The recipients of the Pete von Hippel Graduate Scholar Award, announced each Fall at our annual Institute of Molecular Biology Retreat, are described below in brief biographies with accompanying photographs, listed in reverse chronological order.
2019 Recipient Aleesa J. Schlientz
I was born and raised in Michigan, where I was fortunate to be able to participate in the short-lived Grand Rapids Area Pre-College Engineering Program (GRAPCEP). It was through the GRAPCEP program, which was focused on preparing high school students for futures in engineering and biomedicine, that I got my first taste of laboratory experience as a summer intern at the Van Andel Institute. I spent the summer troubleshooting tissue microarrays that could be used for cancer histology research, and I also had the opportunity to run my first ‘real’ experiment – testing potential flooring samples for the new building they were constructing for resistance to chemical spills and staining. It was this experience that solidified the idea of a future career in science for me.
After high school I attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I spent the first two years of my undergraduate career playing tuba in the Michigan Marching Band, until I started a work study position in the laboratory of Dr. Deneen Wellik in the winter of my sophomore year. During my time in the Wellik lab, I studied the role of Hox11 genes in mouse musculoskeletal development and fracture repair. Having felt out of place and struggling for much of my time at the University of Michigan, it wasn’t until I started working in Deneen’s lab and interacting with the graduate students and postdocs that I felt like I had finally found my place. I still struggled academically and personally outside of the lab, but the lab was a refuge from everything else and everyone in it felt like family. As I was nearing graduation, I realized I wanted to pursue graduate school but also that my chances directly after graduation were limited because of my academic difficulties.
After graduating with my Bachelor of Science in Microbiology and becoming the first person in my family to have a four-year college degree, I continued on for two years at the University of Michigan working as a laboratory technician/lab manager on a collaborative project between the labs of Dr. Lisa Larkin and Dr. Deneen Wellik. My work between the Larkin and Wellik labs focused on determining the post-implantation fate of cells within scaffoldless tissue engineered constructs in a sheep model of anterior cruciate ligament repair. Working as a laboratory technician reaffirmed my desire to pursue a graduate education, and in 2014 I joined the Department of Biology and the Institute of Molecular Biology at the University of Oregon.
Despite entering graduate school with the notion that I would continue on with research involving vertebrates, I decided to join the lab of Dr. Bruce Bowerman to work on oocyte meiosis in the invertebrate model organism Caenorhabditis elegans. My work now focuses on understanding how oocytes extrude polar bodies during the meiotic divisions, and the role of spindle assembly proteins in the extrusion process. When I finish my thesis work, I hope to continue my work of understanding oocyte polar body extrusion as a postdoctoral researcher, and eventually I would like to have my own research lab.
I am deeply grateful for the mentorship and support I have received in my scientific career thus far and honored to have received the 2019 Pete von Hippel Graduate Scholar Award.
2018 Recipient Gabriel Yette
Gabriel Yette spent much of his childhood full of curiosity in Olympia, Washington. He knew he wanted to be a scientist at the age of five, when he first started conducting experiments to answer the age-old question: Why does orange juice taste so terrible after brushing your teeth? His first scientific inquiry had begun! Since then, he’s continued to pursue interesting, relevant questions without losing his sense of curiosity, fun and appreciation for finding answers.
He earned his B.A. in biology with a minor in anthropology from Colorado College in 2009. During his time at CC, he worked as an undergraduate researcher in the labs of Ron Hathaway and Ralph Bertrand studying the morphology of gyrodactylids (small flat worms that parasitize the skin of fresh water and marine fish), and identifying genetic markers to build family trees and assess the genetic health of populations of flammulated owls, respectively. After graduation, Gabriel worked as a professional research assistant in Susan Boackle’s lab at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. There, he investigated the role of complement receptor 2 and its role in autoimmune diseases. He is grateful for the mentorship and support of Drs. Boackle, Hathaway and Bertrand. Their guidance and support were invaluable to his budding career as a scientist.
In 2013, Gabriel began his graduate studies at the University of Oregon. He joined the Stankunas lab in 2014 where he is using zebrafish to conduct research investigating the role of PRC2 in bone development and regeneration. He has also had the opportunity to mentor multiple undergraduate students from the UO and the SPUR program. Additionally, he’s taken the time to mentor students interested in science who are as young as five. Gabriel plans to continue to mentor throughout his career, including but not limited to students who don’t yet see themselves as scientists.
