Innovative Topics
Analyzing Ocean Health; Towards a True Ecogenomic Sensor
Jim Birch, PhD
Director of the SURF Center, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
Jim Birch received his B.S. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Northern Arizona University and as a research scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked on the fluid dynamics of insect flight using a scaled robotic insect model immersed in two tons of mineral oil. He continued honing his instrument design experience at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, working on various biodetection technologies and point-of-care diagnostic devices for biomedicine before coming to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in 2007. He joined MBARI as the Engineering Department’s Instrument Group Leader. While overseeing the development of instrument systems for oceanographic research, he became the project manager for the Environmental Sample Processor (ESP), a robotic lab-in-a-can device for performing microbiology in the ocean. In 2009 he moved into his current role as Director of the SURF Center (Sensors: Underwater Research of the Future), where he oversees all aspects of the ESP project.
Transient Gene and miRNA Expression Profile changes of Confluent Human Fibroblast Cells in Space
Honglu Wu, PhD
Manager of the Radiation Biophysics Laboratory and the Bioanalytical Core Laboratories, NASA Johnson Space Center
Dr. Honglu Wu is Manager of the Radiation Biophysics Laboratory and the Bioanalytical Core Laboratories at NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC). Honglu received his B.S. from Beijing University and his Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico. After completing his postdoctoral research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Rice University, he joined the Radiation Biophysics group at JSC. Honglu has been investigating DNA damage in human cells induced by space radiation. His recent research interests focus on the combined effects of microgravity and radiation exposure on DNA damage and repair. Honglu serves as Associate Editor for the Journal of Radiation Research and was co-editor of several issues of Advances in Space Research. He is also a member of the International Academy of Astronautics.
Fast Proteome Analysis, Metabolomics, and Integration of These Data for Large Studies
Joshua J. Coon, PhD
Professor of Chemistry and Biomolecular Chemistry, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Joshua J. Coon earned his B.S. degree at Central Michigan University and took his Ph.D. at the University of Florida in 2002. At Florida Coon studied ambient ionization processes under the guidance of Professor Willard Harrison. From 2003 to 2005 he was an NIH postdoctoral fellow with Professor Donald Hunt at the University of Virginia. During his time at Virginia he, with Hunt and John Syka, co-invented electron transfer dissociation (ETD). Coon’s research program at Wisconsin is focused on all aspects of biomolecular mass spectrometry.
A comprehensive Database and Search Method for Large-Scale Metaproteomics
Dennis Wolan, PhD
Assistant Professor, Departments of Molecular and Experimental Medicine and Chemical Physiology, Scripps Research Institute
Dennis Wolan’s laboratory employs biochemical, cellular, biophysical, and meta-proteomics methodologies for the identification of the diverse assortment and types of bacterial proteins that are produced within normal and diseased human distal gut microbiomes. He also works on development of small molecules as probes to elucidate the function of essential commensal bacterial proteins, as well as novel therapeutics to modulate the activity of important enzymes in microbiome-related diseases, such as inflammatory bowel diseases.
Engineering Proteins to Respond to Light or Small Molecules In Vivo
Klaus Hahn, PhD
Director, UNC-Olympus Imaging Center, Ronald Thurman Distinguished Professor, Department of Pharmacology, Joint Professor, Division of Medicinal Chemistry & Natural Products
Dr. Hahn’s laboratory develops molecular tools to visualize and manipulate protein activity in living cells and animals, and applies them to ask how the spatiotemporal dynamics of signaling control cellular decision making and immune cell function. His laboratory has produced generally applicable approaches to visualize and control signaling, including fluorescent biosensors that quantify conformational changes of endogenous proteins, novel biosensor designs that reduce cell perturbation, and biosensors based on engineered protein scaffolds for otherwise inaccessible molecules. His laboratory has developed fluorescent dyes for multiplexing biosensor imaging, single molecule microscopy, and in vivo protein labeling. He is currently focused on new approaches to activate or inactivate proteins in vivo, using engineered domains that respond to light or small molecules. Dr. Hahn studied chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Virginia, where he received his Ph.D. He was a postdoc at the Center for Fluorescence Research at Carnegie Mellon University and the Scripps Research Institute, then became an Assistant and Associate Professor at Scripps in the Neuropharmacology and Cell Biology Departments. Most recently he moved to UNC-Chapel Hill, where he is the Thurman Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology and director of the UNC-Olympus Imaging Center. Dr. Hahn has received the NIH’s James Shannon Director’s Award, is a fellow of the AAAS, and has been granted a Transformative R01. His lab’s work on biosensors was named one of the “10 Breakthroughs of the Decade” by Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology.
