Faculty Awards and Honors
The following honors, awards, and prizes have been earned over time by faculty and alumni from MCB's existing four departments or their predecessor units.
American Academy of Arts and Sciences 10
American Association for the Advancement of Science 20
Crafoord Prize 1
Guggenheim Fellows 12
MacArthur Fellows 1
National Academy of Sciences 7
National Medal of Science 2
National Medal of Technology 1
Nobel Laureates 1
(Nobel Laureate Alumni, 6 of 11 from the Urbana campus as a whole)
Invited Talks
Our mission to promote understanding in various fields of molecular biology was well-served this year through invited talks and MCB-chaired events. At major national and international gatherings, MCB faculty members presented research results, organized meetings, or gave honorary presentations to peers and stakeholders. The following is a representative list of MCB faculty member activities.
Biochemistry
Bob Gennis gave invited lectures at the Workshop on Proton Solvation and Transport in Chemistry, Biology and Materials Science (Washington, DC); the Gordon Research Conference on Cellular and Molecular Bioenergetics (Proctor, NH); the 14th European Bioenergetics Conference (Moscow); the German Biophysics Society Meeting (Mainz); and the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students. Bob serves on the External Advisory Boards for the Max Planck Institute for Biophysics (Frankfurt) and for the Hunter College SCORE Program (NYC).
John Gerlt presented an invited lecture at the 20th Enzymes Mechanisms Conference.
Dave Kranz presented seminars at Stanford and Minnesota and invited lectures at the James S. McDonnell Foundation 21st Century Science Initiative (Palisades, NY); the James S. McDonnell Foundation Meeting (Babson Park, MA); and the Workshop on the Role of CD8 in T cells (Amherst, MA). Dave was named the first Phillip A. Sharp Professor of Biochemistry and will be inaugurated in the professorship this fall.
Susan Martinis gave invited lectures at the 2006 International Conference on Aminoacyl tRNA Synthetases (San Diego) and the 107th Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology (Toronto).
Jim Morrissey was the Theodore Spaet Memorial Lecturer at the Montefiore Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine (NYC). He presented invited lectures at the Gordon Research Conference on Hemostasis and at the Advanced Technology Applications for Combat Casualty Care (ATACCC) 2006 Conference. Jim is the co-organizer of the 4th Symposium on Hemostasis with Special Focus on Factor VIIa and Tissue Factor, to be held in 2008.
Satish Nair presented seminars at the University of Michigan, Johns Hopkins University, and Mount Sinai Medical School.
David Shapiro was the Plenary Speaker at the meeting of the Riboclub in Quebec.
Steve Sligar presented seminars at Brandeis, Washington University, Purdue, Northwestern, Chicago, Colorado, and Scripps College. He was an invited presenter at the Human Frontiers Science Program (Paris, France); the P450 Biodiversity Meeting (Swansea, Wales); the ISSX Meeting (San Juan, Puerto Rico); and the Experimental Biology Symposium (Washington, DC).
Emad Tajkhorshid gave invited presentations at the Transdisciplinary International Conference on Aromatic Amino Acids and Related Substances (Vancouver); the first glial endfoot meeting: Physiology and Pathophysiology at the Brain Blood Interface, University of Oslo (Norway); the International Workshop on "Dynamics of Membranes" (plenary talk), German Biophysical Society (Gomadingen, Germany); and at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysics (Frankfurt). He also served as chairperson of the session on membrane transport at the 2007 meeting of the Biophysical Society.
Colin Wraight presented a lecture in the Randolph T. Major Lecture Series, University of Connecticut. He also gave invited lectures in the DOE-sponsored workshop on “Proton Solvation and Transport in Chemistry, Biology, and Materials Science (Washington, DC), and at the Bunty Plot 2006 Workshop on “Biological Water Oxidation and Oxygen Reduction (London). He chaired a session at the SOKENDAI International Symposium on “Electro-chemical Signaling by Membrane Proteins–Biodiversity and Principle” (Okazaki, Japan).
Cell and Developmental Biology
Michel Bellini was an invited speaker at the Cold Spring Harbor Meeting on Nuclear Function.