Outside of his lab work, Gabriel enjoys playing excellent defense on the soccer field, walking his dog, camping, hiking, fishing, cooking and attending sporting events. He is grateful to Dr. Kryn Stankunas and Dr. Scott Stewart for their support throughout his time at the University of Oregon. He is honored to receive the 2018 Pete von Hippel Graduate Scholar Award.
2017 Recipient Connor J. Balzer
I was born in Albany, New York and then moved to Midlothian, Virginia at the age of 4. I have been an avid soccer fan since before I could walk and I have been playing organized soccer since I was 5. I played on the high school soccer team as well as in a travel league in Richmond, Virginia. I am now the manager and captain of the departmental soccer team (the Specific Heat) through the Eugene City Athletics Soccer Program.
In addition to soccer I was also always interested in science. In the third grade we had a project called “History Lives” where we all had to choose a famous historical person and then we pretended to be this person for a day by dressing up and developing a monologue to teach the other students about ourselves. While most students jumped on their favorite athletes or politicians, I chose to be Louis Pasteur. I had a great day wearing my oversized lab coat and googles while pipetting a bunch of colorful liquids from one beaker to another. I essentially do the same thing now except my lab coat fits (when I choose to wear it) and the liquids I pipette are no longer colorful.
After high school, I attended Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA where I majored in Biochemistry with a minor in Chemistry. At Virginia Tech, starting in my junior year, I worked in an organic chemistry lab with Dr. Richard Gandour developing a micelle based drug delivery system using PEG lipids. Most of my work was developing solvent systems to separate PEG lipids into monodisperse lengths and then coating slides with the PEG’s to measure their hydrophobicity. It was my first experience in an academic lab and we had 4 desks and 4 hoods to share between about 20 undergraduate researchers so it was a big upgrade coming to graduate school at the U of O and having my own personal bench and desk.
In addition to undergraduate research, in my first Summer after my freshman year at Virginia Tech, I started working at the research and development facility for the International Petroleum Products and Additives Company, Inc. (IPAC), an oil additive, lubricant and chemical manufacturing company. It was there that I got my first hands on experience in the lab and I decided that I loved it. During my Summers and Winter breaks with the company I got the chance to do a variety of things from developing new protocols for testing different oil blends specifications, working directly with customers to develop new additive packages for their oils, and developing a more sustainable/environmentally friendly soy bean based oil. I continued to work for IPAC until I moved out to Oregon in 2014 to attend graduate school.
In grad school, I joined the Nolen lab and have been working on understanding the regulation of the actin cytoskeleton. In particular I am attempting to unravel the mechanism behind the coordinate activation of Arp2/3 complex by two nucleation promoting factors, WASP and Dip1.
Pete is a fantastic scientist and has been a wonderful role model during my time at the University of Oregon so it is truly an honor to receive an award in his namesake!
2016 Recipient Jordan Gessaman
Jordan grew up in the small town of Lake Stevens, just north of Seattle, Washington. Surrounded by countless opportunities to hike, snowboard, and camp in the outdoors, Jordan developed an appreciation for the natural world. In tandem with the tendencies of Jordan’s detail-oriented and inquisitive father, a career electrical engineer, these influences eventually coalesced into a strong desire to understand the complexity of life through biology research.
Jordan attended the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle, WA, studying biochemistry. While at the UW, Jordan had the opportunity to explore his interest in biology and develop his technical skills in the lab of Dr. Bonny Brewer and Dr. M.K. Raghuraman, utilizing the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to study DNA replication. In collaboration with Dr. Thomas Pohl, Jordan developed the tools necessary to study the effect of kinetochore components at centromeres on DNA replication dynamics at proximal origins. With the aspiration of directing his own research, upon receiving a B.S. in Biochemistry with a minor in Chemistry, Jordan began graduate school at the University of Oregon in the fall of 2011.
