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2019 Sprout Awards Competition Announced

February 8, 2019 By

SPROUT logoThe Office of Technology Licensing (OTL) is excited to announce this year’s SPROUT awards competition!  SPROUT was created to help you bring your scientific research and entrepreneurial ambitions to life by providing seed funding and training to make your innovation a reality.

“It’s not just about the funding. It’s about all the opportunities that arise from participating in SPROUT” – Michael Rosbash, 2018 SPROUT PI

OTL, with support from the Office of the Provost & the Hassenfeld Family Innovation Center, will award up to a total of $100,000 divided among the most promising proposals seeking funding for lab-based innovations that require bench research, lab space and/or lab equipment.   All members of the Brandeis science community, including faculty, staff and students, are invited to submit an abstract for the 2019 round of funding. The preliminary application for abstract submission is now online.  These pre-applications must be received prior to 11pm on March 8th, 2019. 

In the past, successful SPROUT applications have come from all departments in the sciences including Biology, Biochemistry, Physics, and Chemistry.  Past candidates have proposed projects ranging from early-stage research and development to patent-ready projects.  Many undergraduates, graduates, staff and faculty have all pitched various projects from Vaccines Targeting HIV Sugars (Krauss Lab) to an Assay Kit for RNA-binding Protein Target (Rosbash Lab).

Have questions?  OTL is offering 20 minute appointment slots the week of February 28 at our office in Bernstein-Marcus, room 140.  Sign up here.

Filed Under: awards, Biochemistry, Biology, chemistry, Computer Science, labs, Mathematics, Neuroscience, Physics, Quantitative BIology Tagged With: ,

Eve Marder and Liqun Luo receive 2019 NAS awards

January 25, 2019 By

Eve Marder NAS award

Eve Marder, the Victor and Gwendolyn Beinfield Professor of Neuroscience, has received the 2019 National Academy of Sciences Award in the Neurosciences. The National Academy of Sciences is recognizing “Marder’s research of over more than 40 years that has provided transformative insight into the fundamental processes of animal and human brains.” NAS also called Marder “one of the most influential neuroscientists of her generation”.

Liqun Luo

In addition to her research, NAS acknowledged Marder’s impact upon young scientists working in her field. She has served as a mentor to “generations of neuroscientists”.  A book titled “Lessons from the Lobster: Eve Marder’s Work in Neuroscience” by Charlotte Nassim and was published in 2018.

The NAS Award in the Neurosciences is given only once every three years.

In addition to Marder, a Ph.D. alumnus is among the 18 scientists that are being recognized this year. Liqun Luo received the Pradel Research Award.  In the press release, NAS cited Luo’s “pioneering research into neural circuits of invertebrates and vertebrates.”

Luo earned his Ph.D. in Biology from Brandeis in 1992. He worked in Kalpana White’s lab. He is now a Professor and HHMI Investigator at Stanford University.

Read more at Brandeis Now.

Filed Under: awards, labs, Neuroscience Tagged With: , , , ,

Leading Science: Magnifying the Mind

December 14, 2018 By

Brandeis Magnify the Mind

Written by Zosia Busé, B.A. ’20

Joshua Trachtenberg, graduated from Brandeis in 1990 and is a leader in studying the living brain in action using advanced imaging technology. After establishing his research laboratory at UCLA, he founded a company – Neurolabware – in order to build the sophisticated custom research microscopes that are needed to perform groundbreaking work in understanding how the brain develops and how diseases and injuries interrupt its normal functioning. His company is created by scientists and for scientists, and is unique in creating high quality microscopes that are easy to use but also have the flexibility to be used in creative ways in innovative experiments, and in combination with a variety of other devices.

Brandeis University is now seeking to acquire one of these advanced microscopes that can observe fundamental processes inside the living brains of animals engaged in advanced behaviors. The resonant scanning two-photon microscope from Neurolabware allows researchers to understand and image large networks of neurons in order to visualize which cells and networks are involved with specific memories or how these processes go awry in disease. “This approach is unparalleled. There is no other technique around that could possibly touch this,” Trachtenberg says.

