Working closely with the many interdisciplinary programs on campus: The BIMO Program, the Neuroscience Program, the Environmental Studies Program and the BiGP Program, the Biology Department’s goal is to provide students with the opportunity to do hands-on, one-on-one research with a professor in addition to offering state of the art academic courses. To that end the department had 20 honors students working in faculty labs this past year. Of these, 9 were inducted into the Sigma Xi Honors Society. For the academic year 2011-2012, the department has 21 students who will be doing honors work. The department is committed to providing a positive research and learning experience for all biology students. As a result of this commitment, several of our students were awarded grants or fellowships to pursue their studies after graduation. Shivon Robinson received a Stratton Fellowship to further her studies. The department also has approximately 34 students doing summer research, either here at Williams or off campus. Francesca Barrett and Jonathan Wosen will be working at the Whitehead Institute. Funding for summer research comes from various sources including individual research grants and Division funding. At least half of the biology faculty has outside research funding from either NSF or NIH. This funding allows many students to travel to professional meetings throughout the year giving poster presentations on their research at Williams. At the Experimental Biology meetings in California in April of this year, one of Professor Swoap’s students, Beryl Manning-Geist’11 won the prestigious David Bruce Award for the best undergraduate physiology research project. The David S. Bruce Awards are given to recognize excellence in undergraduate research. These awards honor Dr. Bruce’s commitment to promoting undergraduate involvement in research, in the American Physiological Society annual meeting, and, ultimately, in research careers. The American Physiological Society’s annual meeting is called Experimental Biology, and consists of physiologists, young and old, totaling about 12,000+ scientists, including MDs, PhDs, graduate students and undergraduates. A number of alumni returned to campus this year to share their post-graduate experiences with students in the form of a poster presentation. This is an opportunity for students to learn firsthand about life as a graduate student.

Each year at graduation, the Biology Department awards prizes to several outstanding majors, Timothy Hickey-LeClair and Beryl Manning-Geist each received the Benedict Prize in Biology. Jillian Hancock received the Dwight Botanical Prize. Ang Li received the Conant-Harrington Prize for exemplary performance in the biology major, and Hilary Dolstad received the William C. Grant, Jr. Prize for demonstrating excellence in a broad range of areas in biology.

The Biology Department would like to welcome a new faculty member – Assistant Professor Timothy Lebestky. Tim comes to us from the School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles where he received his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology, specializing in Developmental Biology.

The Biology Department continued to participate in the Class of 1960 Scholars program. In addition to the returning alumni who were sponsored by the Class of 1960 Scholars program, the department invited Dr. Andy Bass from Cornell University to be a Class of 1960 Scholar speaker.

Class of 1960 Scholars in Biology

Professor Marsha Altschuler continued her research on chromosome copy number control in the ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila. During the Summer semester 2010 she was assisted by Anh Nguyen’12, Brian Shepherd’11, and Ang Li’11. Ang Li continued his research during the academic year as an honors thesis project. Professor Altschuler attended a ciliate molecular biology symposium in August 2010 at the University of Rochester in honor of Dr. Martin Gorovsky. During Fall semester 2010 she taught BIOL202 Genetics and in the Spring semester 2011 she taught a tutorial BIOL218T DNA, Life, and Everything and a capstone seminar course BIOL416 Epigenetics.

During the 2010-11 academic year, Professor Hank Art taught BIOL/ENVI 220 – Field Botany & Plant Natural History fall 2010 semester.  In the Spring semester 2011 Professor Art co-taught ENVI 102 – Introduction to Environmental Science with Mea Cook and Dieter Bingemann and taught a senior tutorial BIOL/ENVI 422 Ecology of Sustainable Agriculture. During Winter Study, Professor Art co-taught a course with Drew Jones, Hopkins Forest Manager titled Winter!?.

Professor Art also was the Williams College Faculty lecturer on two Alumni Travel Courses in 2010: a 2-week safari to Tanzania and a 1-week trip exploring the ecology of the Everglades and South Florida.

In fall 2010 Professor Art started the supervision of Abby Martin’11 Contract Major thesis on “Environmental Determinism on Mt. Greylock” and serving as an assistant supervisor of Rooney Charet’11 on her thesis on “Regional Farms and Agriculture.”

