CMMBNEWS UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA

SPRING 2015 ISSUE 06

CMMBNEWS

CONTENTS

Dr. Harris Bell-Temin, a former doctoral student in CMMB, was selected by the College of Arts and Sciences to serve as the commencement speaker at the Fall 2014 Commencement Ceremony. Harris was nominated for this opportunity by Dr. Lindsey Shaw, CMMB Director of Graduate Studies. Beginning this spring, Harris will join the laboratory of Dr. Nathan Yates at the University of Pittsburgh as a post-doctoral associate.

Graduate Section

Alumni Spotlight

Social Media & Seminar

CMMB Department

Picnic at Riverfront

Park

Saturday, Mar. 21st

10am—2pm

Spring 2015 CMMB

Undergraduate

Student Award

Ceremony

ISA1051

Friday, May 1st

Noon—1pm

See you there!

Left: Dr. Bell-Temin in front of the Marshall Student Center. Right: Dr. Bell-Temin on the USF Sundome’s big screen at the Fall 2014 Commencement Ceremony.

A Note From The Chair

Faculty & Scientist News

Faculty Spotlight

Undergraduate Section

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Jessica Kennedy, a CMMB doctoral student, was selected as a recipient of the Outstanding CMMB Graduate Student Research award at the Fall 2014 CMMB-Moffitt New Graduate Student Welcome Reception. CMMB extends a warm congratulations to Jessica on her achievements in academics and research!

I hope you had a great break and are

ready for the Spring 2015 Semester! At

the Fall 2014 Graduate Program

Commencement, CMMB’s own Ph.D.

student, Harris Bell-Temin, addressed

the USF commencement audience. His

talk was interesting, witty, and ended

with the comment that, “We are all

dressed in regalia as if we were headed to the Yule Ball at

Hogwarts.” Four Ph.D., four M.S. and over 100 B.S. students

graduated in December. Our December Awards Ceremony

honored six exceptional CMMB students. We welcome Dr. Beth

Jones-Mason who will coordinate upper division teaching

laboratories. Several faculty searches are underway in

Microbiology. Dr. Diane Te Strake will be stepping down in

August from her role as CMMB Undergraduate Director after eight

years of outstanding service.

CMMB faculty applied for a record number of grant

proposals, 17 in the Fall and 18 more applications in the spring. Grant

funding allows our graduate students and undergraduate researchers

to carry out more and better research projects in the research

laboratories. Please remember that the CMMB Annual Picnic is on

Saturday, March 21st at Riverfront Park. An announcement will be

sent out soon with more details. I hope you all have a successful

Spring Semester!

- Dr. James R. Garey

Help keep CMMB a high quality program through your generosity. We appreciate the support of generous benefactors to ensure that education and research at CMMB continue their strength now and into the future. Make an online contribution today!

2 Spring 2015 CMMBNEWS

WANT TO SUBMIT CONTENT TO THE

NEWSLETTER?

Send news to Sasha Peers via email at peers@usf.edu. To CMMB

Alumni, please contact Sasha Peers regarding how to be featured in the

Alumni Spotlight!

JAMES GAREY, PH.D.

CMMB Chair and Professor, Dr. James Garey supported a

part of “Old Florida” with his research findings. In a letter to

the Editor of the Tampa Tribune, Dr. Garey supported the

Army Corp of Engineer’s decision to deny the application of

a permit to dredge the SunWest channel, a unique coastal

spring fed estuarine system in Pasco County.

LINDSEY SHAW, PH.D.

Dr. Lindsey Shaw, CMMB Director of Graduate Studies and

Associate Professor, received an internal award for $50,000,

held jointly with Dr. Yu Chen from the USF College of

Medicine.

SCIENTIST SPOTLIGHT

GARY DAUGHDRILL, PH.D. National Cancer Institute at NIH

DANIEL LIM PH.D. USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA),

Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI)

ALYA LIMAYEM, PH.D. USF Sponsored Research Grant,

CAS Internal Travel Award

CMMBNEWS Spring 2015 3

CMMB WELCOMES NEW LAB INSTRUCTOR

Dr. Beth Jones-Mason, former CMMB visiting instructor, will now be a Teaching Lab Instructor starting Spring 2015. This position supports CMMB’s upper division laboratory courses such as Cell Biology, Genetics, and Microbiology. She will also teach a lecture course each semester.

Dr. Diane Te Strake, Professor and CMMB Director

of Undergraduate Studies, received her Ph.D.

degree from Duke University, and M.A. and B.S.

degrees from the University of Florida. As a tenured

faculty member, Dr. Te Strake’s research has

focused on marine and medically important fungi,

particularly with species of the fungus Basidiobolus.

When first hired at USF, Dr. Te Strake was one of

the first woman scientists at the university. She has

served as the Associate Chair of Biology and was the

first Associate Dean of Research and Facilities for

the College of Arts and Sciences. The USF

Herbarium has been under her leadership since

January 2010.

Since 2008, Dr. Te Strake has been the Director of Undergraduate

Studies for the CMMB department. She has helped establish the CMMB

undergraduate curricula and is responsible for the Cell and Molecular

Biology (CAM) transition from a concentration to a major. In 2009, Dr.

Te Strake assumed the role as Mentor of the Non-Thesis Master’s (NT-

MS) program in CMMB, in which she has provided mentorship to over

40 NT-MS students. Currently, Dr. Te Strake mentors over 30 NT-MS

students and manages the undergraduate programs representing over

1000 CMMB majors.

In August of 2015, Dr. Te Strake will be stepping down from her role as

CMMB Director of Undergraduate Studies to return to the department

in an academic role. CMMB thanks Dr. Te Strake for her outstanding

commitment and service to departmental undergraduates, graduate

students, faculty and staff.

