Wednesday, November 20, 2019
9:00 AM
Life Sciences Laboratory, Room N410
Dissertation Title:  “De-coding the impact of evolved changes in gene expression and cellular phenotype on primate evolution”
Advisor:  Courtney Babbitt

University of Massachusetts Amherst food scientist Matthew Moore has received two grants from the USDA to apply new technology in an effort to more quickly detect and trace foodborne disease caused by noroviruses and bacteria.

Under the USDA’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative, Moore and Min Chen, a UMass Amherst associate professor of chemistry, received a $490,000 grant to develop and evaluate a portable sensing device capable of both identifying and subtyping foodborne pathogens, including bacteria and viruses. “Human noroviruses and Salmonella enterica are the leading causes of foodborne illness and foodborne death in the United States, respectively,” Moore says. “One of the major elements to control these pathogens is the ability to rapidly and portably detect them. Dr. Chen has developed an extremely promising sensing platform that has shown great results for clinical applications, and we hope to translate that progress to pathogenic microorganisms.” 

In related research funded under the USDA’s Improving Food Safety Program, Moore and University of Florida food microbiologist Melissa Jones were awarded a $250,000 grant to use a new and potentially more effective way to concentrate and identify human noroviruses from food and environmental samples. Read more

Intellectual freedom and the opportunity to start his own research group once lured Robert Daniels (PhD, Hebert Lab) to Stockholm University and the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics. After nine years of eminent academic research, he landed a prestigious job in the US. Still, his focus is the same: to apply basic membrane protein folding principles to modernize and improve the antigens in seasonal influenza vaccines.

During his sojourn at Stockholm University, Robert Daniels became Associate Professor at the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics. He also built an international reputation as a distinguished influenza researcher. Since June 2019, Robert Daniels has been the principal investigator for a group that studies influenza viruses at the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research within the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) – a US government agency that regulates therapeutics including vaccines. Read more

Credits:  Photo: Niklas Björling; Text: Henrik Lundström; Page editor: Alexander Tuuling

A cross-disciplinary team of scientists, led by University of Massachusetts Amherst environmental epigeneticist Richard Pilsner, will use a three-year, $1.6 million grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) to expand research into the impact of phthalate exposure on male fertility. The three-year grant is part of the NIEHS initiative known as ViCTER (Virtual Consortium for Translational/Transdisciplinary Environmental Research). The program aims to stimulate unconventional partnerships among environmental health scientists in an effort to accelerate breakthroughs in research.

The new award’s co-investigators are reproductive biologists Pablo Visconti, a UMass Amherst professor of veterinary and animal sciences, and Sarah Kimmins, associate professor and Canada Research Chair in Epigenetics, Reproduction and Development at McGill University in Montreal. Read more