The summer of 2010 marked the start of re-inventorying the permanent plot system in the Hopkins Memorial Forest. This was a research collaboration with a group of 10 undergraduates and essentially was summer teaching activity.  Matthew Cranshaw’11, David Hansen’11, Nick Lee’11, Mari Lliguicota’11, Eric Outterson’12, Dan Nachun’12, Alex Peruta’11, Jackie Pineda’12, Sarah Rowe’13, and Jennifer Turner’13 who each worked 10 weeks on the project. This research was facilitated through a grant obtained from the Holloman-Price Foundation. In addition to research in the Hopkins Forest, Professor Art continues to be a member of the team producing an interpretive infrastructure on the Mount Greylock State Reservation.

Associate Professor Lois Banta continued her research on the soil bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens. This plant pathogen is best known for its unique ability to deliver DNA and proteins to host plant cells, thus stably altering the genetic makeup of the plant and causing crown gall tumors (“plant cancer”) to form at the infection site. One major goal of the lab’s current research is to characterize the host defense responses elicited by the bacterium. Honors student Helen Cha (’11) and post-doctoral fellow Janis Bravo pursued this line of investigation, which is funded by a $415,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded to Professor Banta. During Winter Study, Lauren Goldstein-Kral (’12) and Connor Dempsey (’13) also contributed to this research. Honors student Josh Blanco (’11) and senior Maddy Haff (’11) continued to explore the lab’s recent discovery by David Rogawski (‘08) that a newly identified Type VI Secretion System (T6SS) in A. tumefaciens influences the formation of biofilms, large aggregates of bacterial cells that are resistant to antibiotics, antibody attack, and even chlorox bleach. Kate Dusenbury (’13) worked both semesters in the lab, using site-directed mutagenesis to create new T6SS mutants.  Nicole Lou (’13), Chalita Washington (’13), and Janis Bravo used genetic screens and scanning electron microscopy to study the role of several groups of proteins in mediating attachment of Agrobacterium to host plant tissue. At the annual international Crown Gall Conference, held this year in Berkeley, CA, Josh Blanco, Maddy Haff, Helen Cha, and Janis Bravo presented posters, and Lois Banta presented a talk on this research.

During the fall semester, Professor Banta spent part of her research leave in the lab of collaborator Rosalia Deeken in Wuerzburg, Germany. She was also one of 20 participants invited to a think-tank convened by the Carnegie Corporation, the Hewlett Foundation, and the Teagle Foundation to brainstorm on “Accelerating the Adoption of Evidence-Based Improvement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education” in Palo Alto, CA, where she discussed the findings of a 3-year, multi-college Genomics Curriculum Development project for which she was Program Director. In Professor Banta’s spring course, Cellular Regulatory Mechanisms (Biology 306), the 14 students in the class carried out original research, using quantitative reverse-transcriptase PCR to test the hypothesis that the T6SS mutant bacteria have an altered capability to trigger and/or dampen the host plant’s response to A. tumefaciens. They then designed independent projects, applying their knowledge from the discussion/literature component of the course to investigate the innate immune defenses mounted by mammalian cells against bacterial cell surface material.

During this academic year, Professor Banta served as a reviewer for the National Science Foundation, Journal of Bacteriology, and Molecular Plant Physiology. Within Williams, she served on the Biochemistry/Molecular Biology advisory committee, the Bioinformatics, Genomics and Proteomics advisory committee, the Environmental Studies advisory committee, and the International Educational Initiatives committee; she also served as coordinator for the Global Health track of the International Studies Area of Concentration and for a new college-wide program in Public Health. Finally, she is Secretary/Treasurer of the Williams College Chapter of the national science honor society Sigma Xi.

Derek Dean continues to work as a lecturer for the BIOL101, 102, and Genetics laboratory sections. He has also been updating the laboratory curriculum and creating new, investigative lab exercises. For example, he and Jason Wilder (a former Assistant Professor at Williams who has since moved on to Northern Arizona University) have developed a recombinant DNA laboratory exercise for the Genetics course. In this exercise, students cut up two different DNA molecules, mix them together in the same solution, and splice the DNA together, generating a number of different combinations, much like stacking building blocks randomly. Students then select one of these combinations and use molecular biology techniques to deduce the arrangement of their particular DNA molecule. Over the past four years, the lab has been optimized so that each step works for virtually every student, and backups were put in place so that regardless, everyone has their own data to analyze at the conclusion of the three week exercise. Assignments indicated that students had learned the concepts behind techniques quite nicely, and in evaluations, they expressed appreciation for the chance to take ownership of their own “puzzle”, solving their unique combination of DNA fragments. This exercise will be published in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education this fall, and we hope that other schools will take interest.

