JBS Offers “Bio-Inspired Design” Course

Maria de Boef Miara, Lecturer in Biology at Brandeis University, will be leading a course titled Bio-Inspired Design this summer (June 1 thru August 7, 2015). Bio-Inspired Design is part of the Justice Brandeis Semester (JBS). JBS combines courses and experiential learning to provide complete, immersive experiences so students can deeply examine a specific area of study.

Bio-Inspired Design is designed for students from a wide spectrum of disciplines, but may be particularly appealing to students in Biology, Biological Physics, Environmental Studies or HSSP areas. This is a 10-week course providing 12 credits.

Students in Bio-Inspired Design will spend the summer working with biologists, engineers and artists in a variety of settings. They will explore intriguing life forms and develop the quantitative tools needed to work at the intersection of form and function.

Division of Science Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (2015)

The Division of Science wishes to announce that, in 2015, we will again offer Division of Science Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships for Brandeis students doing undergraduate research.  These fellowships are funded by generous alumni and corporate donations.

The due date for applications  is February 17, 2015,  at 6:00 PM EST.

Division of Science Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships will provide $5000 in stipend support to allow students to do summer research (housing support is not included). Students who will be rising Brandeis sophomores, juniors, or seniors in Summer 2015 (classes of ’16, ’17, and ’18), who in addition are working in a lab in the Division of Science at the time of application, are eligible to apply. A commitment from a Brandeis faculty member to serve as your mentor in Summer 2015 is required.

The Division of Science Summer Program will run from May 26 – July 31, 2015. Recipients are expected to be available to do full time laboratory research during that period, and must commit to presenting a poster at the final poster session on July 30, 2015.

The application form is online (Brandeis login required). Questions that are not answered in the online FAQ may be addressed to Steven Karel <divsci at brandeis.edu>.

Noam Saper ’15 named Goldwater Scholar

Noam Saper ’15, a Brandeis Chemistry major, has been named a Goldwater Scholar by The Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program. An exceptional student, Noam has been doing research with Christine Thomas and also with Barry Snider, seeking out experience in both organic and inorganic synthetic chemistry, with publication in press already from each lab.  Noam was a 2013 recipient of a Division of Science Summer Research Fellowship and a Teaching Assistant for Organic Chemistry Lab. He is also a Lerman-Neubauer Fellow, an Undergraduate Departmental Representative for Chemistry, and an active member in the Brandeis Orthodox Organization, In short, Noam is a hard-working and engaged member of the Brandeis community, and very deserving of this distinctive honor.

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Noam presenting at a recent ACS national meeting

The Scholarship Program honoring Senator Barry Goldwater was designed to foster and encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences, and engineering. The Goldwater Scholarship is the premier undergraduate award of its type in these fields. Goldwater Scholars have very impressive academic qualifications that have garnered the attention of prestigious post-graduate fellowship programs. Recent Goldwater Scholars have been awarded 80 Rhodes Scholarships, 117 Marshall Awards, 112 Churchill Scholarships, and numerous other distinguished fellowships such as the National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowships.

Division of Science Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (2014)

The Division of Science wishes to announce that, in 2014, we will again offer Division of Science Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships for Brandeis students doing undergraduate research.  These fellowships are funded by generous alumni donations.

The due date for applications has been changed: it is now February 28, 2014,  at 6:00 PM EST.

Division of Science Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships will provide $5000 in stipend support to allow students to do summer research (housing support is not included). Students who will be rising Brandeis sophomores, juniors, or seniors in Summer 2014 (classes of ’15, ’16, and ’17), who in addition are working in a lab in the Division of Science at the time of application, are eligible to apply. A commitment from a Brandeis faculty member to serve as your mentor in Summer 2014 is required.

The Division of Science Summer Program will run from May 28 – August 1, 2014. Recipients are expected to be available to do full time laboratory research during that period, and must commit to presenting a poster at the final poster session on July 31, 2014.

The application form is online (Brandeis login required). Questions that are not answered in the online FAQ may be addressed to Steven Karel <divsci at brandeis.edu>.

Another way that flies sense temperature

If you remember your (bio-)physical chemistry, you’ll remember that most proteins are temperature sensitive. But which ones acts as the sensors that drive behavior in higher organisms? The Garrity Lab at Brandeis has been working on thermosensation in Drosophila, and previous work has implicated the channel protein TRPA1 as a key mediator of temperature preference and thermotaxis,  In a new paper in Nature, members of the Garrity lab working in collaboration with the Griffith and Theobald have have identified another protein, GR28B(D), a member of the family of gustatory receptor proteins, as another behaviorally important temperature sensor, involved in rapid avoidance of high temperatures. Authors on the paper include postdocs Lina Ni (lead author) and Peter Bronk, grad students April Lowell (Mol. Cell Biology) and Vincent Panzano (PhD ’13, Neuroscience), undergraduate Juliette Flam ’12, and technician Elaine Chang ’08.

