Departmental News

Professor Peter Southern has been awarded the Medical Student Year One Distinguished Teaching Award for 2006. Dr. Southern was recognized at the November 9, 2006, Medical School Faculty Assembly.

Local researchers identify newly emerging illness:
Staphylococcal Purpura Fulminans
Recently Published Paper (PDF)
Information Regarding the Condition

Daniel Bond received an award of $477,000 from The Initiative for Renewable Energy and the Environment (IREE) as part of $8.5 million awarded to 24 renewable energy projects at the University of Minnesota for "An Integrated Approach for Optimization of Microbial Fuel Cells." The proposal was developed by Bond, Microbiology, Biotechnology Institute and collaborators Timothy LaPara and Raymond. M. Hozalski, Civil Engineering, and Edward Cussler, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science.

In a recent Science paper (312:114-116), Marc Jenkins and colleagues report key insights into how different types of infection-fighting T-cells survive and co-exist within the body's immune system. "Without this balance, a body's immune system will not have the desired response when faced with infection," said Dr. Jenkins, senior author of the study. "These findings could aid the development and production of vaccines and lead to further research on how the body fights specific infections, such as HIV." For more, click here.

Ken Vernick and colleagues' latest article in Science (312:577-579) describes how via a genetic mapping study of malaria-infected mosquitoes in Africa, he and his colleagues identified a small section of the mosquito genome that controls the majority of natural resistance to human malaria parasites and contains at least one novel candidate gene with strong parasite-control function. This research could someday lead to malaria-resistant mosquitoes. For more, click here.

Professor Emeritus Martin Dworkin received the 2006 USFCC/J. Roger Porter Award through the American Society for Microbiology. The award was presented at the General Meeting of ASM in Orlando on May 22, 2006.

MICaB Graduate Program Coordinator Louise Shand was one of two recipients of the Graduate School's 2006 Best Director of Graduate Studies Assistant Award.

Students chose Patrick Schlievert, Ph.D., as one of two people to receive the 2005 Distinguished Teaching Award from the Minnesota Medical Foundation, for his year one medical school course.

Prasanna Alluri, a medical student researcher in Dr. Haase's lab, received a seed grant from the American Medical Association Foundation, Spring 2006.

"Adjunct Professor Judy Berman describes how Candida strains can become drug-resistant and suggests a way to deter such attacks in the July 21 issue of Science." click here