In addition, Dean has been researching the genetics of seizure disorders, using the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. His lab is interested in how insulin signaling affects the sensitivity of the fly to seizures. This line of inquiry could serve to help us understand a similar phenomenon in humans, as diabetes and hyperglycemia can cause seizures under certain conditions. Dean’s students Daniel Nachun (’12) and Jingyi Liu (’14) presented a poster at the most recent International Drosophila Meeting in San Diego, and Dean and Nachun are continuing this work at Cornell University this summer with a collaborator (David Deitcher, Associate Professor of Neurobiology and Behavior). Through generous support from the Williams Division III and Psychology Discretionary Funds, Nachun will have a great opportunity to start off his Honors thesis early and to get a preview of graduate school at a research institution.

In addition to teaching Biology 101 and his senior seminar course, The Molecular Basis of Biological Clocks, this year Professor Bill DeWitt began an entirely new research project conceived by his Honors student, Mike Abrams’11.  Its ultimate aim is to biologically generate high levels of hydrogen gas, which can be used as a renewable, carbon-neutral energy source. We are using the photosynthetic cyanobacterium Synechocystis that possesses an enzyme complex, hydrogenase, which catalyzes the production of hydrogen gas under certain defined growth conditions. However, the hydrogenase enzyme is inactivated in the presence of molecular oxygen, which is synthesized in all cyanobacteria as a byproduct of photosynthesis. Consequently, we initiated experiments designed to limit oxygen concentrations within the photosynthesizing cells. Our approach has been two-fold: (1) to modify Synechocystis genetically in order to insert genes that will bind molecular oxygen, and (2) to develop a unique growth regime that will favor hydrogen production. This academic year, we were able to make three different genetic constructs with which we have transformed Synechocystis and obtained three novel strains. We have also constructed an apparatus in which we can grow the Synechocystis under conditions that exclude molecular oxygen from the air while still allowing us to assay for the production of even low levels of hydrogen using gas chromatography. This summer and during the next academic year, we will test the transformed Synechocystis strains in order to determine the levels of hydrogen they produce and then attempt a series of experiments to optimize growth conditions for hydrogen production.

Professor Joan Edwards taught Ecology (Biology 203) fall term and was on leave in the spring. During summer 2010 Gregory McElroy’12 and Gordon Smith’13 assisted with her research on pollination networks and arctic plants at Isle Royale National Park, Michigan. Kelsie Meehan’11 and Holly Dwyer’12 assisted with studies of rapid plant movements and the long-term studies of garlic mustard in Hopkins Forest. In August, Jillian Hancock started her thesis work with Prof. Edwards. Jillian’s research focused on the conservation of the fall blooming asters and goldenrods and their pollinators. These are of particular concern because they form an important component of the New England’s biodiversity and they are all in decline—partly due to habitat loss, partly due to management practices, and partly due to other reasons (e.g. diseases and parasites). Jillian’s study showed that simple changes in mowing practices could increase the biodiversity of all of these species.

Prof. Edwards continues to study ultra-rapid movements in plants. Last summer the work she did with Prof. Dwight Whitaker (Physics, Pomona College) on the explosive capsules of Sphagnum moss was published in Science (Whitaker and Edwards. 2010. Sphagnum moss disperses spores with vortex rings. Science 329: 406). This moss has tiny capsules (about the size of a small pepper grain). They build up internal pressure and eventually explode releasing their spores in a miniature mushroom cloud (vortex ring), which allows the tiny spores to achieve enough height where they can remain aloft and be carried many kilometers by turbulent winds.  This paper was also covered by a Science perspectives article (van Leeuwen, J.L. 2010. Launched at 36,000g. Science 329:395-396). Prof. Edwards also published a paper with colleagues based on a symposium on “Mechanics Without Muscle: Evolutionary Design of Macrophytes at the 2010 meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (Martone et al. 2010. Mechanics without muscle: biomechanical inspiration from the plant world. Integrative and Comparative Biology 50: 888-908). She gave invited talks at Isle Royale National Park and for the Distinguished Lecture Series of the Lenox library, and at Skidmore College. She also gave talks on botanical explosions to 4^th graders at the Williamstown Elementary School.

Prof. Edwards is collaborating with Prof. Maroja on a project examining the origins and population structure of the arctic plants on Isle Royale.

During this past year Professor Dan Lynch taught BIOL 101 The Cell in the fall semester, and he taught BIMO/BIOL/CHEM 322 Biochemistry II Metabolism in the spring semester.