JoAnn Cameron chaired the session on “Limb Development and Evolution” at the annual meeting of the American Association of Anatomists in Washington, DC.
Stephanie Ceman presented invited lectures at the 10th International Fragile X Conference in Atlanta and at the 1st Annual Conquer Fragile X Symposium in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Jie Chen presented seminars at Harvard and LSU.
David Clayton presented invited lectures at the NIMH/NIDA conference on Social Behavior, the Cold Spring Harbor meeting on Biology of Genomes, and the Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology (Asilomar). He is co-chair of the Gordon Conference on Genes and Behavior to be held in February 2008.
Brian Freeman served as Chair of the Midwest Stress Conference in Evanston and the 3rd International Conference on the Hsp90 Chaperone Machine.
Martha U. Gillette presented invited lectures at the International Symposium on Nitric Oxide in Valencia, Spain; the XXII Congreso Latinoamericano y Primero Ibero-Americano de Ciencias Fisiológicas (Buenos Aires); the Winter Conference for Brain Research (Snowmass, CO); the National Science Foundation’s Director’s Workshop on “Measuring the Brain: From Signals and Synchronizers”; the Gordon Research Conference on Chronobiology (Aussois, France); the Associated Professional Sleep Societies 19th Annual Meeting (Minneapolis); New York Academy of Science Conference on Sleep Regulation and Dysregulation: From Molecules to Flies to Man; and the Plenary Lecture at the 10th Annual Neuroscience of Sleep and Circadian Biology Datablitz (Atlanta). Martha also served as president of the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms and president-elect of the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms.
Craig Mizzen presented an invited lecture at the 28th Annual Asilomar Chromatin and Chromosomes Conference (Monterey, CA).
Phil Newmark presented seminars at Columbia, Duke, USC, Washington University, and the Universities of Rochester, Colorado, and Utah. He gave invited lectures at the First International UC, Berkeley Evolutionary Developmental Biology Meeting; the International Symposium on Flatworm Biology (Innsbruck, Austria); the Midwest Developmental Biology Meeting, Society for Developmental Biology (Chicago), where he served as a session chair; the Research Society on Alcoholism annual meeting; Symposium on Alternative Animal Models for Alcohol Research (Chicago); and the Cell and Molecular Biology Graduate Student Symposium at UNC at Chapel Hill.
Mary Schuler presented invited lectures at the International Symposium on P450 Biodiversity (Swansea, Wales); the 15th International Conference on Cytochrome P450 (Bled, Slovenia); the American Society for Plant Biology Annual Meeting (Chicago), where she served as session chair; the Gordon Research Conference (Tilton, NH); and the Canadian Workshop on Plant Genomics, (Vancouver).
Fei Wang presented seminars at the University of Aberdeen and at University of Illinois Chicago, and was an invited speaker at the Chicago Cytoskeletal Meeting.
Microbiology
Stephen Blanke participated in the National Meeting of the Regional Centers of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases in St. Louis. He was an invited speaker at the Gordon Conference on Microbial Toxins and the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology. He also served as co-chair of the Hager Symposium, honoring Lowell Hager on the occasion of his eightieth birthday.
John Cronan presented seminars at MIT and the University of Pennsylvania.
Steve Farrand was an invited speaker at the International Symposium on Plasmid Biology (Fallen Leaf Lake, CA), where he was one of the organizers, and at the International Workshop on Quorum Sensing in Plant-pathogenic Bacteria (Ca Tron, Italy).
Jim Imlay presented seminars at Dalhousie University, the University of Washington, and UC Berkeley. He was an invited speaker at the Gordon Conference on Microbial Stress Responses meeting of the Genetic and Environmental Mutagenesis Society (Chapel Hill); the Gordon Conference on Oxidative Damage and Disease, where he chaired a session and was organizer of the meeting; and at the Conference on Iron-sulfur Cluster Biogenesis (Grenoble, France).
Bill Metcalf continues to serve as the co-director of the Microbial Diversity Summer Course at the Marine Biological Laboratory (Woods Hole, MA). He is also the Theme Leader for the “Mining Microbial Genomes for Novel Antibiotics” research theme at the Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois.
