles for Girls Soccer Network, and serving on the Detroit Lions Volunteer Energy Team. Danna has served in the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps, where she found a passion for identifying patterns across several human experiences.

Learn more about Danna Kasom and her experiences at Michigan Tech, and how they prepared her for her career after college.

These extraordinary alumni will be honored at the 2024 Alumni Awards Ceremony, which will take place during Reunion Weekend on Aug. 2.

Learn more about each award and recipient.

About the Biological Sciences Department

Biological scientists at Michigan Technological University help students apply academic concepts to real-world issues: improving healthcare, conserving biodiversity, advancing agriculture, and unlocking the secrets of evolution and genetics. The Biological Sciences Department offers seven undergraduate degrees and three graduate degrees. Supercharge your biology skills to meet the demands of a technology-driven society at a flagship public research university powered by science, technology, engineering, and math. Graduate with the theoretical knowledge and practical experience needed to solve real-world problems and succeed in academia, research, and tomorrow’s high-tech business landscape.

Questions? Contact us at biology@mtu.edu. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for the latest happenings.

In the News – Michigan Tech’s Tick Talk

MTU’s Tick Talk project was included in a WKAR News story, considering the escalating tick populations in Michigan. Michigan Tech’s Tick Talk project utilizes the power of crowdsourcing tick collection to advance research on tick populations and tick-borne diseases in the Copper Country. 

man walking in woods with dog
Man walking in the woods with his dog in the Copper Country.

Faculty, staff, graduate students, and undergraduate students across Michigan Tech departments ranging from Computer Sciences to Biological Sciences are coming together to work on this project and make it successful. Members from our department who are contributing to this project include Dr. Stephen Techtmann (Biological Sciences Associate Professor, Great Lakes Research Center Associate Director), Dr. Aimee Marceau (Research Scientist, Genomic Surveillance Facility Lead), and Trisha Colling (Sequencing Laboratory Scientist).

Dr. Aimee Marceau was previously interviewed in a  WLUC TV6 story about the Tick Talk project, which was featured on our blog.

About the Biological Sciences Department

Biological scientists at Michigan Technological University help students apply academic concepts to real-world issues: improving healthcare, conserving biodiversity, advancing agriculture, and unlocking the secrets of evolution and genetics. The Biological Sciences Department offers seven undergraduate degrees and three graduate degrees. Supercharge your biology skills to meet the demands of a technology-driven society at a flagship public research university powered by science, technology, engineering, and math. Graduate with the theoretical knowledge and practical experience needed to solve real-world problems and succeed in academia, research, and tomorrow’s high-tech business landscape.

Questions? Contact us at biology@mtu.edu. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for the latest happenings.

In the News – Trista Vick-Majors Interviewed on ParAqua Podcast

Trista Vick-Majors (BioSci/GLRC) was interviewed on a science podcast supported by the European Cooperation in Science and Technology, the ParAqua Podcast. The ParAqua Podcast highlights new and interesting research in aquatic and marine ecology. Episode 5 of the ParAqua Podcast, released May 19, focused on Vick-Majors’ research in the polar regions on aquatic ecosystems.

Trista Vick-Majors conducting winter microbial research at MTU's Great Lakes Research Center.
Trista Vick-Majors conducting winter microbial research at MTU’s Great Lakes Research Center.

Trista Vick-Majors is a microbial ecologist who studies the reciprocal relationships between microbial communities and biogeochemical processes in aquatic ecosystems. She is interested in understanding how chemical and physical characteristics interact with microbial communities, and influence or are influenced by microbial metabolism and diversity. Trista’s work is also aimed at understanding energetic constraints on microbial metabolism that could result from seasonal or ecosystem change change, such as the formation of ice-cover. Her field work locales span temperate environments with seasonal ice-cover, where rapid environmental change is affecting ice duration and thickness, and polar environments where ice-cover can be a permanent fixture. Vick-Majors’ research happens at the interface of biogeochemistry and microbial ecology.

