News
Feb. 7, 2020
#IAmScience Sanzida Rahman
By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC Growing up in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, Sanzida Rahman longed for space to grow a garden. She often grew plants and vegetables on small windowsills and the roof of her home, making the most of what little space she had. From an early age, Rahman, a doctoral student in Walter Gassmann’s lab at Bond LSC, fell in love with agriculture. She remembers visiting her family in a small village of Bangladesh every year and helping her uncles, grandparents and cousins on the farm. …
Feb. 6, 2020
Bringing in talent: New labs look for recruiting edge at annual event
George Smith, Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, speaks at the Joint Recruitment Weekend at Bond LSC. |Photo by Jerry Duggan, Bond LSC By Jerry Duggan | Bond LSC It was an entirely new process for Henry (XiuFeng) Wan as he spent part of last weekend wooing potential graduate students at the 11th annual Graduate Life Sciences Joint Recruitment Weekend at the Bond Life Sciences Center. As a relatively new faculty member, Wan took his first stab at recruiting in a way he’s never had to before. Previously having worked for years at Mississippi State University, he has never had…
Jan. 27, 2020
The taming of the brain
Russian silver foxes that have been tamed show changes in their brains. | photo provided by Anna Kukekova Bond LSC scientist delves into how domestication alters the fox brain By Roger Meissen | Bond Life Sciences Center You might be familiar with the idiom “don’t bite the hand that feeds you,” but when it comes to a certain lineage of tame Russian silver foxes it’s quite literal. After more than 50 generations of breeding, these tame foxes likely offer insight into how selective breeding leads to domestication, and scientists dove deeper to look at what…
Jan. 24, 2020
#IAmScience Kaitlyn Waters
By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC It’s common knowledge that all Ph.D. candidates must complete research in preparation for a dissertation, but what happens when one’s faculty mentor moves to a different school before completion? Kaitlyn Waters found herself in that situation as she was preparing for the final year of her Ph.D. program. Waters, a current veterinary medical sciences Ph.D. candidate at Mississippi State University (MSU), is finishing her research in the Bond Life Sciences Center with primary investigator Henry Wan. Wan came to Mizzou last summer from MSU as…
Jan. 14, 2020
Stepping into their own
Two Bond Life Sciences Center researchers find their path in teaching and research Sarah Unruh and Vinit Shanbhag have both taken paths that have led them toward teaching positions and fellowships. By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC As one semester closes and another begins, Sarah Unruh finds herself at the start of a new chapter of her life—this time at the front of the classroom. A newly appointed assistant professor at Illinois College, Unruh only had a handful of weeks to create syllabi, craft lesson plans and pack up her entire life to prepare…
Jan. 10, 2020
#IAmScience Karen Segovia
By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC Karen Segovia wanted to work with animals the moment her childhood dog fell sick. With few veterinarians near the rural town in Perú where she grew up, she felt powerless to help, and that inspired her to eventually go to veterinary school. But it was her preparation for her dissertation to meet the degree requirements at San Marcos National University veterinary school that refined Segovia’s focus on something smaller. Already interested in virology, her research narrowed in viruses and avian flu. A connection with a…
Dec. 30, 2019
Stopping transport: How limiting copper can combat cancer
Vinit Shanbhag (left) is pictured with a few of his co-collaborators Nikita Gudekar, Michael Petris (principal investigator), Kimberly Jasmer and Aslam Khan (from left to right). | Photo by Jinghong Chen, Bond LSC By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC We find copper in currency, electrical equipment and jewelry, but it also plays an essential role within our bodies. From its use in the production of red blood cells to maintaining healthy bones, blood vessels, nerves and immune function, a tiny level of copper makes us function. But recent research points to a darker side: its…
Dec. 13, 2019
#IAmScience Madison Green
By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC It’s hard for a sixth-grader to nail down exactly what she wants to do for the rest of her life, but that’s when the process started for Madison Green. After all, it isn’t the easiest of decisions. With a wide range of possibilities, it can be hard for anyone to be truly sure of a decision that will shape the rest of their life. For Green, a junior biology and public health dual major, her path shifted toward science when she joined Science Olympiad, a national nonprofit organization dedicated…
Dec. 5, 2019
#IAmScience Mannie Liscum
For Mannie Liscum, thinking is a privilege, and his job gives him the chance to be fascinated by human’s capacity to conceptualize and learn new things. “It’s my goal to use as much of the stuff between my ears as I can while I’m here,” said the Bond LSC primary investigator. “And that’s what drives a lot of people into science.” Along with that internal tick to learn, he’s inspired by the scientific pursuit to better understand the world. He said it’s easy to see things and from one mindset, but in reality, it’s always…
Nov. 28, 2019
Jordyn Lucas #IAmScience
By Danielle Pycior | Bond LSC Fourteen billion years ago, the universe began expanding. Four billion years ago, the earth formed. Four million years ago, humans began to roam the Earth. Four years ago, Jordyn Lucas began her graduate degree studying the origins of life in the lab of Donald Burke at Bond LSC. “We have this really cool grant from NASA that I’m working on,” she said. “We’re working with RNA to see if it would have been a good progenitor molecule for life, and testing the bounds of what it can do on its…
Nov. 25, 2019
A return to mentor: Gant advises on PREP for Ph.D.’s
Kristal Gant, a former MU PREP Scholar and current Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wisconsin – Madison | photo by Roger Meissen, Bond LSC By Roger Meissen | Bond LSC Kristal Gant is a long way from the student she was when she donned a lab coat and wielded a pipette in labs at Bond Life Sciences Center nearly four years ago. As she stood in front of a group of MU students hoping to one day follow their own routes to graduate school, Gant recounted her long and winding path to her Ph.D. program at…
Nov. 22, 2019
#IAmScience Rachel Martin
By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC Rachel Martin always faced challenges head-on. As a budding freshman who began her college career in the School of Journalism, she switched to biological sciences, tackled a double major in music, joined two research labs and kept up with clubs throughout her undergraduate career. Through it all, she has maintained an unwavering ambitious spirit. Now in her final year, Martin has wrapped up her music degree and enjoys a more relaxed course load than she’s used to. From freshman to junior year, she often took over 18 credit hours at…