During his time at the University of Oregon, Jordan pursued his thesis work in the lab of Dr. Eric Selker, studying the roles and requirements of components of the constitutive heterochromatin machinery in the filamentous fungus Neurospora crassa. Chromatin subtypes, such as heterochromatin, function to establish active or repressive environments at genes in a manner independent of the underlying DNA sequence. Aberrations in chromatin programming have been implicated in a number of human health conditions and cancers. Jordan’s thesis work took advantage of his previous technical experience in fungal model systems while also addressing new, exciting mechanistic questions. While many of the proteins that are important for heterochromatin formation have been identified, the functions of these proteins and the “signal” directing heterochromatin formation are unclear. To better understand the contributions of these proteins, Jordan developed a method in Neurospora to artificially localize proteins of interest to active chromatin to generate repressive heterochromatin, which in turn can be further dissected. Thanks to the support of his mentor Dr. Eric Selker, he utilized this system to identify a mechanistic link between the activity of a histone deacetylase complex and the recruitment of the classic hallmarks of heterochromatin. These results contribute to our knowledge of the factors involved in heterochromatin formation and, in a broader sense, will allow for better-informed selection of therapeutic targets.
Jordan would like to thank his mentor, Dr. Eric Selker, in addition to all present and former members of the Selker Lab for their insights, critiques, and instruction over the years. Additionally, he would like to thank Dr. Pete von Hippel for providing inspiration in both his scientific contributions and in his unwavering support for the department. Finally, Jordan would like to thank the Genetics Training Grant, the Institute of Molecular Biology, and the University of Oregon for their support throughout his graduate student career.
2015 Co-Recipients: Matthew J. Bailey and Jennifer S. Hampton
Matt Bailey and Jennifer S. Hampton were the 2015 co-recipients of the Pete von Hippel Graduate Scholar Award (scroll down for Jennifer’s biography, which follows Matt’s). Matt did his PhD work in the lab of Ken Prehoda studying the mechanisms of cell polarity. His work used both biochemistry and Drosophila genetics to characterize how a kinase regulates the localization of its substrates. Matt is currently applying for positions as a post doctoral researcher. In this position, Matt plans to use genetics and biochemistry to study signaling pathways in animal development. Outside of the lab, Matt has enjoyed the trails of Oregon for running, hiking and exploring (including as pictured above in the Alvord Desert, east of Steens Mountain, in remote southeast Oregon).
Matt grew up in Lancaster, PA. There, he developed two hobbies: running and music. He played piano through high school and contrabass through college. Matt became a distance runner competing with his school’s Cross Country and Track teams. In high school, another interest emerged: biology. When he learned about the cytoskeleton and molecular motors, he had an epiphany that he wanted to study how the molecules of life work. He remembers “being fascinated by the amazing tasks these machines performed and wanting to learn more.”
Matt went to Juniata College, in Huntingdon, PA to receive a B.S. in Biochemistry with a Secondary Emphasis in Philosophy. He picked up a Philosophy minor because he enjoyed the critical thinking and theorizing involved. At Juniata, he worked for Jeffrey Demarest and worked to develop NMR protocols to characterize the effects of molecular crowding on protein diffusion. In the spring of his junior year, Matt studied abroad at University of Leeds in Leeds, England. There, he had the opportunity to work in the lab of Sheena Radford to study protein structure and folding.
While at Juniata, Matt ran for their Cross Country and Track teams. His collegiate running career ended with several honors, including being the school’s only individual to run at Division III Cross Country Nationals and several school records in track, including the 10,000 m record that he still holds. Matt completed his bachelor’s degree, said goodbye to Pennsylvania, then loaded up his Subaru in search of greener pastures, bigger trees, better trail running and a desire to learn more about how proteins work. The bass was left behind due to its size.
Matt was delighted to join Ken Prehoda’s lab so that he could work at the interface between biochemistry and genetics. After joining the lab, reading and looking for a thesis project, Ken had a fortuitous conversation with Peter Pryciak of University of Massachusetts Worcester. Peter asked Ken if phosphorylation alters the electrostatics of aPKC substrates to induce their polarization. Ken asked Matt to check this out, and they noticed that aPKC phosphorylated putative charge-based, lipid binding sites. This conversation led to the hypothesis Matt and Ken tested in the paper they recently published in Developmental Cell. About this experience, Matt says he “will always be grateful for Ken’s conversation with Peter Pryciak. It gave my thesis a direction.”
