Grad News Forum

In the coming year, Patricia Wadsworth, professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, will join Melody Brown Burkins on the Graduate Alumni Council. She will be taking over from Allan Weatherwax, who is completing his time as a member of the council this spring. Professor Weatherwax earned his PhD in physics in 1995 and frequently returns to campus to provide guidance to graduate students. The Graduate Studies Office thanks Weatherwax for his active participation on the Alumni Council and in the graduate community more generally. “Alan Weatherwax has been a great graduate representative on the council, and we will miss his leadership,” observes Assistant Dean of Recruiting, Jane Seibel.

Professor Wadsworth is an active member of her local Dartmouth Alumni Club in the Pioneer Valley, and she is looking forward to becoming involved in the Graduate Alumni Council. She completed her PhD at Dartmouth in 1983, working with Professor Roger Sloboda. The Graduate Forum recently had the opportunity to speak with Professor Wadsworth about her time at Dartmouth and decision to join the Graduate Alumni Council.

Graduate Forum (GF): What inspired you to study biology at Dartmouth?

Patricia Wadsworth (PW): My decision to study at Dartmouth stemmed from working at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. I had completed my undergraduate degree in biology at St. Lawrence University, and I took a summer job at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. My boss at MBL was Ken Edds, who received his PhD degree working with Professor Robert Allen, who subsequently moved to Dartmouth as Chair of Biology. Dartmouth researchers often perform research at the Marine Biological Lab over the summers, and I actually worked with several others from Dartmouth there. Dr. Edds had very much enjoyed working with Professor Allen, and he encouraged me to pursue my PhD at Dartmouth.

GF: What types of activities were you involved in while a graduate student?

PW: I spent a lot of time working in the lab, but in addition to that I also participated as a graduate student representative to the biology faculty. There was not a Graduate Student Council at that time, but individual departments did have graduate student representatives to inform them of graduate student happenings and concerns, so I participated as a rep. I also really enjoyed the many outdoor activities that the Hanover area offers. I took up cross-country skiing and went to the Dartmouth Outing Club cabins. There was a lot of camaraderie amongst the biology graduate students, and we would have different evening gatherings throughout the term.

GF: How did your graduate experience at Dartmouth prepare you for your position as a professor?

PW: As a graduate student, I had the opportunity to be a teaching assistant for several different courses. I feel that being a TA was great preparation for the teaching that I do now. The undergraduate students at Dartmouth are very bright and working with them was both challenging and satisfying. Although at the time I was primarily interested in being in the lab and working on my research, I think it would have been much harder for me to transition to a faculty position had I not had the chance to observe Dartmouth professors teaching and work with undergraduates there.

GF: What was it that made you decide you wanted to be a part of the Graduate Alumni Council?

PW: There are really two reasons that I decided to get involved in the Alumni Council. The first is that as a professional, I feel that it is important to maintain connections with the institution where you studied. As a graduate student, you are heavily involved in the work of your advisor, and when you graduate, you tend to maintain that connection to your mentor as you become a young faculty member. However, it is also important to have broader connections to the institution as a whole and to have interactions with your other classmates. I think that at the time I graduated, there was less emphasis on mentoring activities and maintaining connections, but now there is starting to be more recognition of how important these mentoring connections are.

The second reason that I decided to join the Council was that I am already involved in the Pioneer Valley Dartmouth Alumni Club. My father-in-law, who graduated from Dartmouth in 1939, is very active in the Alumni Club, and I started attending events with him and really enjoyed them. They have annual dinners, activities for families, and other events two to three times a year. Based on my interactions with the Alumni Club, I decided that I would like to be more involved in the broader Dartmouth alumni community and joining the Council seemed like a great way to get involved.

GF: Do you have any specific goals for the Alumni Council?

PW: My main goal is to enhance the opportunities for graduate alumni to get involved in the Dartmouth community.

We thank Professor Wadsworth for taking the time to talk with us, and we look forward to working with her in the future to promote the work of the Graduate Alumni Council!

Everywhere researchers go, be it a conference, a job interview, or simply meeting a colleague in the hallway, people ask the obvious question: “So tell me about your work?” It goes without saying that the ability of researchers to describe their research in lay language efficiently is one of the most important skills to be acquired, regardless of the field of research.

On Monday, April 29, assistant dean of Graduate Student Affairs, Kerry Landers, initiated a speed researching event aimed at developing students’ communication skills. In this event, students were expected to explain their research to their smart, but not expert, colleagues in only two minutes!

“We have received feedback from faculty who attended the recent Graduate Poster Session and were impressed with many of our graduate students’ ability to explain their research to non-experts,” notes Landers. “The goal of this speed researching event was to provide another opportunity for graduate students to continue to improve this essential skill.”