Abigail Salyers presented invited lectures at the Gordon Conference on Environmental Microbiology; the Sackler Conference on the Human Microbiota (an annual event sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences); the Southeast Asian Conference on Microbial Ecology, where she presented two lectures including the keynote (Jakarta, Indonesia); the Mark Wilson Annual Meeting on Oral Microbiology where she was also the keynote speaker (Naples, FL); and the Conference on Microbial Communities (Ann Arbor, MI).
Joanna Shisler presented seminars at the Universities of Cincinnati and Wisconsin, the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology, and at Penn State and Northwestern Universities. She was an invited speaker at the Sixth Annual Orthopoxvirus Research Group Meeting (Bethesda, MD); the American Chemical Society 233rd Spring National Meeting and Exposition (Chicago); and at the FASEB Poxvirus Summer Research Conference (Indian Wells, CA).
Jim Slauch presented an invited lecture at the University of Alberta/University of Calgary Conference on Infectious Diseases (Banff, Alberta). He continues as the organizer of the Microbial Pathogenesis and Host Response Meeting at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
Richard Tapping presented an invited lecture at the Biochemical Society Meeting on Pattern Recognition Receptors in Human Disease (Queen’s College, Cambridge, UK).
Cari Vanderpool gave invited lectures at the Cold Spring Harbor Meeting on Molecular Genetics of Bacteria and Phages; the 13th Annual Midwest Microbial Pathogenesis Conference (Cincinnati); and at the 2nd ASM Conference on Integrating Metabolism and Genomics (Montreal).
Rachel Whitaker gave invited lectures at the Thermal Biology Institute (Bozeman, MT), and at the American Museum of Natural History (NYC). She was the organizer of the American Academy of Microbiology's Large-Scale Sequence Colloquium.
Brenda Wilsonpresented an invited lecture at the American Society for Microbiology Biodefense and Emerging Diseases Research Meeting (Washington, DC).
Molecular and Integrative Physiology
Milan Bagchi presented invited lectures at the Annual Meeting of International Federation of the Placenta Association (Kobe City, Japan); the Annual Meeting of the Society of Gynecologic Investigation (Reno); and the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Reproduction (San Antonio).
Al Feng gave seminars at the Chinese Academy of Science and UCLA and was the Huber Lecturer for the International Society for Neuroethology.
Rhanor Gillette presented an invited lecture at the University of Washington Friday Harbor Laboratories Centennial Symposium.
Claudio Grosman gave seminars at the University of Chicago, Southern Illinois University, NIH, Yale University, the University of Wisconsin, University College London, the Technical University of Munich, and was an invited lecturer at the 2006 Ion Channels Gordon Conference, the 2007 American Chemical Society Meeting, and the 2007 Telluride Symposium on Proton Transport and Solvation in Biology.
Benita Katzenellenbogen presented the Roy O. Greep Award lecture at the 88th Annual Endocrine Society Meeting (Boston), and the Louis D’Agrosa Memorial Lecture at St. Louis University School of Medicine. She presented invited lectures at the Ernst Schering Foundation Symposium (Berlin, Germany); the Keystone Symposium on Nuclear Receptors (Banff, Canada); ASCO: Development of Molecular Therapeutics in Breast Cancer (Aspen, CO); the 12th International Congress on Hormonal Steroids and Hormones and Cancer, Plenary Lecture, (Athens, Greece); Washington University School of Medicine; the 17th Annual Breast Cancer Think Tank Meeting (Cancun, Mexico); the University of Virginia; the University of Oregon Health Sciences Center; the 10th Frontiers in Nuclear Receptor Action Conference (Atlanta); and the EMBO Conference on Nuclear Receptors in Health and Disease (Italy).
Ann Nardulli was co-chair of the session on Steroid Receptors and Coactivators at the 88th Annual Endocrine Society Meeting (Boston).
Lori Raetzman chaired the session on Mechanisms of Fetal Growth at the Endocrine Society Meeting.