About the Biological Sciences Department

Biological scientists at Michigan Technological University help students apply academic concepts to real-world issues: improving healthcare, conserving biodiversity, advancing agriculture, and unlocking the secrets of evolution and genetics. The Biological Sciences Department offers seven undergraduate degrees and three graduate degrees. Supercharge your biology skills to meet the demands of a technology-driven society at a flagship public research university powered by science, technology, engineering, and math. Graduate with the theoretical knowledge and practical experience needed to solve real-world problems and succeed in academia, research, and tomorrow’s high-tech business landscape.

Questions? Contact us at biology@mtu.edu. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for the latest happenings.

BioSci Instructors Earn Exceptional Student Evaluation Scores!

Congratulations to the following 9 instructors from Biological Sciences identified as among only 55 MTU instructors campus-wide that received an exceptional “Average of 7 Dimensions” on student evaluations for Spring Semester 2024!

Casey Huckins, Professor and Chair
Robert Larson, Assistant Professor
Brigitte Morin, Teaching Professor
Jill Olin, Assistant Professor
Gordon Paterson, Assistant Professor (Nominated for the 2024 MTU Distinguished Teaching Award)
Thomas Werner, Professor
Jenna Disser, MS Graduate Student
Alexzandra Markle, PhD Graduate Student
Hunter Roose, MS Graduate Student

Their evaluation scores were in the top 10% of similarly sized sections university-wide, with at least a 50% response rate, and a minimum of five responses. Thank you, instructors, for being such an important part of Biological Sciences’ key role in fulfilling the educational mission of MTU!

About the Biological Sciences Department

Biological scientists at Michigan Technological University help students apply academic concepts to real-world issues: improving healthcare, conserving biodiversity, advancing agriculture, and unlocking the secrets of evolution and genetics. The Biological Sciences Department offers seven undergraduate degrees and three graduate degrees. Supercharge your biology skills to meet the demands of a technology-driven society at a flagship public research university powered by science, technology, engineering, and math. Graduate with the theoretical knowledge and practical experience needed to solve real-world problems and succeed in academia, research, and tomorrow’s high-tech business landscape.

Questions? Contact us at biology@mtu.edu. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for the latest happenings.

West Iron County High School Wins 34th Annual Bioathlon!

To stimulate an interest in biology, the Department of Biological Sciences at Michigan Technological University has sponsored a single-day, hands-on, problem-solving competition known as the Bioathlon each May since 1989. As many as 20 high schools from across the Upper Peninsula have participated in the day-long competition, using their biological skills and knowledge to solve the problems presented to them.

This year, 6 high schools competed in the 2024 Bioathlon: Calumet, Houghton, Dollar Bay, Luther L. Wright, A. D. Johnston, and West Iron County. The event consisted of 3 sub-competitions: a microbiology gram staining and cellular structure competition, an anatomy and physiology dissection competition, and an ecological scavenger hunt and trophic interactions competition.

Prizes and Results

2024 Bioathlon 1st place team West Iron County High School
2024 Bioathlon 1st place team West Iron County High School

Prizes for 2024’s Bioathlon winners included a generous $100 for each member of the 1st place team, $75 for the 2nd place team members, and $50 for those who took 3rd.

West Iron County High School traveled a long way to compete in this year’s Bioathlon, and it was well worth it… West Iron County earned 1st place, Luther L. Wright High School came in 2nd, and A. D. Johnston came in 3rd! Each of the winning teams went home with an award certificate, and all of the participating students and teachers left with their brand new 2024 34th Annual Bioathlon t-shirts, some extra goodies, and bright smiles.

About the Biological Sciences Department

Biological scientists at Michigan Technological University help students apply academic concepts to real-world issues: improving healthcare, conserving biodiversity, advancing agriculture, and unlocking the secrets of evolution and genetics. The Biological Sciences Department offers seven undergraduate degrees and three graduate degrees. Supercharge your biology skills to meet the demands of a technology-driven society at a flagship public research university powered by science, technology, engineering, and math. Graduate with the theoretical knowledge and practical experience needed to solve real-world problems and succeed in academia, research, and tomorrow’s high-tech business landscape.

Questions? Contact us at biology@mtu.edu. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for the latest happenings.