At the event, a total of 10 students explained their research to each other in pairs over lunch, followed by a two-minute constructive comments session. Students came from programs in biology, chemistry, engineering, genetics, MALS, and physics and astronomy. A wide range of research topics were discussed, including black holes, prion diseases, and the causes of the Arab Spring. Each student had the opportunity to present his or her research five times, providing plenty of practice.

“This event was great! I now know what other students in genetics, engineering, and chemistry do,” commented Daniel Durcan, a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies student, who also serves as the graduate student activities coordinator. Durcan continued, “The clarity for the presentations was very impressive. I thought it was a great opportunity to practice explaining my research to students from other disciplines.”

The event was somewhat similar to the Three-Minute Research Presentation sessions held by the Graduate Studies Office in the past. However, there is a subtle difference in emphasis between the two events. The Three-Minute Research Presentation sessions involve a single three-minute talk and aim to improve public speaking skills. On the other hand, “speed researching” aims to help students present their research swiftly to several people—a skill they will need at job fairs or conferences. Such a skill is crucial in a competitive academic environment.

Speed researching is, indeed, very helpful and from the looks of it, a very successful idea. Please keep your eyes open for the second speed researching event!

by Gilbert Rahme

In 2012, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that over one-third of US adults are obese, and that the medical costs associated with obesity in 2008 were estimated at $14.7 billion, with rates and costs expected to increase. The molecular and epidemiological cause of this emerging epidemic in the US and world populations was the basis of the 6^th Annual Integrative Biology Symposium, held on April 24^th. This year’s topic was “Obesity and Human Health.”

The Integrative Biology Symposium was started in 2008, with the goal to “host an interdisciplinary symposium that would help to bring the broader Dartmouth community interested in biomedical research together,” according to Professor Jason Moore. “Another important goal was to provide a forum for students to showcase their work and to interact with national and international leaders.” Past symposia topics have included “Human Microbiome in Health and Disease” (2012), “RNA and Disease: Beyond the Central Dogma” (2011), “Clinical and Translational Research” (2010), “Emerging Technology” (2009), and more generally, the inaugural event covered biostatistics, genomics, bioinformatics, and proteomics (2008).

Of the 200 registrants for this year’s symposium, 98 were students, 14 of whom presented posters at an evening poster session on April 23^rd. Winners of the poster session were graduate students Jeremy Huckins (Psychological and Brain Sciences), Corina Lesseur (Program in Experimental and Molecular Medicine), and Jie Tan (Molecular and Cellular Biology, first year), as well as undergraduate students, Rachael Bornstein (Dartmouth Class of 2014) and Brad Stubenhaus (from Keene State College in Keene, New Hampshire).

Speakers at the symposium consisted of three from the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth: Diane Gilbert-Diamond, PhD, Richard Rothstein, MD, and Benjamin Moyer, PhD, as well as six outside speakers: Pamela Goodwin, MD (Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, Canada), Ruth Loos, PhD (Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, New York), Cecilia Lindgren, PhD (Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Oxford University, United Kingdom), David Allison, PhD (University of Alabama, Birmingham, Alabama), Lee Kaplan, MD, PhD (Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts), and the keynote speaker, Joel Hirschhorn, MD, PhD (Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts).

These nine speakers discussed topics encompassing the genetics of obesity, Western diets as agents of obesity, innovative interventions for weight and diabetes management, the application of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) to identify potential biomarkers for elevated obesity risk, and many others.

The Integrative Biology Symposium is sponsored by a number of Dartmouth-affiliated groups and programs, including the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Norris Cotton Cancer Center, the Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Sciences (iQBS), the Dartmouth Toxic Metals Superfund Research Program (SRP), the Dartmouth Lung Biology Center, the Children’s Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Center at Dartmouth, and the New Hampshire Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (NH-INBRE). In order to choose the symposium themes, topics are discussed and voted on by the Integrative Biology Committee, which meets monthly to plan and organize the yearly symposium. The theme for 2014 will be “Global Health.” According to Professor Moore, the group tries to pick themes which will broadly appeal to researchers across campus.

It appears that so far, the committee has been successful. Biochemistry graduate student Kelli Hvorecny stated, “I think the Integrative Biology Symposium is a great forum bringing the disparate research disciplines at Dartmouth together for discussion on a topic that touches all of their research. The exposure to techniques and fields of study that I do not encounter on a daily basis triggers outside-of-the-box ideas for my own research, often to my benefit.” When asked to provide a potential topic for a future symposium, Hvorecny suggests, “From molecules to medicine: Integrating the sciences spanning biochemistry to patient care.”

by Jeanine Amacher

photos by Carolee Crossmon

Celia Chen, a research professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, who received her undergraduate degree from Dartmouth in 1978 and her PhD in biology in 1994, was recently involved in negotiations in Switzerland as a part of the Minamata Convention on Mercury. Chen represented Dartmouth as a member of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Global Mercury Partnership.

For the full article go to Dartmouth Now.