Expansion Microscopy: Improved Resoution through Uniform Specimen Swelling
Paul Tillberg
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Laboratory of Ed Boyden
Paul Tillberg is a Hertz Fellow pursuing his PhD degree in Electrical Engineering at MIT. He is interested in developing new technologies to address fundamental issues in neuroscience at the synaptic, neuronal and neural circuit levels. Before being awarded the Hertz Fellowship to pursue his PhD, Paul received a BA in comparative literature with a minor in music composition in 2003. Afterwards, while traveling to India to teach English at the Norbulingka Institute for Tibetan culture in the foothills of the Himalayas, and returning to the U.S. to search for a best-fit career, Paul had an epiphany. He realized that academic research in engineering offered a synthesis of all the things he valued—the intellectual rigor of studying physical systems, participation in the greater endeavor to continually advance our knowledge of the physical world, and the opportunity to apply scientific insights to developing new technologies that improve people’s lives. His diverse scientific interests came together in the co-invention of Expansion Microscopy, a technique in which biological tissues are embedded in a swellable gel material and then swollen by a factor of 4-5x in linear dimension. Nanoscopic structures that were too small to see using diffraction-limited microscopes are preserved by this process, but with the same physical magnification as the macroscopic material, enabling them to be resolved on a standard optical microscope.
Core Administration Track
Parker Antin
University of Arizona
Parker Antin is Associate Dean for Research in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, at the University of Arizona. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and did postdoctoral work at the University of California, San Francisco. He moved to the University of Arizona in 1992, where he holds dual appointments in the College of Medicine and in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Dr. Antin’s research investigates vertebrate development with an emphasis on cardiovascular development and disease. He has been continuously funded by the NIH since 1994, and has also been supported by the American Heart Association, the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the USDA, NASA and NSF. He is also Principal Investigator of the iPlant Collaborative, a $100M NSF funded project that brings cyber infrastructure to the life sciences. As Associate Dean for Research, he oversees the research direction and portfolio for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. In addition to his FASEB service as Board Member, President-Elect, and now President, Dr. Antin has served as chair of FASEB’s Membership Committee and the NIH Issues Subcommittee. He is a Fellow and past Board Member of the American Association of Anatomists, and is also Editor in Chief of the journal Developmental Dynamics.
Improving Openness and Reproducibility of Scientific Research
Tim Errington, PhD
Center for Open Science
Tim Errington received his B.S. in Biology and Chemistry at St. Lawrence University in upstate New York. Following his undergraduate education he spent three years to work in an academic research lab focused on identifying novel compounds targeting the downstream MAPK pathway. Tim entered graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley where he studied telomerase biogenesis. After receiving his M.A. in Molecular and Cell Biology from U.C. Berkeley he continued his graduate education at the University of Virginia. There he worked with Ian Macara on the discovery and characterization of a novel mammalian DNA repair pathway. He currently is a project manager for metascience research activities at the Center for Open Science (COS; http://cos.io/) that aims to increase openness, integrity, and reproducibility of scientific research. He leads the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology (https://osf.io/e81xl/wiki/home/), which is a collaboration between COS and Science Exchange to independently replicate selected results from a substantial number of high-profile papers in the field of cancer biology.