Professor Lynch continued his research on plant sphingolipid biochemistry. Students working in the lab included Sophia Kim, a thesis research student in the biology department who characterized mutants of Arabidopsis thaliana having a disruption in one of the three ceramidase genes; and Elizabeth Kalb, a thesis research student in the chemistry department who characterized mutants having the lone ceramide kinase gene disrupted. Since mutations knocking out the activities of these two gene products would be predicted to increase levels of ceramides in the plant tissues, and ceramides are associated with programmed cell death, the results of these projects permit us to better assess the respective roles of these genes in plants. In addition, Karyn Moss completed an independent study project working with professors Lynch and Swoap to characterize the lipid profiles in selected tissues of calorically restricted mice. Lynch also served as a reviewer for manuscripts submitted to several scientific journals.

Joy Jing'13 and Zachary McKenzie'14 present their research in the "International Evolution Meeting 2011" in Norman, Oklahoma.in Evolutionary Genetics, Luana Maroja set up a new lab and advised three summer students (Amlak Bantikassegn’ 12, Joy Jing’ 13 and Zach Mckenzie’ 14) who conducted research on genetic divergence and speciation in crickets and butterflies. The work of these students together with a winter student (Stanislas Monfront’ 13) will be presented at the annual Society for the Study of Evolution conference in June 2011. Jing and McKenzie were awarded an NSF Evolution undergraduate diversity grant and will participate in a special program during the Evolution conference.

In her first year as an assistant professor Maroja has submitted two papers related to her work on butterfly genetics, one was published in BMC Genomics and the other is under review in BMC Biology. Another paper is in preparation with the independent student Rebecca Alshuler’ 11. Maroja also developed a new human mitochondrial DNA lab for BIOL 305 (Evolution) where the students sequenced their own DNA and that of professors to find where in the world their maternal lineage came from.

Last summer, Maroja attended a symposium at Cornell University (Genetics and the Origin of Species: The Continuing Synthesis) and in March 2011, she gave an invited lecture at the University of Vermont on co-evolution. For the summer of 2011, Maroja is starting a new project on the population genetics of plants on Isle Royale in collaboration with Joan Edwards and will also advise six summer research students working in various projects (Bantikassegn, Jing, McKenzie, Monfront, Oscar Calzada’ 12 and Hannah Matheny’ 12).

Martha Marvin, Essel Fellow in Neuroscience, taught the laboratories for NSCI 201/BIOL 212/PSYC 212 Introduction to Neuroscience in the fall and as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the spring, taught NSCI 401, Neuroscience Senior Seminar on the topic “Adult Neurogenesis and Plasticity”.

Dr. Marvin’s research is focused on the environmental influences that cause birth defects in the developing heart, using zebrafish as a model organism. This project began as a collaboration with former Williams Professor Lara Hutson (University at Buffalo) to investigate the cardiovascular function of a class of small heat shock proteins, which protect animals from environmental stress. A previous honors student, Jamie Lahvic’10, demonstrated that two of the cardiovascular small heat shock proteins are necessary for normal left-right asymmetry of the heart and visceral organs, showing a role for these proteins even before heart formation. During the Summer semester 2010, Dr. Marvin mentored four research students. Mark Springel’12 and Jonathan Wosen’13 concentrated on the requirement for heat shock proteins and the role of heart rate in forming the cardiac valves. While Jonathan analyzed changes in gene expression through quantitative PCR, Mark worked on visualizing the changes in valve structure with the scanning confocal microscope. Jackline Odhiambo’13 surveyed the expression of heat shock proteins in the pre-gastrulation embryo by quantitative PCR and in situ hybridization, searching for other members of the small heat shock protein family that might influence very early development. Jackline and Paloma Marin’12 also investigated whether the disruption of global left-right asymmetry leads to asymmetry in normally symmetric organs, but found that it does not. All the summer students continued to work in the lab for the rest of the year. During the academic year, Honors student Jonah Zuflacht’11 investigated the mechanism by which the small heat shock proteins disrupt embryonic asymmetry. He found that hspb7 and hspb12 have partially overlapping roles in determining laterality. Normal laterality depends on the function of cilia in a transient organ, in fish called Kupffer’s vesicle. Using transmission electron microscopy, he found evidence that the structure of cilia in embryos with reduced expression of hspb7 may be defective. Additionally, Mark Springel expanded the work of the summer by spending Winter study in the lab of Didier Stainier at University of California, San Francisco, to learn how to image living, beating hearts in the transparent zebrafish embryo. He brought back these skills to Williams, and in an independent project in spring 2011, demonstrated that reduced hspb7 indeed causes stiff and thickened heart valves, a condition that leads to valve degeneration in humans.