The second talk in the series “Becoming a Faculty Member” was as informative as the first. Professor Ron Taylor talked to a group of graduate students and postdocs about how to write an effective research paper, something that he and his lab have a lot of experience with.

The hardest part of writing is figuring out where to start. Professor Taylor suggested that writers start with the abstract, which will provide a general overview of what the paper will be about. He did mention that your ideas will probably change as you start writing the paper, but you can always adjust the abstract later. After developing the abstract, the next and most important aspect of writing is looking at the collected data. Professor Taylor suggested actually having the data physically in front of you, so that you can move it around and arrange it into a coherent story. Sometimes more experiments may need to be done before the story is complete. Do you have controls? Is everything labeled correctly? Do the results fit well with what the abstract says? Looking at the data in advance will allow the writer to determine how the paper should develop and what remains to be done.

The next important aspect of writing a paper is determining why other researchers would care about what you are writing. You will want to present your work in a way that interests others in the field and addresses an issue that they find compelling.

Professor Taylor also stressed the importance of remembering basic writing skills, such as making sure each paragraph has a topic sentence. You should correct spelling and grammar before sending the paper off to be read by your advisor—sometimes having a colleague read through the paper in advance can help.

A final consideration when writing a paper is deciding where you ultimately want to submit it. This may change the layout and content of the paper. Some scholars pick journals based on impact factor, while others may submit to a smaller journal, hoping that the paper will be published faster. As Professor Taylor noted, however, it is often worth taking a risk and submitting to a more prestigious journal because, “If you don’t play, you can’t win, and sometimes you can win.”

Overall, Professor Taylor offered a number of helpful pointers to aspiring graduate student and postdoc writers.

by Britney Tappen

In the latest movie produced by the Graduate Studies Office, international graduate student reflect upon their studies at Dartmouth. Featuring interviews from students in five of Dartmouth’s Arts & Sciences graduate programs, the newly-released movie explores the international community in Hanover.

Directed by Tennile Sunday
Filmed & Edited by Wesley Whitaker

Grad student Elizabeth Macari, Poster Winner

Dartmouth graduate student Fabrizio Galimberti, from the Program of Pharmacology and Toxicology, kicked off the 4^th Annual Integrative Biology Symposium on campus with his talk on “Tumor Suppressive and Oncogenic MicroRNAs in Lung Cancer.”

The symposium brings together many biological research groups on campus to present work and discuss ideas. Most participants agree that organizational conferences that attract different perspectives on the same issues are the key to making new discoveries.

The theme for this year’s conference was “RNA and Disease: Beyond the Central Dogma”. Invited speakers and Dartmouth professors talked about microRNA, messenger RNA, patterns of observation, and phenotype observations.

In keeping with the theme of interdisciplinary research and collaboration, poster presenters were students from a variety of programs at The Dartmouth Institute, the Thayer School of Engineering, and other colleges across campus. The event was sponsored by several major grants and laboratories on campus, including the IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE), and the new Institute for Quantitative Biological Sciences (iQBS), which offers a new PhD degree program at Dartmouth.

Students benefited not just from the science, but also from numerous door prizes. Poster winners, Luca Magnani, Sergey Fogelson, and Elizabeth Macari took home iPad’s!

by Brian Pogue
photo by Tennile Sunday

The Ecology and Evolutionary Biology program (EEB) has had another successful year. We now have 24 students – our largest number ever – enrolled this fall.  We received strong rankings from the National Research Council, and many of our current students hold nationally recognized fellowships, including: National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellows Carissa Aoki and Vivek Venkataraman; GAANN Fellow Alex Shanku; and IGERT Fellows Julia Bradley-Cook, Lauren Culler, Sam Fey, Nina Lany, Marcus Welker, and Simone Whitecloud.  In addition, Ramsa Chavez-Ulloa, Zak Gezon, and Vivek Venkataraman have been awarded outside grants to support their research.

In alumni news, Tom Morrison successfully defended his PhD in September 2010 and is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wyoming.  Erik Stange has joined the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, while Jim Kellner and Darren Ward are assistant professors at the University of Maryland at College Park and Humboldt State University, respectively.  Alice Shumate was promoted to Associate Professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University.  Rich Hofstetter was featured in The Atlantic and on Public Radio International, and Jay Lennon was quoted in the New York Times.

By Kathryn Cottingham  and Matt Ayres

A paper whose co-authors include current Dartmouth researchers Chen (a PhD Biology graduate alum), Folt, and Thomas Hampton, bioinformatics specialist in the Dartmouth Medical School Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, is one of the papers highlighted in conjunction with the publication of “The Ecoresponsive Genome of Daphnia pulex” by CGB Director John Colbourne and his co-authors in Science. The Dartmouth co-authored paper is titled, “Gene Response Profiles for Daphnia pulex Exposed to the Environmental Stressor Cadmium Reveals Novel Crustacean Metallothioneins” and was originally published in BMC Genomics in 2007.

Read the full article in Dartmouth Now.