Faculty Highlights 2019-2020

Dr. Michael Levin, Director of the Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology and Professor of Biology at Tufts University

Ben Wolfe's article on How to Make your own Yeast has been published in the New York Times.

Julia Gouvea is highlighted in an Inside Higher Ed article about her approach to her Biology 14 labs; way to go!

Congratulations to Sergei Mirkin for being awarded the Distinguished Scholar Award! Well deserved!

Erik Dopman’s paper Genomic Basis of Circannual Rhythm in the European Corn Borer Moth, published in the Dec. issue of Current Biology, received a lot of press, being featured by the National Science Foundation. "Secrets to climate change adaptation uncovered in the European corn borer moth" and The Scientist magazine, Circadian Clock Genes Help a Crop Pest Adapt to Climate Change.

Sara Lewis and Michael Reed’s review about Firefly extinction also received widespread press coverage, from NPR Morning Edition, The New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg News, and many others.

Michael Levin and the Levin Lab had press for their PNAS publication entitled, "A scalable pipeline for designing reconfigurable organisms" go viral. This publication has garnered publicity from sources including The Boston Globe, The New York Post, Forbes, and Scientific American, among many others.

Sergei Mirkin and Alexandra/Sasha Khristich had a lot of interest in their paper on the PNAS website titled "Large-scale contractions of Friedreich's ataxia GAA repeats in yeast occur during DNA replication due to their triplex-forming ability."

In addition to these, Biology faculty had many impactful publications published that received recognition from other scientists in their fields.

Congratulations Class of 2020!
The Department of Biology is incredibly proud of your dedication, hard work and perseverance throughout your time at Tufts University. Our faculty and staff have valued each moment teaching and guiding you through your biological science major. It is evident that our department has a cohort of students that are driven, motivated and collaborative. You have achieved a major accomplishment and we could not be more thrilled to send our well wishes to you are your future endeavors!

Class of 2020 Congratulations video
Senior Honors Thesis
Biology Department Award Winners

Congratulations to Gabriela Garcia (Orians Lab) who has won the Graduate Student Council Award for Outstanding Graduate Contribution to Diversity and Inclusion Award.

Brain links to embryonic immunity, guiding response of the "troops" that battle infections: Tufts University-led team of biologists discovers neurotransmitter signals guide migration of immune cells to infection sites. Levin Lab, Feb. 2020

Professors Sara Lewis and Michael Reed making headlines for their research on fireflies and their risk of extinction:

"Australian wildfires have created dangerous stress for wildlife, a harbinger for increasing pressures on animals due to climate change" Read TuftsNow interview with Michael Reed about how animals cope with the ravages of wildfires.

Congratulations to Michael Levin and the Levin Lab for their PNAS publication entitled, "A scalable pipeline for designing reconfigurable organisms." This publication has garnered publicity from sources including The Boston Globe, The New York Post, Forbes, and Scientific American, among many others. Read some of the buzz.

Congratulations to Sergei Mirkin and Alexandra/Sasha Khristich for their paper on the PNAS website titled "Large-scale contractions of Friedreich's ataxia GAA repeats in yeast occur during DNA replication due to their triplex-forming ability." Read the press release.

Research from the Dopman lab was spotlighted in The Scientist on January 13, 2020. Read the article.

Congratulations to Prof. Zarin Machanda, who has been named Usen Family Career Development Assistant Professor, effective January 1, 2020.

A paper from the Freudenreich lab was published online in the December 2019 issue of journal eLife on "Distinct roles for S. cerevisiae H2A copies in recombination and repeat stability, with a role for H2A.1 threonine 126" by Nealia C.M. House (AG14), Erica J. Polleys (current post-doc), Ishtiaque Quasem (AG19), Marjorie De la Rosa Mejia (A18), Cailin E. Joyce (A06), Oliver Takacsi-Nagy (A18), Jocelyn E. Krebs, Stephen M. Fuchs, and Catherine H. Freudenreich.

In addition to giving an invited talk ("Dealing with Degrees: An Environmental Skeleton for Scansorial Locomotion") at the Gordon Research Conference on Neuroethology: Behavior, Evolution and Neurobiology, at Mount Snow in August 2019, Professor Barry Trimmer also traveled to Japan, where he presented his robotics work ("Brains and Biomaterials: Controlling Movements in Soft Animals and Robots") at the 2019 International Symposium of the Research Institute for Electronic Science (RIES) at Hokkaido University.

Congratulations to Brenna Gormally in the Romero lab for successfully defending her Ph.D. thesis in November 2019.

Undergraduate Sarah Shnayder in the Romero lab was named a Beckman Fellow in the summer of 2019.

Congratulations to Prof. Michael Reed, who was appointed an Associate of Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology.

The Department of Biology at Tufts University is ranked 3rd in College Factual's list of 2019 Best General Biology Colleges in the U.S.

Congratulations to Dr. Eric Tytell on his tenure and promotion as Associate Professor without limit of time in the Department of Biology, School of Arts and Sciences, effective July 1, 2019.

Congratulations to Dr. Susan Koegel, who has been selected to receive a 2019 Tufts Teaching with Technology Award. The Teaching with Technology Awards program is conducted annually to recognize Tufts faculty for effective and meaningful uses of technology in teaching academic courses. Each year, Educational Technology Services (ETS) surveys students across the University to nominate course instructors whose use of technology has had a markedly positive impact on their learning and engagement in a Tufts course. Dr. Koegel will be recognized at the 32nd Annual Tufts University-wide Teaching Conference on May 22, 2019 at the Grafton campus.

Congratulations to Dr. Norah Warchola who has been recognized with an Honorable Mention in the 2019 Tufts Teaching with Technology Awards.

Congratulations to Dr. Sergei Mirkin, who received a $2.6M Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (MIRA) from NIH in March 2019, to advance his pioneering studies of the mechanisms of genome instability mediated by simple DNA repeats.

Professor Michael Romero was awarded the Howard Bern Award for Contributions to Comparative Endocrinology, one of the top prizes in the world for comparative endocrinologists, at the annual Society for Comparative and Integrative Biology in January 2019.

Tufts Biologists win "Project of the Year" from the Department of Defense's SERDP Resource Conservation Program, for 'Endangered Butterflies as a Model System for Managing Source-Sink Dynamics on Department of Defense Lands.' This project was led by Dr. Elizabeth Crone, with Norah Warchola, Lee Brown, and researchers from Duke University, Michigan State University, Washington State University, and the Institute of Wildlife Studies. The project demonstrated how habitat restoration, if carefully planned, enhances landscapes for endangered butterflies.