Previous two-photon technologies permitted only very slow imaging, allowing scientists to take a picture about every two seconds, but the resonant two-photon technology is a major breakthrough that allows scientists to take pictures at about 30 frames per second. This speed increase is a major game changer. Not only can one observe activity in the brain at a higher speed, but it is possible to take pictures at a speed that is faster than the movement artifacts that must be accounted for, such as breathing or heart beats. Because one can see the movement, it can be corrected, allowing high resolution functional imaging of structures as small as single synaptic spines in the living brain. Further, advances in laser technology and fluorescent labels now allow scientists to see deeper into the brain than ever before, compounding the recent advantages of increased speed.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: labs, Neuroscience Tagged With: , , , ,

Marder Lab wins the Ugly Sweater contest

December 14, 2018 By

 

A new feature was added to the 2018 Life Sciences Holiday Party – the Ugly Sweater Contest! Lab’s were encouraged to purchase, design, and bedazzle a sweater for their PIs to wear and show off at the party. Ballots for best sweater were cast at the event with the Marder lab submitting the winner. Eve’s sweater was decked out with crabs, lobsters, STG’s and neurons.  Congratulations!

Filed Under: grad students, labs, Neuroscience Tagged With: , ,

How do batteries work?

December 14, 2018 By

How do batteries really work? A convincing simple yet quantitative answer to this question has remained elusive. Textbooks and on-line sources have provided only descriptions but not explanations of basic electrochemistry. All calculations in electrochemistry are based on measured voltages, not atomic or molecular properties. Made-up explanations of batteries in terms of different “electron affinities” of different metals are widely believed but easily disproved, e.g. by concentration cells using the same metal for both electrodes.

A paper in the Journal of Chemical Education by Klaus Schmidt-Rohr (Chemistry) explains how batteries store and release energy, in quite simple terms but based on quantitative data. In the classical Zn/Cu galvanic cell, it is the difference in the lattice cohesive energies of Zn and Cu metals, without and with d-electron bonding, respectively, that is released as electrical energy. Zinc is also the high-energy material in a 1.5-V alkaline household battery. In the lead–acid car battery, intriguingly the energy is stored in split water (two protons and an oxide ion). Atom transfer into or out of bulk metals or molecules plays as big a role as electron transfer in driving the processes in batteries.

How Batteries Store and Release Energy: Explaining Basic Electrochemistry, Klaus Schmidt-Rohr, Journal of Chemical Education, 2018, 95 (10), pp 1801–1810.

Filed Under: chemistry, labs Tagged With: , ,

HMS Professor Stephen Harrison to Receive 48th Rosenstiel Award

October 16, 2018 By

Prof. Stephen C. Harrison will receive the 48th Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in Basic Medical Research on March 25, 2019. He is being honored for his studies of protein structure using X-ray crystallography.  His work has ranged from the landmark elucidation of the structure of viruses, to understanding the recognition of DNA sequences by transcription factors, to the regulation of protein kinases implicated in cancer. The event will take place from 4:00 to 5:00 PM on Monday, March 25 in Gerstenzang 123.

Harrison is the Giovanni Armenise-Harvard Professor of Basic Medical Sciences and Director of the Center for Molecular and Cellular Dynamics at the Harvard Medical School.  He is also Head of the Laboratory of Molecular Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.   He has been elected a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,  the American Philosophical Society; he is a foreign member of the Royal Society and the European Molecular Biology Organization.

Dr. Harrison’s initial studies of virus structure provided an understanding of how viruses invade cells and how virus particles are assembled.  He has extended his work to reveal the structures of many viruses, including influenza, HIV, ebola and dengue.  Knowledge of these structures is guiding the development of new vaccines against these viruses.  Moreover, the methodology that he and his colleagues developed to visualize virus structure has made it possible to learn about the molecular architecture of other very large assemblies of proteins.

Harrison’s lab has also revealed the ways that proteins recognize specific DNA sequences to regulate gene expression.  More recently his lab has been exploring the complex structure of the many proteins that are assembled in the kinetochore, which anchors the centromeres of chromosomes to microtubules, to permit their proper segregation in mitosis.

“Steve Harrison has done much more than giving us astonishing pictures of proteins at the atomic level; he has used this structural information to show us how these proteins perform their precise functions,” said James E. Haber, Director of the Rosenstiel Center for Basic Medical Sciences.

The Rosenstiel Award has had a distinguished record of identifying and honoring pioneering scientists who subsequently have been honored with the Lasker and Nobel Prizes. Awards are given to scientists for recent discoveries of particular originality and importance to basic medical research.

View full list of awardees.

 

 

Filed Under: awards, events, labs Tagged With: , , , ,

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