Since publishing his first paper, Matt has worked on a screen for new polarity proteins. This work uses the tools of Drosophila genetics, CRISPR/Cas9-based genome editing, and in vitro biochemistry to identify polarized proteins and determine how aPKC polarizes them. This screen has already identified new polarized proteins, which may provide clues about uncharacterized functions of aPKC. Importantly, Matt and Ken think this work will provide a foundation for understanding how proteins polarize.
Matt says he is extremely grateful for his excellent advisor Ken Prehoda for mentoring him, challenging him and training him to think like a scientist. He also wants to thank the entire IMB community, his committee and his wonderful, and supportive family.
2015 Co-Recipient Jennifer S. Hampton
Jennifer grew up in rural northern California where her parents took her outside constantly. Frequent backpacking trips into mountain wilderness, and yearly camping by the ocean instilled a curiosity of the biology in these beautiful environments. Jennifer’s father, a prominent California fisheries biologist, challenged and inspired Jennifer to examine and research complex biological processes and problems.
There was never any question that she would choose to study biology for her undergraduate degree at Humboldt State University (HSU). While at HSU, she joined the lab of Dr. Patricia Siering, studying the microbial ecology of Boiling Springs Lake, the world’s largest hot spring, located in Lassen Volcanic National Park. During her time in the Siering lab, Jennifer worked on isolating iron-oxidizing bacteria from this extreme environment, furthering her respect for the natural world and giving her valuable experience in microbiology research.
Also during her time at HSU, Jennifer had the opportunity to explore her interest in stem cell biology. HSU is funded by a unique grant from the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), to provide training in stem cell laboratory techniques to foster the growth of competent young stem cell research scientists. After excelling in these courses, Jennifer was chosen as an HSU-CIRM Scholar to participate in a 12-month research fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Immediately after graduating from HSU in the spring of 2010, she began her fellowship at UCSF with Dr. Didier Stainier, whose lab uses the zebrafish model to study organogenesis. In the Stainier lab, she studied the regenerative capacity of the pancreas, screening small molecules for the ability to regenerate pancreatic beta cells with the ultimate goal of discovering potential therapeutics for diabetes. Her time at UCSF was instrumental in convincing her that she was suited to a career in research, and she began graduate school at the University of Oregon in the fall of 2011.
At Oregon, Jennifer has pursued her thesis work in Karen Guillemin’s lab, studying secreted microbial proteins that influence development in the zebrafish. Her thesis work has been a unique marriage of the techniques she learned in her previous laboratory experiences. Utilizing knowledge of both microbial ecology and zebrafish pancreatic development, she came up with an interesting question: Do resident microbes influence the development of pancreatic beta cells? Thanks to immense support from Dr. Guillemin in pursuing this question, she was able to identify a novel bacterial protein that can induce proliferation in both zebrafish and murine beta cells. These results provide a new explanation for how reduced intestinal bacterial diversity might contribute to diabetes. Jennifer hopes to continue her work on understanding the mechanisms behind bacterial driven expansion of host beta cells into a post-doctoral fellowship.
“Oregon has been a wonderful setting to work on my PhD. The beautiful mountain and ocean environments nearby make it feel like home. I have also benefited immensely from the collaborative atmosphere of the Institute of Molecular Biology. Both my peers and the faculty have provided helpful discussion and support throughout the process of growing into a successful research scientist.”
2014 Recipient: Luke A. Helgeson
Luke Helgeson was the 2014 recipient of the Pete von Hippel Graduate Scholar Award. Luke did his PhD work with Brad Nolen studying the dynamics of the actin cytoskeleton. As is evident from his photograph above, Luke has fully enjoyed his time in Eugene, taking advantage not only of the exciting research environment within the Institute of Molecular Biology, but also the outdoor environment of the surrounding area. Luke will continue to enjoy his life in Oregon–and extend his interests in microscopy, single molecule imaging, and cell biology–as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Catherine Galbraith at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland. The Galbraith lab uses super high resolution microscopy and biophysical methods to study cell biology and neurobiology.
Luke grew up in Rochester, Minnesota where he became accustom to laboratory environments at an early age with frequent visits to the clinical lab where his mother worked. In 2005, Luke enrolled at Iowa State University and decided to study biochemistry because he enjoyed biology and chemistry but couldn’t make up his mind on which one to pursue.