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FACULTY SPOTLIGHT

Above: Dr. Diane Te Strake, CMMB Profes-

sor and Director of

Undergraduate Studies

José Luis Beltrán DMD, MD CMMB Outstanding Alumni Award

Dennis Kirichenko Outstanding CMMB Student Award

Maria Andrea Reinberg Palmar Microbiology Student Excellence Award

Claire Dorcent

Special Award: First Generation in College

Riley Bednar

CMMB Outstanding Research Award

Allison Distler CMMB Outstanding Research Award

Jose Ortiz Outstanding Non-Thesis Master’s Student Award

Christina Carlson, Ashly Kuruvilla & Michelle McGee CMMB Student Excellence Award

CMMBNEWS Spring 2015 5

AWARDS CEREMONY

The Ecology Lecture and Lab are no longer required in the Cell and

Molecular Biology Major but can still be used as electives within the

major. If you do not take Ecology, you must take another course in

the major because the number of credits within the major is

unchanged. General Microbiology will soon change from the “C”

format, where the lab and lecture grades are merged together, to the

“L” format, where the grades are separate as in the Biology I course.

This will allow students performing poorly on the Microbiology

lecture to drop the lecture but still complete the lab. Please contact

the BioAdvise Office or consult the 2014/15 Undergraduate Catalog

for more information on this change.

UNDERGRADUATE CURRICULUM CHANGES

RECIPIENTS

Above: Dennis Kirichenko, received the Outstanding

CMMB Student Award

CMMB GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS PARTICIPATE IN THE 8TH ANNUAL OKTOBERFEST

Thank you to the graduate and undergraduate students that represented CMMB at the

Oktoberfest Research Symposium! Congratulations to STEM Field winners: Crupa

Kurien, Vedad Delic, Josean Cruz, Sandra Zivkovic, and Drs. Patrick Bradshaw and

Svitlana Garbuzova-Davis on their poster titled, “Mitochondrial Electron Transport

Chain (ETC) Changes in Spinal Cord Grey and White Matter of ALS Patients”.

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Top Left: Oktoberfest STEM Field poster winners. Right: Valentina Caceres and Scott Cukras, CMMB Graduate Students. Bottom Left: Valentina and

Scott with CAS Dean Eric Eisenberg and Suzy Hall. Right: Renee Fleeman

and Christina Krute, CMMB Graduate Students.

CMMB DOCTORAL AND MASTER’S GRADUATES

CMMBNEWS Spring 2015 7

CMMB HAPPENINGS!

Whittney Burda, a CMMB Ph.D. student in Dr. Lindsey Shaw’s lab, was a co-inventor on a patent recently awarded to the laboratories of Dr. Lindsey Shaw and Dr. Roman Manetsch. The patent is for novel antimicrobial compounds that target infections caused by MRSA, as well as other drug resistant bugs.

Melanie Kuehl, a CMMB Ph.D. student in Dr. Brant Burkhardt’s lab, was selected as an honorary speaker for the Millipore Sales convention in Las Vegas, NV due to her expertise in the field of Luminex technology and achievements in Type 1 Diabetes research.

Whitney Ratliff, a CMMB Ph.D.

student in Dr. Brant Burkhardt’s lab,

was selected as a travel award

recipient to attend the Endocrine

Society’s 97th Annual Meeting &

Expo in San Diego, California from

March 4—8, 2015.

ALUMNI UPDATE José Luis Beltrán, D.M.D., M.D.

José Luis Beltrán, D.M.D., M.D., was the recipient of the first ever Outstanding CMMB Alumni award at the Fall 2014 CMMB Awards Ceremony. Dr. Beltrán received a B.S. in Biology and Master’s in Health Administration from the University of South Florida in 1998 and 1999, respectively. After his tenure at USF, Dr. Beltrán went on to obtain a Doctor of Medical Dentistry (D.M.D.) degree from Harvard University‘s School of Dental Medicine, and then a Medical Degree (M.D.) from the University of Texas - Houston Health Science Center. Dr. Beltrán now practices as a successful dental surgeon in the Tampa area.

Top: Dr. Garey, CMMB Chair and Professor, stands

with Dr. Beltrán DMD, MD.

CONNECT WITH CMMB!

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LIKE US ON FACEBOOK!

We love to hear from you! Please

send career updates to: Tiffany

Ferrer, 4202 East Fowler Avenue,

ISA 2015, Tampa, FL 33620 or

email tferrer1@usf.edu.

keep i

n t

ouch

January 9 Blaise Boles University of Iowa

January 16 Sargurunathan

Subashchandrabose University of Michigan Medical School

January 23 Kristi Frank University of Minnesota Medical

School

January 30 Christopher Vakulskas University of Florida

February 6 Prahathees Eswara Moorthy National Institutes of Health

February 13 Yu Chen USF College of Medicine

February 20 Priyanka Dutta CMMB Graduate Student

February 27 Robert Hill CMMB

March 13 Sarah Yuan USF College of Medicine

March 20 Lizi Wu University of Florida

March 27 Anja-Katrin Bielinsky University of Minnesota

April 3 Jin Cheng Moffitt Cancer Center

April 10 Vivek Shastri CMMB Graduate Student

April 17 Ranjan Perera Sanford-Burnham Medical Research

Institute