Dr. Marvin served as an advisor to Jennifer Swoap’s Winter Study course BIOL11, Project BioEyes: Zebrafish Genetics and Development in the K-12 classroom, which brought the zebrafish back to 4^th grade classrooms at Williamstown Elementary School for a second year. Eight Williams students learned about zebrafish genetics, habitat and care, and then taught the 4^th graders how to set up matings between fish, make predictions and observations about the pigmentation of the babies, collect fish embryos and watch them develop during the course of a week. It was a unique experience for both the elementary and the college students, many of whom are interested in teaching careers. Retired elementary teachers Diane and Art Fuleihan again volunteered to join us in the classrooms. Art composed new verses for his song about zebrafish going to school, which is always a real high point. Despite snow days and fire alarms, everyone was able to see the fish embryos’ hearts beating and learned why some fish were striped and some were not.

Professor David C. Smith taught the Biology and Social Issues of the Tropics (Biology 134) in the fall and was on leave in the spring. During the summer Gregory McElroy’12 and Gordon Smith’13 assisted with his research at Isle Royale National Park, Michigan—research that is now in its 31st field season.

Professor Smith continues to work on the long-term population dynamics and the plasticity and genetic structure of the boreal chorus frog populations at the northeastern end of Isle Royale. Previously he collaborated with Josh Van Buskirk and colleagues in Switzerland to identify microsatellite markers for these specific populations. Over the past few years Prof. Smith has worked with Chris Himes, a postdoctoral scholar, and his honors students to look at patterns of microsatellite variation among the Isle Royale Chorus frogs. Prof. Smith and Dr. Himes are collaborating on a paper that reports that the Isle Royale population originated from a population along the north shore of Lake Superior. Along with Emily Behrman ’09 Prof. Smith is working on a paper describing the genetic structure of the population on Isle Royale.

Jonathan Snow has set up a new lab characterizing the immune mechanisms used by the honey bee to combat infectious agents targeting them through their gastrointestinal tract. Snow attended the Honey Bee Genome Conference at Cold Spring Harbor in May and presented work on honey bee immunity performed by thesis students Hilary Dolstad’11 and Jamal Jefferson’11. In addition, Jefferson’11 presented a poster on his thesis work at the New England Science Symposium in April. Prior to transitioning to research on honey bee immune function, Snow worked on blood and immune cell development in mammals at Children’s Hospital in Boston. He published a number of papers this year dealing with results from this previous work.

Associate Professor Claire Ting taught Integrative Plant Biology: Fundamentals and New Frontiers (BIOL 308) in the fall semester and offered a new capstone course on Genome Sciences: At the Cutting Edge (BIOL 430T) in the spring semester. In this tutorial, students explored how developments in metagenomics (genomic studies of entire communities of microorganisms in natural environments, such as the open oceans and mammalian gut), metatranscriptomics (studies of genome wide changes in expression and mRNA levels in natural communities of organisms), and proteomics have integrated and revolutionized the field of biology.

During the year, Professor Ting continued to pursue her National Science Foundation funded research on photosynthesis in the ecologically important marine cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus, and her laboratory has continued to work with the Sargasso Sea bacteriophytoplankton samples they recently collected for metagenomic and metatranscriptomic analyses. Prochlorococcus is one of the most abundant photosynthetic organisms on the planet and is an important carbon sink. One of the ongoing projects in the laboratory focuses on the Prochlorococcus carboxysome, which is a cellular microcompartment that functions in the fixation of carbon dioxide. Research in her laboratory aims specifically to establish how differences at the genomic level translate into physiological advantages in photosynthetic capacity and in tolerance to environmental stress. Undergraduate students who participated in research in her laboratory this past year included Aimee Weber’11 (NSF summer research assistant, honors thesis research), Charlene Thomas’11 (NSF summer research assistant, BIOL 297 Independent Study student), Ai Tran’12 (summer research), Ellen Beauchamp’12 (research assistant), Donna Lee’12 (research assistant), Melany Funes’14 (research assistant), and Alyson Barrett’14 (BIOL 22 Winter Study research student, research assistant). Kris Anderson also joined her laboratory for the first time in August 2010 as an NSF-funded research technician. Professor Ting was invited to give an oral presentation of her laboratory’s research at the 10^th Cyanobacterial Molecular Biology Workshop in Lake Arrowhead, California, and was also invited to participate on the NSF Climate Change panel. She was also selected to participate in the NSF-BBSCR Ideas Lab on Surpassing Evolution: Transformative Approaches to Enhance the Efficiency of Photosynthesis in Asilomar, California.