Throughout his undergraduate career, Luke had the opportunity to train under a couple of very talented advisors, each in very disparate fields. During the summers of his sophomore and junior years, he worked in the cytogenetics lab of Dr. Robert B. Jenkins at the Mayo Clinic. There Luke studied a chromosomal anomaly associated with the brain tumors, oligodendrogliomas. This afforded him a unique opportunity to work in a more medically applied lab that was on the forefront of cancer genetics. For two years at Iowa State University, Luke performed research in the biochemistry and structural biology lab of Dr. Gaya Amarasinghe. In the Amarasinghe lab, he was tasked with crystallizing a functionally inactive mutant of a double-stranded RNA binding protein from the deadly Ebola virus. Dr. Gaya Amarasinghe’s mentoring significantly fostered Luke’s love for protein science and was instrumental in convincing him to pursue graduate school. Luke graduated from Iowa State University in 2009 with a bachelor’s of science and then headed west to start his graduate work at the University of Oregon in the Institute of Molecular Biology.
In the spring of 2010, Luke joined the lab of Dr. Brad Nolen and began his research on the regulation of branched actin network formation. For his thesis project, Luke sought to discover the detailed mechanisms by which two sets of distinct regulatory proteins coordinately generate branched actin networks. While joining the Nolen lab to further improve upon his skills in structural biology and protein kinetics, Luke soon found himself developing a single-molecule microscopy assay to answer critical questions related to his project. However, having never worked with microscopes before, this was a large undertaking for Luke. After a year of hard work, he was eventually able to visualize single-molecules of actin binding proteins in real time as branched networks were assembled. Through these studies, Luke was able to understand important kinetic and thermodynamic details about branched actin filament creation which are invaluable to assessing cellular actin dynamics.
Under the advising of Brad Nolen, Luke learned how to mechanistically think about scientific questions and how to apply that to his research. Going forward, he is planning on using those skills to understand how proteins perform their functions within the complex cellular environment. By studying protein kinetics and thermodynamics in cells, Luke hopes to reveal mechanistic details about complicated biological processes.
Luke would like to thank his advisor, Brad Nolen, and fellow members of the Nolen lab because without them, achieving the award would not have been possible. Importantly, he would like to thank Dr. Pete von Hippel; whose award is extra special because his impacts on the fields of biophysics and biochemistry are profound, lasting and inspiring to young scientists. Finally, Luke would like to acknowledge the Institute of Molecular Biology and the University of Oregon for their support and their dedication to advancing scientific knowledge. Go Ducks!
2013 Recipient: Julia R. Widom
Julia R. Widom was the 2013 recipient of the Pete von Hippel Graduate Scholar Award. Julia did her Ph.D. work with Dr. Andy Marcus, a Professor of Chemistry and Associate Member of the Institute of Molecular Biology. Her thesis project included a collaboration between the Marcus lab and Pete von Hippel’s laboratory, making her a very fitting recipient of the award. The above photograph of Julia was taken at the 2013 annual IMB retreat (at Mt. Pisgah) after she received the award, with Pete on her right and Andy on her left. Julia also was the recipient in 2010 of the Rosaria Haugland Chemistry Graduate Research Fellowship, given to the top first-year female graduate student in Chemistry. She published a dozen research articles during her Ph.D. work here, and has given talks on her thesis work at multiple conferences. She was truly an outstanding PhD student here and will no doubt go far and prove to be another outstanding IMB alum and scientist. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Nils Walter at the University of Michigan, where she is using single-molecule microscopy to study RNA splicing and riboswitches. Julia provided the brief biography below that summarizes her background and graduate work.
Julia grew up in Pittsburgh, PA, and was introduced to science at a young age by her father, a physicist, and grandparents, both chemists. She became especially interested in chemistry when she took her first course in the subject in 10th grade.
During her undergraduate career, she pursued research in the area of organic synthesis, working with Peter Wipf at the University of Pittsburgh and Richard Silverman at Northwestern University. Her junior year, she took a spectroscopy lab course taught by Fredrick Northrup, which provided the initial inspiration that led her to pursue graduate study in spectroscopy. She received her bachelor’s degree with a major in chemistry from Northwestern in 2009.
