The MIND (Magnetic Interfaces and Nanostructures Division) Postdoctoral Award recognizes outstanding contributions to the areas of interest to MIND. The award comes with a certificate and a cash prize for the winner. Congratulations to Dr. Thomas Feggeler for receiving this award!
Thanks to the PEAQS program, Max Krauss (Computer Engineering, ’24), got to sharpen his skills in research and peer research publication before heading to University of Utah for a doctoral program. From tinkering with electronics as a child to tackling advanced nanofabrication in graduate school, Max Krauss’ (Computer Engineering, ‘24) is a story of curiosity, innovation, and transformative learning.
Congratulations to Benjamin Hammel for receiving the First Place Poster Award and Emma Nelson for receiving the Third Place Poster Award at the 2024 Innovation in Materials Symposium! This symposium brought together the materials research community at CU Boulder and beyond for presentations by faculty and students as well as discussion and collaboration opportunities.
Yunzhe “Oliver” Shao, a graduate student at JILA in the group led by JILA Fellows and University of Colorado Boulder Physics professors Margaret Murnane and Henry Kapteyn, has been awarded the Best Paper Award at the IEEE Conference on Computational Imaging Using Synthetic Apertures.
Shao’s winning research focused on developing an extreme ultraviolet (EUV) reflectometer. This innovative instrument is designed to characterize various nanostructured samples’ chemical compositions and spatial properties.
“This research represents a first-iteration, proof-of-concept instrumentation for nanostructure metrology,” Shao explained. “It has been constructed, developed, and improved over several generations of graduate students in our group. It is reassuring and inspiring to share its new capabilities and witness the interest it generates from the metrology community.”
The paper was submitted to the 2024 IEEE Conference on Computational Imaging Using Synthetic Apertures, created in partnership with and hosted by NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology). The annual event highlights advancements in cutting-edge computer imaging and sensing using high-resolution imaging systems, like the reflectometer Shao and the KM group work on.
Shao expressed gratitude for the recognition, highlighting the collective effort behind the project. “Apart from its founding members, whose names are listed in several previous publications, the reflectometer does not exist without the continuing efforts of current students and postdocs from our group, including Nick Jenkins, Clay Klein, Yunhao Li, and Jiayi Liu. We are motivated to further develop and improve this metrology instrument beyond its current limitations.”
Anya Grafov, a graduate student at JILA, has been awarded the Best Poster Award at the IEEE Magnetics Society Summer School 2024. Studying under JILA Fellows and University of Colorado Boulder Physics professors Margaret Murnane and Henry Kapteyn, Grafov’s poster titled “Probing Ultrafast Spin Dynamics with Extreme Ultraviolet High Harmonics” was one of only nine to receive this prestigious recognition.
“Winning this award from the IEEE Magnetics Society is an incredible honor. It validates the hard work and dedication put into our research and motivates us to continue pushing the boundaries in magnetics research,” stated Grafov. “Our technique is quite niche, so I wanted to focus my poster on our actual measurement technique and the experiments we conduct. It’s an overview of the measurement technique and examples of two recent projects we’ve been working on using our beamline.”
Highlighting the fundamentals and new research, like Grafov’s, in magnetics, the annual summer school brings together graduate students worldwide to study magnetism through lectures by international experts and poster presentations.
“It was a great experience to learn about different aspects of magnetism, from fundamental research to applied technologies like spintronic devices and magnetic artificial intelligence,” she added.
The Brown Institute for Basic Sciences at Caltech today announced the 2024 class of Brown Investigators. The cohort, the first selected through the newly formed Brown Institute for Basic Sciences, comprises eight distinguished mid-career faculty working on fundamental challenges in the physical sciences, particularly those with potential long-term practical applications in chemistry and physics. Each investigator will receive up to $2 million over five years.
The Brown Institute for basic Sciences at Caltech was established in 2023 through a $400-million gift to the Institute from entrepreneur, philanthropist, and alumnus Ross M. Brown (BS ’56, MS ’57).
Caltech and Brown share a common purpose: advancing fundamental science discoveries with the potential to seed breakthroughs that benefit society.
Gordana Dukovic, professor of chemistry, University of Colorado Boulder, will develop methods for chemical structure determination of biomolecules bound to inorganic nanoparticles—materials that could be useful for the conversion of solar energy directly into new chemical bonds.
Skylar Sherman, a graduate student in Gordana Dukovic’s group at CU Boulder, was awarded a fellowship from the Department of Chemistry that will fund research for the spring semester and summer. Congrats Skylar!
Biochemistry, Molecular and Structural Biology (BMSB) graduate students Andrew Goring (Clubb/Loo groups) and Alexander Stevens (Zhou group) have been awarded prestigious Whitcome Pre-doctoral Fellowships in Molecular Biology for 2023-24. The fellowship will provide them support in the form of tuition/fees, a monthly stipend and travel funds.