Professor Heather Williams taught two courses in the fall. Neuroscience, a large 200-level course that she co-taught with Betty Zimmerberg of the Psychology Department, introduces students to the principles of neuronal function and how these principles relate to complex brain phenomena such as visual processing, consciousness, and language.  Sensory Biology was taught as a literature-based seminar and covered a variety of systems – from bacterial stretch receptors and their relationship to touch and pain in humans to the details of how the retina functions and implications for how light-sensing chips can be implanted and used as prostheses. In the spring, she taught a section of the second-semester course in the introductory Biology sequence.

Two honors students spent the summer doing research and also completed theses in Professor Williams’ lab. Leigh Davis’11 investigated the role of changing connections in allowing the adult songbird brain to adjust its song after the critical period for learning is over, and Clint Robins’11 investigated the roles of morphology (beak shape), physiology (use of the beak to adjust volume and resonance), and culture (learned preferences and behavioral responses) in defining the structure of songs of wild sparrows from two different populations.

Prof. Williams served as a reviewer for the N.I.H., the N.S.F., and several journals.

During the fall semester, Professor Steve Zottoli taught BIOL 304 Neurobiology. In the spring he was on leave. A long term goal of the Zottoli laboratory is to understand the neuronal basis of behavior and the recovery of behavior after spinal cord injury He uses identified neurons in the goldfish as a ‘model system’. Professor Zottoli continues to spend summers at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA where he conducts research and is faculty member in the SPINES (Summer Program in Neuroscience, Ethics and Survival) course. In work performed with Mark Agostini, Jason Meyers ‘97 and Tina Wong ‘08, Professor Zottoli published a paper on “Axon cap morphology of the sea robin (prionotus carolinus) mauthner cell is correlated with the presence of ‘signature’ field potentials and a C-type startle response.” Professor Zottoli continues as a Life Trustee of The Grass Foundation.

Department Colloquia

Thomas Kunz, Boston University

“Aeroecology – An Emerging Frontier”

Amy Gladfelter, Dartmouth College

“Nuclear Anarchy and Cortical Order in a Filamentous Fungus”

Doron Greenbaum, University of Pennsylvania
Co-sponsored with BIMO

“A Chemical Biology Approach to Understand Host-Parasite Interactions”

Jacques Dumais, Harvard University

“Nature’s Catapults: Their Evolution and Mode of Action in Plants and Fungi”

Heather Mattila, Wellesley College

“How Do Promiscuous Honey Bee Queens Generate Productive Colonies?”

Gerry Borgia, University of Maryland

“Exploring the Unique Courtship Behaviors of Bowerbirds: The Design of Bower

Decoration Displays”

Phil Zamore, University of Massachusetts Medical School
Co-sponsored with BIMO

“What Fruit Flies Teach Us About RNA Silencing”

Greg Ball, Johns Hopkins University

“Adult Neuroplasticity: Lessons from the Birds”

Andy Bass, Cornell University

Biology Class of 1960 Scholar Speaker

“Getting Ready to Talk: Evo-Devo of Novel Pattern Generators”

Department Colloquia

Hank Art

The Pros and Cons of Burning Biomass for Electricity: Ecological Considerations Panel Discussion – October, 2010

Off-Campus Colloquia

Hank Art

NE Old Growth Forest Conference – “The Beinceke Stand” – Holyoke Comm. College – October, 2010

Empirical Sustainability Education at Williams – Luce Foundation Conference on Sustainability – Brown University, November 2010

Tower Hill Botanic Garden – “Ecology for Landscape Designers.” February 2011.

Luana Maroja

Genetics of Speciation, Co-evolution and its consequences. The University of Vermont, March 21, 2011.

External evaluator of Master Thesis. “Microsatellite variation in the Mountain Pine Beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins) in Western Canada; Spatial genetic analysis of Neutral variation and development of genetic markers”. By G. D. N. Gayathri Samarasekera. University of Northern British Columbia. April 26, 2011.

Postgraduate Plans of Biology Department Majors