Julia began her graduate work with Andrew Marcus in the spring of 2010, and worked on a variety of projects centered around the goal of applying ultrafast laser spectroscopy to study the conformations adopted by molecules of biological interest. Her work focused on the use of two-dimensional fluorescence spectroscopy (2D FS), a technique developed in the Marcus lab that uses a sequence of four laser pulses to reveal the correlations between successive electronic transitions in a sample. In her initial work, she determined the temperature-dependent conformations of porphyrins embedded in membranes, uncovering the thermodynamic forces driving the assembly of porphyrin dimers. She then switched her focus to nucleic acids, working in collaboration with the lab of Pete von Hippel. After modifying the 2D FS apparatus to generate ultraviolet laser pulses, she determined the conformation of a dinucleotide of the fluorescent adenine analogue 2-aminopurine, showing that the bases were stacked with a smaller twist angle than that found in double-stranded DNA. Subsequent work involved studying the effects of bacteriophage T4 helicase and primase on the conformations of DNA labeled with cyanine dyes. Through this work, Julia has established 2D FS as a powerful technique for deciphering the conformations of biological molecules in complex environments.
Having completed her graduate work at the University of Oregon, Julia is now pursuing postdoctoral work at the University of Michigan. She thanks her advisor Andrew Marcus, her collaborator Pete von Hippel and the entire Institute of Molecular Biology for their guidance and support during her time at U of O.
2012 Recipient: Omer Ali Bayraktar
Omer Ali Bayraktar was the 2012 recipient of the Pete von Hippel Graduate Scholar Award. Like our 2010 recipient, Omer did his PhD work with Dr. Chris Doe, a Professor of Biology and a member of both the Institute of Molecular Biology and the Institute of Neuroscience, and a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator. Omer’s outstanding thesis work focused on identifying an extensive combinatorial program of temporal identity within neuroblast stem cells in the Drosophila brain that accounts for how these stem cells can produce descendants with widely diverse cell fates. This work was published in a remarkable Nature article in June 2013, accompanied by a News and Views.
Omer was born and raised in Ankara, the capital of Turkey. During his sophomore year as an undergraduate at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, he discovered online the summer program for undergraduate research (SPUR) at UO, headed by Peter O’Day in the Department of Biology. Omer provides a summary of his research experiences since then as follows.
“Upon perusing the faculty profiles in the Institute of Molecular Biology, I immediately got interested in Alice Barkan’s research on the regulation of RNA splicing in plant chloroplasts. I wrote to Alice expressing my interest in her work. Despite my lack of research experience, Alice invited me to her lab for the summer of 2006. Her lab provided an excellent environment where I learned about hypothesis driven research and experimental design. My work during that summer and following studies in the lab identified a novel chloroplast intron-splicing factor; these results were published in 2008. After finishing up my undergraduate studies, I came back to Oregon for graduate school. The Department of Biology at UO has a strong tradition of research in developmental biology and genetics. Influenced by this strength, I eventually joined Chris Doe’s lab, where I became particularly interested in investigating “type II” neural stem cells in the Drosophila brain. Type II neural stem cells (called neuroblasts) generate exceptionally large numbers of neurons and glia during development by giving rise to intermediate neural progenitors (INPs) that undergo extended proliferation. Recent studies had shown that similar neural stem cells that generate INPs contribute to the increased size of the human neocortex that underlies our uniquely powerful cognitive abilities. However, little was known about the generation of diverse neurons and glia in these lineages. My PhD work focused on understanding the developmental mechanisms that generate the extraordinary neural diversity in type II lineages. I characterized a novel combinatorial temporal program that generates diverse neurons and glia in type II lineages: both type II neuroblasts and INPs change over time to make different neurons and glia. My findings provide a developmental mechanism that is likely relevant to the neuronal complexity of the human neocortex. In the future, I plan to pursue the developmental mechanisms that generate cell type diversity in the mammalian brain. The Institute of Molecular Biology (IMB) at UO had a tremendously positive impact on my graduate education. The IMB harbors a uniquely open working environment where graduate students, postdocs, and faculty members from different research groups can easily communicate and exchange ideas. Over the years, I have had many great conversations on science with other researchers in IMB that greatly aided my progress in graduate school.”