  • Ni L, Bronk P, Chang EC, Lowell AM, Flam JO, Panzano VC, Theobald DL, Griffith LC, Garrity PA. A gustatory receptor paralogue controls rapid warmth avoidance in Drosophila. Nature. 2013.
  • story at BrandeisNOW

 

Science Undergraduate Poster Session on August 1

Photo by Emma GriffithBrandeis Summer Scifest, an Undergraduate Research Poster Session, will be held on Thu, Aug 1 2013.   Undergraduates from laboratories and research groups throughout the Division of Science, including summer visitors and Brandeis students, will present posters on their research.  The poster session will run from 1-3 pm in the Shapiro Science Center atrium.

Update: Abstract submission has closed — the abstract book containing the abstracts of all 75 posters is now online.

How does the brain decide whether you like what you eat?

When we encounter a taste, we appreciate both its chemosensory properties and its palatability—the degree to which the taste is pleasurable or aversive. Recent work suggests that the processing of this complex taste experience may involve coordination between multiple brain areas. Dissecting these interactions help understand the organization and working of the taste system.

F4.largeThe lateral hypothalamus (LH) is a region of the brain important for feeding. In a rodent, damage the LH, and the rodent may starve itself to death; stimulate it, and you get a curious mix of voracious eating and expressions of disgust over what is being eaten. Such data suggest that LH plays a complex game of balancing escape and avoidance, palatability and aversion, during the evaluation of a taste stimulus. Little is known, however, about how neurons in LH actually respond to tastes of different valences.

Brandeis postdocs Jennifer Li and Takashi Yoshida. undergraduate Kevin Monk ’13, and Associate Professor of Psychology Don Katz have recently published a study of neuronal reponses in LH in the Journal of Neuroscience. They have shown that taste-responsive neurons in LH break neatly down into two groups–one that responds preferentially to palatable tastes and one to aversive tastes. Virtually every taste neuron in LH could be identified as a palatable- or aversive-preferring neuron. In addition, even without considering the specific tastes to which a particular neuron responded, these two groups of neurons could be differentiated according to their baseline firing rate, shape of response, and tuning width. While these neurons were spatially intermingled, several pieces of data (functional connectivity analysis, relationship to responses in amygdala and cortex) suggest that they are parts of distinct neural circuits. These results offer insights into the multiple feeding-related processes that LH manages, and how the hypothalamus’ role in these processes might be related to its connection to other parts of the taste system.

Li JX, Yoshida T, Monk KJ, Katz DB. Lateral Hypothalamus Contains Two Types of Palatability-Related Taste Responses with Distinct Dynamics. J Neurosci. 2013;33(22):9462-73.

Electronic senior thesis submission takes effect this year

Sarah Shoemaker, Director of Robert D. Farber University Archives & Special Collections, recently announced that Senior Theses for students can be submitted electronically, staring in Spring 2013 (now!).

We’re excited about this — it will make student research easier to share, and it will save student time and effort and paper. Students will upload their final theses into the Institutional Repository directly. Instructions for uploading are at the LibGuide for Thesis Writers.

Brandeis undergrad research on cover of Astronomical Journal

3C345CoverWithAuthors1kThe editors of the Astronomical Journal chose an image from a Brandeis research paper to adorn the cover of the February issue of the Journal (see right). What is sweet about this is that the image was made by Valerie Marchenko, a senior physics major who has been doing research since her freshman year, initially with Dave Roberts, and presently with John Wardle in the Physics Department. Several of the images in the paper were made by Valerie, and of course she is a co-author. This is actually her second publication in a mainline astronomical journal.

Roberts DH, Wardle JFC, Marchenko VV. The Structure and Linear Polarization of the Kiloparsec-scale Jet of the Quasar 3C 345. The Astronomical Journal. 2013;145(2):49.

Brandeis undergraduates publish upward of 20 papers a year in scientific journals along with their faculty, postdoc and grad student mentors.

Computational Neuroscience Traineeships for 2013-2014

The Division of Science wishes to announce the availability of Traineeships for Undergraduates in Computational Neuroscience through a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Traineeships will commence in summer 2013 and run through the academic year 2013-14.

The due date for applications to the new programs will be February 25, 2013.

Traineeships in Computational Neuroscience are intended to provide intensive undergraduate training in computational neuroscience for students interested in eventually pursuing graduate research. The traineeships will provide a $5000 stipend to support research in the summer, and $3000 each for fall and spring semesters during the academic year. Trainees are appointed for at least a year and up to two years.  Current Brandeis sophomores and juniors are eligible to apply. In addition, to be eligible to compete for this program, you must

  • have a GPA > 3.0 in Div. of Science courses
  • have a commitment from a professor to advise you on a research project in computational neuroscience
  • have a course work plan to complete requirements for a major in the Division of Science and this program (see below)
  • intend to apply to grad school in a related field.

The curricular requirements are listed on the program website.  The application form is online (Brandeis login required).

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