Graduate School Newsblog

Category: News

Interesting stories about and for our students.

Stream Monitoring in Your Own Backyard

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Schoolchildren in the Houghton area are learning about water resources protection in a hands-on way. They are joining Michigan Tech faculty and students in monitoring Huron Creek and its watershed, which serves a large part of Houghton and surrounding communities.

Graduate student Lindsey Watch wrote about this stream monitoring project as part of an NSF-funded program to help scientists learn to communicate their research to schoolchildren and the public.

Read the full news story.

Published in Tech Today by Jenn Donovan, director of news and media relations

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US News Ranks Michigan Tech PhD Programs in Engineering, Science

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More of Michigan Tech’s PhD level engineering and science programs than ever made US News & World Report’s annual graduate school rankings, released today. The rankings reflect momentum generated by Michigan Tech’s focus on graduate education and research, said Provost Max Seel. The Graduate School has more than doubled its enrollment since 2005.

Michigan Tech’s PhD engineering programs earned an overall ranking of 90th, tied with George Washington University, Rochester Institute of Technology and Mississippi State University. Biomedical engineering at Tech showed up in the rankings for the first time, placing 71st.

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Alumnus receives 2014 TMS Young Leader Professional Development Award

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Research Assistant Professor Zhiwei Peng (MSE) has received a 2014 TMS Young Leader Professional Development Award from the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society. The award is supported by the TMS Foundation.

Peng, who recently completed a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering at Michigan Tech, was honored with the 2013 Bhakta Rath Award for his exceptional research on the use of microwaves to make steel. “I am truly grateful for the education at Michigan Tech which laid a solid foundation for my career,” said Peng. “I am also deeply indebted to my advisor, Jiann-Yang Hwang, for his excellent and invaluable guidance during my PhD studies.”

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Graduate Student Government Travel Grant Award Winners for Spring 2014

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Travel grants for spring 2014 have been awarded. The full list of graduate recipients can be accessed online.

Travel grants are awards that help subsidize cost of attending and presenting at conferences. These awards are sponsored by the Graduate Student Government (GSG) and the Graduate School. For more information on travel grants, please visit the webpage.

Should you have any questions, contact the GSG treasurer Jennifer Winikus (jawiniku@mtu.edu).

Published in Tech Today.

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A Better Way to Purify Peptide-Based Drugs

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Members of Shiyue Fang's research team in his lab at Michigan Tech, where they developed a better process to purify peptides and other biomolecules.
Peptides are an intriguing class of drugs. They are made of amino acids, just as humans are, and because of their intimate relationship with our own biological molecules, they have the potential to fight some of the most intractable diseases, including cancer.

But they can be difficult and expensive to make. A year’s worth of the anti-HIV peptide drug enfuvirtide costs $25,000. Now a chemist at Michigan Tech has overcome an important hurdle in the manufacturing process by developing a quicker, simpler purification method. As a bonus, his technique also works on DNA.

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Published in Tech Today by Marcia Goodrich, magazine editor

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2nd annual Heidelberg Laureate Forum in Heidelberg, Germany

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The National Science Foundation (NSF) and Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) are pleased to announce that they will sponsor a maximum of 20 young researchers to attend the 2nd annual Heidelberg Laureate Forum in Heidelberg, Germany, from September 21 through 26, 2014.

All nominations must be submitted before Monday, March 3, 2014 at 12:00 pm, Eastern Time.  Further information about the program, including the Web site for submission of nominations, can be found online.

Specific eligibility criteria and a nomination form may be found on our web site:  http://www.orau.org/hlf.

All applicants to the U.S. delegation must also apply to attend to the HLF Foundation at  http://www.heidelberg-laureate-forum.org/call-for-application.

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Alumnus makes Surprising Finds on St. Thomas, Virgin Islands

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He’s digging up the past–somewhere between 200 BC and 400 AD–in an unexpected archaeological excavation in downtown Charlotte Amalie on the Caribbean island of St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands.

David Hayes, who got his MS in Industrial Archaeology from Michigan Tech in 2000, is principal investigator for a year-old dig that began when he noticed pottery popping out of a highway improvement site. The highway work was stopped, and the pieces have since been dated to early ceramic makers and farmers of the Saladoid era, 2000 to 1,400 years ago.

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Tech Gives Minnesota Communities’ History Back to Them

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A PhD candidate in Industrial Heritage and Archaeology at Michigan Tech has given the residents of Minnesota’s Cuyuna Range a unique gift–a glimpse into the history of their own communities. Fred Sutherland is researching the history of the Cuyuna Range, an iron mining region between Brainerd and Aitkin, Minn., for his PhD dissertation. Earlier this month, he presented a summary of findings from a survey of nearly 900 historic buildings and sites along the Cuyuna Range.

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