2011 Recipient: Anica Wandler
Anica Wandler was chosen in 2011 as the second recipient of our annual Pete von Hippel Graduate Scholar Award. Anna stood out for several reasons as a worthy recipient. First, she took on a novel and ambitious PhD thesis project, working on Drosophila melanogaster in a lab that primarily uses zebrafish to study gut microbiota. She worked very independently on this project and yet was very productive. Anica’s use of Drosophila as a model to explore the function of a bacterially encoded virulence factor was creative and provided intriguing and novel insights into how this virulence factor functions.
Moreover, Anica’s contributions as a PhD student here extend well beyond her research. For 3 years, she was the director of our Career Advancement in the Biological Sciences Seminar Series. This program is run entirely by PhD students (with funding from our institute). The students invite 3-5 external speakers each year who have pursued non-academic research careers after finishing their PhD. This gives our students a feel for career options, and they invite an outstanding selection of scientists to come and speak and spend a substantial amount of time interacting with our PhD students. This commitment to a larger community personifies the qualities we seek to recognize with the Pete von Hippel graduate scholar award, as Pete himself has throughout his career been exceptionally generous and helpful as a mentor and colleague.
Anica’s PhD thesis work led her to develop a strong interest in human disease, and she has chosen a very exciting postdoc that will enable her to apply her substantial molecular and genetic skills directly to an important pediatric human cancer in an outstanding laboratory at at the University of California, San Francisco.
2010 Recipient: Michael R. Miller
Michael R. Miller was a fifth year IMB Ph.D. student in the laboratory of Chris Doe (Professor of Biology and joint member of both IMB and ION). Mike is in many ways the perfect first recipient for this award. His enthusiasm for science, like Pete’s, is without limits. Moreover, Mike always is willing to help his colleagues with their own work, while also making remarkable progress himself. Mike is an Oregon native: he was born in Oregon City and grew up in nearby Molalla, and he was an undergraduate at the University of Oregon. As an undergraduate, Mike joined the laboratory of Eric Johnson, now an Associate Professor of Biology and IMB member. Mike and Eric invented a novel approach to the mapping of genetic traits called RAD mapping, for Restriction site Associated DNA Polymorphism mapping. This remarkable gene mapping strategy takes advantage of next generation DNA sequencing technology to simultaneously and inexpensively sample DNA polymorphisms throughout a genome. Mike’s contributions to the invention of RAD mapping resulted in two first author papers by him as an undergraduate, and Mike is co-holder along with Eric Johnson of a patent on this procedure. The discovery of RAD mapping also inspired the founding by Eric Johnson of a biotechnology company, Floragenex, Inc., and RAD mapping is having a remarkable impact on genetic and evolutionary research throughout the world.
After accomplishing at least one PhD equivalent as an undergraduate, Mike entered the IMB graduate program and chose to join the Doe lab for his official PhD thesis. However, rather than work on developmental neurobiology (the focus of the Doe lab), Mike instead chose to sequence the salmonid genome (using a rainbow trout line), in part using novel technologies that he has developed. This interest in the salmonid genome stems from a deep fondness for salmon that Mike developed while growing up in Oregon; he both loves to fish for salmon and is fascinated by their biology and evolutionary history. His goal is to assist in salmon conservation by making it possible to identify genetic loci that are important for the survival of the many different local Pacific salmon populations. Mike has worked very independently on his PhD thesis locally, while also collaborating with multiple labs throughout the US who are interested in the salmonid genome. These include Professor Gary Thorgaard at Washington State University, who helped George Streisinger get zebrafish research started here in the IMB some four decades ago! Mike used his Pete von Hippel Scholar Award to attend a meeting called 10,000 Genomes that was organized to promote the genome sequencing of 10,000 species. After Mike presented his results on the rainbow trout genome, he was chosen to select and oversee the genome sequencing for five additional fish species! Mike clearly exhibits the adventuresome and exciting spirit that has made research at the IMB so fascinating and successful for over 50 years now. We are pleased to honor him with this award. Appropriately enough, Mike also was awarded an NSF pre-doctoral fellowship to pursue his salmonid genome project while stil a PhD student, and he is now an Assistant Professor of Animal Sciences at UC Davis (having been hired directly out of graduate school as a professor, an exceptional accomplishment for PhD students in life sciences research.