Speakers

Dr. Rachel Brewster is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County. In 2006, she was one of only three U.S. biologists to receive a coveted NSF Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). Her recent work investigates the role of cell adhesion molecules known as cadherins in mediating posterior body formation in the zebrafish. The title of her talk was: The Brawn behind Brain Cells: Mechanisms of Neural Tube Morphogenesis.

http://www.umbc.edu/biosci/general/user/brewster

Dr. W. Malcolm Byrnes is an Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in the College of Medicine at Howard University. His scientific research is concerned with the structure and function of enzymes from bacteria and archaea. He recently has become interested in the work and legacy of Ernest Everett Just, and has written papers and given presentations in this area. The title of his talk was Ernest E. Just: His Scientific Contributions and Their Importance Today.

http://www.med.howard.edu/biochemistry/wbyrnes/

Dr. Malgorzata Kloc is Director of the Immuno-Biology Laboratory at The Methodist Hospital Research Institute in Houston, Texas. Her research investigates how maternal RNAs produced during oogenesis are localized in the egg, and how their subcellular distribution contributes to embryonic patterning and cell lineage specification. Her work reveals that the phenotypes of embryos can depend not only on proteins, but also directly on the messenger RNAs from which they are translated. The title of her talk was: Emerging Novel Functions of RNAs, and Binary Phenotype.

She can be reached by email at: mkloc@tmhs.org.

Dr. Kenneth R. Manning is the Thomas Meloy Professor of Rhetoric and the History of Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. His meticulously researched biography of E. E. Just, Black Apollo of Science, won the Pfizer Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography. He has written a number of scholarly articles focused on blacks in medicine, and currently is working on a book that examines the role and experience of African Americans in the medical professions from 1860 to 1980. The title of his talk was: E. E. Just and African Americans in Science and Medicine.

See the video recording of Dr. Manning's talk on the "Comments, Photos and Video" page of this site.

http://web.mit.edu/STS/faculty/info/Manning_Kenneth-css.html

Dr. William A. Mohler is an Associate Professor in the Department of Genetics and Developmental Biology at the University of Connecticut Health Center at Farmington. He currently is pursuing projects that innovatively apply light microscopy to biology in three areas: developmental cell fusion, second-harmonic generation microscopy, and genome-wide imaging of development in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. In his work, he uses fluorescence imaging technologies to record the dynamics and expression of Green Fluorescent Protein-tagged proteins in live worms. The title of his talk was: The Challenges and Benefits of High Resolution Imaging of Intact Specimens.

http://genetics.uchc.edu/MohlerLab/

Dr. Gerd B. Müller (MD, PhD) is Professor of Zoology and Head of the Department of Theoretical Biology at the University of Vienna. He is also Director of the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research at Altenberg, Austria. He has worked and published on the development and evolution of vertebrate limbs, on concepts integrating developmental and evolutionary theory, and on the theory of innovation. He was a convener of a recent meeting in Altenberg to discuss the future of evolutionary thought. The title of his talk was: The Environment-Development Relation and the Biologische Versuchsanstalt in Vienna.

http://homepage.univie.ac.at/gerhard.mueller/index.html

Dr. Stuart A. Newman is Professor of Cell Biology and Anatomy at New York Medical College in Valhalla, NY. His work concerns the role of physical mechanisms in the generation of biological form and pattern during development and evolution. He has written on the social and cultural dimensions of biological research, and was a participant, with Dr. Müller, at the Altenberg meeting. He is a co-author with Gabor Forgacs of the book Biological Physics of the Developing Embryo. The title of his talk was: Developmental Systems as Excitable Media: Variations on a Justian Theme.

http://www.nymc.edu/sanewman/

Dr. Mariusz Nowacki is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of Professor Laura Landweber in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University in New Jersey. His most recent work, published this year in the journal Nature, provides evidence for the existence of an inherited, maternally-derived “RNA cache” that guides genome rearrangement in the ciliated protozoan Oxytricha trifallax. The title of his talk was: An RNA-Mediated Mechanism for Inheritance of Acquired Mutations.

http://www.princeton.edu/%7Elfl/

Dr. Sonia E. Sultan is a Professor in the Department of Biology at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. Her research, which is concerned with the evolutionary ecology of plant responses to the environment, is especially relevant in this time of rapid global environmental change. In work demonstrating phenotypic plasticity in plants, she has shown that a single genotype of the genus Polygonum will express dramatically different phenotypes when clones are grown in different environments. The title of her talk was: Studying Development in Context: The Eco-Devo Approach.

http://www.wesleyan.edu/bio/sultan/

Dr. Orlando L. Taylor is Vice Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate School at Howard University. Since 1993, he has played a significant role in promoting excellence in graduate education at the university, which produces more African American on-campus PhDs than any other American research university. He currently serves as a principal investigator on grants from the National Science Foundation to increase the production of minority PhDs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and in the social, behavioral and economic (SBE) sciences. The title of his talk was: The Howard University Science Legacy.

http://www.gs.howard.edu/dean/deanbio.htm

Note that Dr. William Eckberg, using Dr. Taylor's prepared remarks along with some of this own, gave the address in place of Dr. Taylor.

Dr. Paul M. Wassarman is Professor of Developmental and Regenerative Biology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. For over thirty years, he has studied the biosynthesis, structure, and function of the glycoproteins of the thick extracellular coat, known as the zona pellucida, of the mammalian egg. He was the first to show that one of these glycoproteins, ZP3, acts as a sperm receptor and an inducer of the acrosome reaction during fertilization. Recently, he has identified the particular region of ZP3 that binds sperm. The title of his talk was: Mammalian Fertilization: Molecular Profile of a Sperm Receptor.

http://www.mountsinai.org/Find%20A%20Faculty/profile.do?id=0000072500001497229732

Dr. Gary M. Wessel is a Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Biochemistry at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and Senior Scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. For over twenty-five years, he has studied oocyte maturation; cortical granule biogenesis and release; egg activation during fertilization; and embryogenesis in sea urchin. Recently, he has applied functional genomic and proteomic technologies to understand the molecular events associated with calcium signaling and homeostasis during sea urchin egg activation. The title of his talk was: Cell Surface Changes in the Egg at Fertilization.

http://www.brown.edu/Research/Wessel_Lab/