We will be holding our recruitment weekends February 1 – 3,  February 8-10 and February 22-24. Interviews will be held February 1,  February 8  and February 22. Receptions on February 1 and 8 will be held in Sidney Frank Hall at 5 PM and on February 22 the reception will be at 70 Ship St.  There will be many opportunities to interact with prospective students. Save the dates!

We had a great day for our annual grad program retreat on August 29, 2012. Congratulations to the winners of our poster contest: Jeff Hofmann, Dorothy Koveal, and Zak Swartz.

Kristin Beale, an MCB graduate student working in Prof. Mark Johnson’s lab published a paper in Current Biology recently. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982212004617). She then blogged about her work in the Huffington Post. Go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristin-beale/flower-pollination_b_1552289.html to read her blog. The NYT Science Times also mentioned her work – http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/22/science/fertilization-in-flowers-marked-by-expert-precision.html?_r=1

Associate Professor Tricia Serio has stepped down as Director of the Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry (MCB) Graduate Program. Tricia served as Director of Graduate Studies for this interdepartmental PhD program since 2009. During this time, Tricia spearheaded important curricular innovations, helped to develop a new graduate curricular track in functional and computational genetics and served as co-PI on the successful renewal of the MCB Training Grant. She also developed a mentoring program to support MCB graduate students in preparation and submission of external fellowships and was honored in 2010 with the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Graduate and Postdoctoral Teaching and Mentoring in the Biological Sciences.

Tricia has been a dedicated mentor and champion of rigorous graduate training. We thank her for her service and congratulate her on a job well done.

We welcome Associate Professor Arthur Salomon who has been appointed as Director of the MCB Graduate Program to replace Tricia. Professor Judith Bender will continue as Co-Director. Both Art and Judith are experienced and dedicated graduate trainers and we look forward to working with them to advance the Division’s training and research missions.

The MCB Program announces the start of implementation of a new curricular track in the Molecular Biology of Aging (MBoA). This track will augment our current programmatic tracks, namely MCB (Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry) and FCG (Functional and Computational Genetics). Prospective students interested in this thematic area should contact Professor John Sedivy (John_Sedivy@Brown.edu). Further information will be provided here on this website as it becomes available in the near future.

Zak Swartz in the Wessel lab has received a three year NRSA Fellowship from NIH. The title of his project is: Notch pathway maintenance of the immortal germ line.

Selena Gell from Rob Reenan’s lab successfully defended her PhD thesis on September 6.  She will soon start a postdoc at Harvard University.