iSEED E-Newsletter

The iSEED had a great time recruiting students and representing UB at the SACNAS Conference in Los Angeles, California. Dr. Margarita Dubocovich, Dr. Carl Li, and Dr. Graham Pumphrey attended and met many motivated and engaging students.

Two UB faculty members, Dr. Raj Rajnarayanan (Pharmacology and Toxicology) and Tammy Austin-Ketch (Nursing), attended the 2014 ABRCMS in San Antonio, Texas. They were joined by two iSEED summer students from 2014, Javier Muniz and Mobolanle Adebesin. Both students gave poster presentions of the research they conducted during the summer at UB.  

The second cohort of undergraduate students have successfully completed the iSEED Summer Research Experience program.  This year, 13 talented students were funded from each of the participating iSEED schools.  Students were represented from the University of Guam, Binghamton University, Rutgers University, UNC Chapel Hill, University of Maryland Baltimore County, California State at Northridge, El Paso Community College, North Carolina A&T State University, University of District of Columbia, Albany University, and the University at Buffalo.

The iSEED summer students enjoyed a wide range of activities, both academic and social.  The main focus of the program was for students to gain research experience in a lab, and to attend professional development workshops, educating them on framing their research, and how to present their findings on a poster and through an oral presentation.

The students attended a weekly BIOSTEM lecture series, featuring a prominent researcher from UB.  The students indicated that they enjoyed learning how these researchers got to be where they are today; the personal stories of the guest speakers seemed to resonate highly with the students, as many of them are getting ready to apply to graduate programs.  Following the lecture, the students and staff enjoyed a weekly dinner together.

On July 30th, 2014, the iSEED students presented their research first at a poster session, and then orally to their mentors, peers and other UB faculty.  Saiema Alam, from Binghamton University, who worked in the lab of Dr. Chris Li, from the Oral Biology department, was selected as the top speaker of the day, and she was invited to present her research at the annual Summer Research Day at the CTRC on August 1st, 2014.

The student feedback from this summer has been overwhelmingly positive!  Students truly enjoyed their time doing research in the labs, but also appreciated all of the other opportunities the program provided them, including learning about graduate opportunities at UB.

Raj Rajnarayanan, PhD (Assistant Professor, Pharmacology and Toxicology, and iSEED Steering Committee Chair) and David Milling, MD (Senior Associate Dean for Student and Academic Affairs for the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences) both attended Tougaloo College for a hugely successful recruitment day on January 27^th. 

Dr. Rajnarayanan also visited Jackson State University, where he spoke about "Phthalate Induced Allosteric Modulation of Nuclear Receptor Signaling", as well as graduate and professional school opportunities at UB. 

Graham Pumphrey, PhD (iSEED Senior Coordinator) and Chris Nwankwo, a Pharmacist and proud UB Alum living in Atlanta, both attended the Morehouse College Graduate School Fair on Thursday, February 6^th, 2014.  The fair was very well attended and students from a wide range of disciplines walked through the various booths asking questions about summer research experiences and graduate programs.

Graham and Chris spoke to many students who expressed interest in UB’s programs, including: Engineering, Chemistry, Biology, Public Health and Neuroscience. 

The annual ABRCMS conference was truly a success for iSEED!  Margarita L. Dubocovich, PhD, the Co-Director of iSEED, along with Carl Li, MD, MPH, Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Social and Preventative Medicine, Rajendram Rajnarayanan, PhD, the iSEED Steering Committee Chair, and James O'Donnell, PhD, Dean of Pharmacy, all recruited for UB’s STEM programs. 

Our representatives made connections with a large number of students interested in learning more about the summer, graduate, and professional opportunities at UB through iSEED.

Our 2013 iSEED Summer Scholars were very active at this conference. Three of our 2013 participants presented their summer research during the poster sessions: Adelaeda Barrera, currently a senior at University of Texas at Brownsville, presented her poster “Induction of MAPK Pathways During Morphogenesis in Candida albicans” based on the work she did in the lab of Dr. Mira Edgerton in the UB School of Dental Medicine; Kendall Sands, a junior at Morehouse College in Atlanta, described the work he conducted this summer with Dr. Stefan Ruhl, also in the School of Dental Medicine. His poster was entitled “Bacterial Adhesion on Saliva-Coated Silicon Model Surfaces”; Carmen Marable, a junior at North Carolina A&T University, presented her poster “Cytochrome P-450 (CYP) Variants as Potential Biomarkers of Sensitivity to Chlorpyrifos” based on her work in Dr. James Olson’s lab over the summer. Tekeydra Lee, who participated in CLIMB PRO with funding from the MARC Program, also presented her findings from summer research in the lab of Dr. Rajnarayanan, titled “Characterization of Prostate Specific Antigen Glycans of Normal and Tumor Origins.”

All of our students greatly enjoyed the conference, which was held at the beautiful Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee, from Wednesday, November 13, to Saturday, November 16.

The annual SACNAS Conference in October was a very successful recruiting event for iSEED.  Graham Pumphrey, PhD, the iSEED Senior Coordinator, attended the conference along with Carla Jungquist, PhD from the School of Nursing. 

Pumphrey and Jungquist met many enthusiastic students who expressed an interest in various programs, (graduate and undergraduate research) affiliated with iSEED.

Margarita L. Dubocovich, PhD, the Co-Director of iSEED, attended the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting, and was pleased to find out that 2012 CLIMB UP Fellow Carina Block, an undergraduate student at University of California, San Diego, was in attendance and presented her poster “Pavlovian Fear Conditioning Following Manipulation of Circadian Waveform.” Carina worked on circadian rhythms in Dr. Dubocovich’s lab during her summer here, and was so inspired by the work she did here that she returned to UCSD and started work on circadian biology in the lab of Dr. Michael Gorman. CLIMB UP is proud to have helped Carina discover an area of science she is passionate about.