Alex Stevens received his bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry from Arizona State University, where he researched G protein-coupled receptor structures in the lab of Professor Wei Liu. In the fall of 2019, Alex joined the Biochemistry, Molecular and Structural Biology (BMSB) graduate program under the tutelage of Professor Hong Zhou.
Alex’s graduate work leverages the recent advancements in cryo-electron microscopy (cryoEM) to resolve high-resolution structures of the proteins that drive assembly and replication in double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) viruses. Because dsRNA is alien to eukaryotes and thus a powerful inducer of the antiviral response, these viruses have evolved to transcribe nucleotides at transcriptional enzymatic complexes (TECs) within their proteinaceous capsids which simultaneously undergo large architectural changes. Alex investigates this dynamic within complex dsRNA viruses, like the economically important aquareovirus, to determine how their TECs and capsids change throughout their lifecycle. He has also characterized a minimally complex dsRNA virus which he plans to use as a model to probe the rules of intracellular replication amongst these ubiquitous pathogens.
Alex is passionate about deepening our understanding of disease and hopes to contribute to the discovery of therapies that improve people’s lives and wants to improve the manner in which we conduct science so it may realize all its promises to stakeholders. After receiving his PhD, Alex plans to pursue research roles uncovering the mechanisms underpinning pathogenesis of harmful microbes and hopes to one day branch into science policy. “UCLA gave me the perfect environment to collaborate with preeminent scholars, learn techniques from the leading edge of my field, and produce impactful work, and I look forward to applying what I’ve learned to my future work.”
About the Whitcome Fellowships
In 2005 UCLA received an $8,000,000 bequest from the estate of Philip Whitcome. Dr Whitcome received his Ph.D. in 1974 from the Molecular Biology Interdepartmental Ph.D. Program and went on to a stellar career in the biotechnology industry. His gift allowed the establishment of the Whitcome Fellowship Program designed to attract highly talented students to a unique graduate training environment that emphasizes rapid progress toward groundbreaking scientific discoveries.
Graduate students Cody Gillman (Gonen lab), Declan Evans (Houk lab), Troy Lowe (Backus lab), Ashley Julio (Backus lab), and Alex Stevens (Hong Zhou lab) have been selected as 2022-2023 Fowler Fellows.
Each Fellow presented a talk at the Audree V. Fowler Fellowships in Protein Science Special Seminar on Tuesday, October 7, 2022.
A strong supporter of the basic sciences and medicine at UCLA, alumna Dr. Audree Fowler (B.S. ’56 chemistry, Ph.D. ’63 biochemistry) established the Audree V. Fowler Fellows in Protein Science in 2008. Fowler was Director UCLA Protein Microsequencing Facility from 1984-1999 and is a Researcher Emeritus of the UCLA Department of Biological Chemistry. She is one of the first four women to receive a Ph.D. from the UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry. In 2018, the women were awarded the department’s 2018 Alumni Legacy Awards in recognition of their achievements in life, and generous support and service to UCLA. “The sciences gave me a great life. Now I want to help others have access to the same opportunities I enjoyed,” Fowler explained when she established the Fowler Fellowships endowment.
Applications for the fellowships are solicited from graduate students in the Molecular Biology Interdepartmental (MBI) Ph.D. Program, Biological Chemistry, and Chemistry & Biochemistry Departments. In addition to presenting their research at a special seminar, the recipients each receive a $5,000 award.
Alex Stevens is a fourth year Biochemistry, Molecular and Structural Biology (BMSB) graduate student in Professor Hong Zhou’s group.
Alex received his B.S. in Biochemistry from Arizona State University, where he researched G protein-coupled receptor structures in the lab of Dr. Wei Liu. Alex’s graduate work leverages the recent advancements in cryo-electron microscopy (cryoEM) to resolve high-resolution structures of the proteins that drive assembly and replication in double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) viruses. Because dsRNA is alien to eukaryotes and thus a useful inducer of the antiviral response, these viruses have evolved to transcribe nucleotides at transcriptional enzymatic complexes (TECs) within their proteinaceous capsids which simultaneously undergo large architectural changes. Alex investigates this dynamic within complex dsRNA viruses, like the economically important aquareovirus, to determine how their TECs and capsids change throughout their lifecycle. He has also characterized a minimally complex dsRNA virus which he plans to use as a model to probe the rules of intracellular replication amongst these ubiquitous pathogens.
Congratulations to professor Hong Zhou on being named a 2024 fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology! In addition to his role as a professor at UCLA MIMG, Zhou is the faculty director of the Electron Imaging Center for NanoMachines (EICN), part of the CNSI Technology Centers.
In Feb., the American Academy of Microbiology (Academy) elected 65 new fellows to the Class of 2024. Fellows of the American Academy of Microbiology, the honorific leadership group within the American Society for Microbiology, are elected annually through a highly selective, peer-review process, based on their records of scientific achievement and original contributions that have advanced microbiology. The Academy received 156 nominations for fellowship this year. There are over 2,600 fellows in the Academy representing all subspecialties of the microbial sciences and who are involved in basic and applied research, teaching, public health, industry and government service.