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The Department
of Biology
The Biology Department is housed in the Cox Science Center on the
beautiful
Coral
Gables campus of the
University of
Miami in southern Florida, gateway to the tropics. Our
diverse internationally community has
strong research foci
ranging from Tropical Biology to Neuroscience. We interact with medical and
marine
campuses and exploit resources
such as the Everglades,
the Fairchild
Tropical Botanic Garden, the
Organization
for Tropical Studies
and our on-campus Gifford
Arboretum.
Our curriculum serves the largest Arts and Science major,
Biology,
as well as Marine
Science and
Neuroscience
majors, and emphasizes
experiential learning and research
opportunities.
Fall Semester 2012:
Study Abroad in the Galapagos!
Top Ten Reasons to spend Fall term in the Galapagos Islands (ppt)
Web site for more information
Seminars
Please come to departmental seminars on Mondays and informal
seminars on Fridays. All seminars are at 12:20 in Cox 166.
The next seminar will be Monday, February 13th, at 12:20 in Cox 166. Dr.Maitreyi Das will be speaking on Design Principles in Cell Morphogenesis
.To contact Dr. Das please contact her host Dr. Dallman.
Beautiful Evidence, a collaborative adventure challenging standard
presentation paradigms
Faculty
In the last five years Biology has welcomed ten
new Graduate Faculty: two core facility manger/faculty James Baker and Carla Hurt, four
junior faculty, Bill
Browne, Julia Dallman, Isaac Skromne, and Alex Wilson, and three
senior faculty, Akira
Chiba, Kathryn
Tosney, Athula
Wikramanayake and, most recently, Albert Uy.
New
Aresty Chair in Tropical Ecology Biology's newest faculty
member is Albert Uy who joined us in January, 2011. His research uses tropical birds and a multiplicity
of modern approaches to explore the origin of biological species. He is
also deeply involved with conservation, and will be taking UM students
for a field-based course in the Solomon Islands.
Announcing: Kushlan Chair in Waterbird Biology and Conservation. This search will be advertized this Fall term. We are now eliciting conversations with those who could be interested in this eminent tenured faculty position. The chosen individual will hold joint appointments in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Rosentiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. The Kushlan chair's research is to focus on the biology and conservation of waterbirds (including marine birds) primarily at the organismal level. It is desirable that the incumbent use (or use in collaboration) modern integrative approaches such as physiological, genetic, isotopic, or molecular methods. It is expected that the research program be extramurally funded and at the cutting edge of important questions on the biology and conservation of waterbirds. Interested partiess should contact Kathryn Tosney, Chair of Biology.
Recognition |
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David Janos has been named a Cooper Fellow by the College of Arts and Sciences, an award that acknowledges and celebrates excellence in our core missions of scholarship, teaching and service, an honor he very much deserves.
Read the award citation. |
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Steven Green has won the University’s James W. McLamore Outstanding Service award. His
contributions to UM and beyond are vast and varied, but have been
marked by great energy, rich creativity, and a profound interest in the
well-being of all inhabitants of the earth. Read the award
citation. |
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Guillermo Goldstein retires
The international reputation of Professor Guillermo Goldstein,
our Smathers Chair in Tropical Trees, remains at the highest caliber
internationally. Happily, this major asset to Biology will remain
active in research.
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Mike Robinson was highlighted on the College of Arts and Sciences home page, because Ashley Taggart (a Biology major) named him as "My Favorite Professor." Read what she wrote about Mike here (pdf). |
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Jennifer Stynoski
received the Henri
Seibert Award for one of the best student papers at
the fifty -third annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Amphibians and
Reptiles. |
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Jeff Peng in Athula Wikramanayake’s lab has won a 2011 College of Arts and Sciences Summer Graduate Research Fellowship to support his research. He also won a Best Poster award at the Developmental Biology of the Sea Urchin XX meeting. |
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Naveen Wijesena in Athula Wikramanayake’s lab won a first prize for his talk at our outstanding graduate symposium, a first prize for his oral presentation at the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology meeting and a College of Art and Sciences Dissertation Award for 2011-12 with a full stipend. |
2011 Faculty Awards
Outstanding Biology
Educator, awarded by a vote of the graduating seniors, went to Michael Gaines
2011 Graduate Student Awards
Biology Department's Outstanding TA award, Adrienne Dubois, William H. Evoy graduate Research Support Fund Award Robert McElderry, Rebekah Outman and Simeon Yurek, Jay M. Savage Award in
Tropical Biology Gabriela Toledo, Anuradha Gunathilake and Rebekah Outman, Kushlan Graduate
Research Award Jiang Jiang and ChiehFu Peng, J. Gerry Curtis Plant Sciences
Award Anuradha Gunathilake, Robert McElderry and Joanna Weremijewicz, Life Science Category of the Research and Creativity Forum: Gavin Leighton, Outstanding Gradiate Student Paper Xin Wang, "Linking water use and nutrient accumulation in tree island upland hammock plant communities in the Everglades National Park, USA"
2011
Undergraduate Research Awards
Outstanding Biology
Senior Gabriela Toledo, Outstanding Graduating
Senor Life Science Category of the Research and Creativity Forum Katherine Toll, and in the geological sciences category Gabriella Toledo. Outstanding Senior Thesis - Honors in Biology Maria G. Giribaldi, Beta Beta Beta Biological Honor Society, Omicron Chapter, Outstanding Senior Michelle S. Rosario
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Facilities
and new equipment
Featured
 
Nathan Dappan from MIke Gaines' lab has produced another marvelous film, The Battle of the Sexes, that has won the first prize at the Amimal Behavior film festival, at the Annual Animal Behavior conference. The film is about Nate's research on how males and females coevolve together. Do give yourself the treat of seeing this superior example of effective scientific communication.
