GDCB would like to congratulate the following students affiliated with the department who graduated fall semester. The combined undergraduate and graduate University Commencement Ceremony was held on December 15, 2012.

Undergraduate Students
See attached list of undergraduates in Biology and Genetics who earned their B.S. in the fall.

Graduate Students

Hsien-chao Chou, Ph.D. in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. Co-Major professors Volker Brendel and Vasant Honavar. Dr. Chou will be a post-doc in the laboratory of GDCB professor Stephan Schneider.

Andrew Foudree, M.S. in Plant Biology. Major professor Stephen Rodermel. Andrew has accepted a position in industry.

For GDCB Professor Martin Spalding, the “interim” tag will come off his current title and he will become the associate dean of research and graduate studies in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. GDCB Professor David Oliver, the current associate dean of the College LAS, has been named Iowa State’s interim vice president of research and economic development. Both changes are effective January 1.

Tom Peterson, GDCB professor and Pioneer Chair in Maize Molecular Genetics, was recently announced as an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow in the Section on Biological Sciences. Election as a Fellow of AAAS is an honor bestowed upon members by their peers. Fellows are recognized for meritorious efforts to advance science or its applications.

Dr. Peterson will be among 701 association members elected by the AAAS Council this year who will be recognized for their contributions to science and technology in February at the 2013 Annual Meeting in Boston.

GDCB Professor Phil Becraft (PI) and Dr. Paula McSteen (Co-PI), professor in the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of Missouri (Co-Principal Investigator), have been awarded $33,650.00 in sponsored funding by the NSF.  Professor Becraft is the chair and Professor McSteen a member of the 2013 Maize Genetics Conference Steering Committee, and this award is to help broaden participation and help defray the costs of participation of students from the U.S. scientific community to attend the 55th Maize Genetics Conference (MGC) to be held at the Pheasant Run Resort, St. Charles, IL on March 14-17, 2013.  Awardees will have hotel accommodation costs defrayed and a limited number of travel scholarships will be available to qualified applicants.

GDCB professor Eve Syrkin Wurtele was awarded the Woman of Innovation award for Research Innovation and Leadership by the Technology Association of Iowa (TAI) at their fifth annual DuPont Pioneer Iowa Women of Innovation event held on November 15, 2012 in Des Moines. This is the second consecutive year Dr. Wurtele was a finalist for this award.

The research of three GDCB professors, Jeff Essner, Maura McGrail, and Tom Peterson, was profiled for the fall 2012 edition of STORIES, a magazine published by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Dr. Essner and Dr. McGrail work together using the zebra fish model system to find new insights into battling cancer through better understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms leading to the onset and progression of tumors.

Dr. Peterson studies maize and uses color in the cob and seed coat to phenotypically track the genetic doings of a transposon that controls red pigment in maize. The gene for red kernel color also produces a natural insecticide.