Nathan Dappan from MIke Gaines' lab has produced a marvelous film that won first place in the NESCent Evolution Film Festival, called Cold-Blooded Canibals: Extreme adaptations to island life . It is a three-minute piece about the dietary adaptations in species he studies, Mediterranean island lizards, which range from eating flowers and fruit to eating each other! Check it out. Three UM undergrads (who also recently participated in UM's UGalapagos semester abroad) are contributing to Nathan's research program: Ryan McMinds, Hannah Peck and Marina Knize. This film was highlighted in the Guardian pdf, the Dutch National Newspaper pdf, and Nature pdf.
Rebecca Duncan, from Alexandra Wilson's lab, has won a three-year, $30,000/year NSF graduate research fellowship from the National Science Foundation. Her research uses the citrus mealybug, an insect that has evolved an intimate, mutually beneficial relationship with two different bacterial species that reside within specialized mealybug cells. Rebecca wrote and submitted her winning proposal from Kathryn Tosney's course, Professional Writing and Grantsmanship in Biology. Her win reflects the excellence of her project, her mentor, and the research and training environment in the Biology department. Read the eVeritas article (pdf). In the same competition, another course graduate Johanna Weremijewics from David Janos' lab, won an honorable mention.
Julia Dallman's work using zebrafish, as part of a collaboration between Biology, Bascom Palmer Eye Institute and the Human Genome Institute, has been highlighted in Science (pdf). This collaboration has used cutting edge approaches to fill gaps in a catalog of rare diseases.
Akira Chiba's lab is 'propelling proteomics'. Until recently,
it wasn’t possible to watch living proteins at work, but now Akira
Chiba's group has developed a specialized fluorescence lifetime imaging
microscope that lets biologists study how individual proteins interact
with one another in their natural environment: in living cells and
organisms. Using this remarkable approach, Chiba and collaborators
will examine 10,000 different protein interactions using a $2.6 million NIH stimulus grant. “Now we have direct
access to the protein network,” Chiba says, “and that should help
improve medical strategies.” see pdf.
Alexandra Wilson's lab published four important
papers in a single week. A collaborative paper in PLoS
Biology describes sequencing of the entire genome
of the pea aphid, a notorious agricultural pest. The work reveals
extensive genetic collaboration between the aphid and its bacterial
symbiont, which sheds light on this insect's extraordinary
characteristics.
Two companion papers explore implications of these findings. In the
same week, Rebecca Duncan, graduate student in the Wilson lab,
published her first-authored paper on her work with spiders.
Dr. Whitlock
is known as a molecular systematist/botanist, but
her passion for her topic ranges across the spectrum, covering all
phases from evolution to ecosystems to anatomy. A recent featured
article in e-Veritas (pdf) describes how she recognized a
unique resource, a slide collection by one of the early greats in
tropical botany, Walter Tennyson Swingle, saved it from a trip to the
dumpster, and won a grant to move it into the digital age. With her
insight and dedication, The
Swingle Plant Anatomy Reference Collection has become an
internationally-available and much valued resource.
Dr. Barbara Whitlock, left, and UM student Megan
Morris examine two microscope slides from the Swingle Plant Anatomy
Collection.
Leo
Sternberg's research on ancient tree rings (pdf)
has been highlighted in the prestigious journal Nature.
Dr. Sternberg, with Hope Jahren of Johns Hopkins University, studied
the carbon, oxygen and hydrogen isotopes in tree rings of a “fossil
forest” located in the far northwest Canadian Arctic and revealed
changes in seasonal humidity that affected forest growth in the Eocene
period, about 45 million years ago
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Grad
Student Nathan Muchala's discovery of a gigantic tongue was
published, as a sole-author paper, in the prestigious journal Nature.
This bat appears to be the sole pollinator of an extremely elongated
flower of Centroogon nigricanse. Nathan found
that the tongue of the tube-lipped nectar bat Aouna fistulata
can reach 150 percent of its body length, and retracts into the rib
cage.
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