News and Events

Clark rising senior wins prize for excellence in biology

The biology department staff selected Clark rising senior Jana Loux-Turner as the recipient of the David Potter Prize for Excellence in Biology. The prize is accompanied by a $1,000 cash award, and is given annually to a biology student who ranks in the upper fifth of his or her class, has attended Clark for at least two years, and has maintained a B average or better in biology and related fields. The Potter Prize is a permanent endowment fund established by Dr. and Mrs. Warren Litsky, AB '45.

Hibbett lab wins NSF grant for AFTOL project

Just the facts: National Science Foundation Systematics and Population Biology/Assembling the Tree of Life (David S. Hibbett, PI; P. Brandon Matheny, Co-PI; M. Cathie Aime, Sub-award PI). Title: Collaborative Research: AFTOL: Resolving the Evolutionary History of the Fungi. Funding period September 15, 2007-August 31, 2011. DEB-0732968. $590,000.

AFTOL (Assembling the Fungal Tree of Life) is an NSF-sponsored collaboration involving 10 laboratories at eight universities. The project seeks to reconstruct the evolutionary history of Fungi, a group of perhaps 1.5 million extant species, using molecular sequences and morphological and biochemical characters. The Hibbett lab's part of AFTOL concerns molecular systematics and phyloinformatics in the mushroom-forming Fungi. Read more about AFTOL

David Hibbett named honorary fellow of mycological society

Prof. David Hibbett has been appointed an Honorary Fellow of the Mycological Society of America, a scientific society dedicated to advancing the science of mycology — the study of fungi of all kinds including mushrooms, molds, truffles, yeasts, lichens, plant pathogens and medically important fungi. Read more about MSA

Post-doc Brandon Matheny departs for University of Tennessee

Brandon Matheny has worked as a post-doc in the Hibbett lab since August 2003, primarily acquiring and analyzing data for the Assembling the Fungal Tree of Life projects (AFTOL1 and AFTOL2). These results cast new light on evolutionary relationships of fungi, including mushroom-forming fungi. Now Brandon has joined the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee where he will pursue research in mushroom systematics and evolution of Agaricales and mycorrhizal fungi. Read more about Brandon's work

Jason Slot wins NSF postdoctoral research fellowship

Jason Slot, who is completing his doctoral work this summer, has just been awarded a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biological Informatics. Jason will take the fellowship to Antonis Rokas' lab at Vanderbilt. Jason's research interests in David Hibbett's laboratory at Clark involved investigating the evolution of nitrate assimilation genes in fungi. Read more about Jason

Foster-Baker lab denizens head to British Columbia, Alaska

Students in the Foster-Baker lab are doing field work in British Columbia and Alaska. One post-doc, four grad students, and five undergrads are performing field work on threespine stickleback and their lake environments through early July. One team will work in the Cook Inlet region of Alaska, and the other will do research in the Vancouver Island and adjacent British Columbia mainland region. Studies will range from collections made to continue our conservation archive for selected lakes, water quality and plankton, behavior, and host-parasite relationships. Students plan to blog about their experiences while in the field.

Susan Foster appointed to new endowed chair in biology

Prof. Susan Foster has been appointed to the newly established Warren Litsky Endowed Chair in Biology. This chair is established through a generous bequest gift from the estate of Warren Litsky, who graduated from Clark University in 1945. Appointments to the Warren Litsky Endowed Chair are for a three-year term.

Susan joined the Clark University faculty in 1995. She was appointed chair of the department in 2005 and promoted to full professor in 2006. She is an evolutionary biologist and her research on stickleback fish is currently funded by a major grant from the National Science Foundation. Her funded research has created wonderful opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to work in her laboratory here in Worcester as well as in the field in Alaska. Susan is a major contributor to the teaching program in biology and the new environmental science major. She also was a leader in our successful Keck grant proposal to redesign biology courses around an inquiry-based pedagogy. Currently Susan serves the university as chair of the faculty Planning and Budget Review Committee. Visit Susan's laboratory web site

Justin Golub wins two awards to support doctoral research

PhD student Justin Golub has won two prestigious awards to support his work with Susan Foster and John Baker. One award was $1,500 from the American Museum of Natural History Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Grant. The AMNH Roosevelt grant is designed to aid graduate research on the natural history and conservation of North American fauna. The second award was $1,000 from the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists Raney Fund. Set up in honor of Edward C. Raney, the award is designed to aid in graduate research in ichthyology (fish studies). Both awards will be used to support Justin's summer research on embryonic learning in threespine stickleback. Read more about Justin

Fifth-year student Rachel Chock earns master's in biology

Fifth-year master's student Rachel Chock successfully defended her thesis titled "Re-emergence of ancestral plasticity and the loss of a rare limnetic phenotype in an Alaskan population of threespine stickleback," and walked in commencement ceremonies May 18. Rachel studied the effects of human-induced environmental change on the behavior of a unique population of stickleback in Lynne Lake, Alaska. After graduation she will be spending part of the summer doing fieldwork with pronghorn in Montana and the rest working at Lake George in New York helping to remove invasive milfoil. In the next year she is planning to spend time traveling and working in Australia and Southeast Asia, and wants to continue to be involved with conservation and animal behavior. Read more about Rachel | Read more about the accelerated BA/MA program

Academic Spree Day '08

Academic Spree Day is a spring celebration of undergraduate research and creativity. Top photo: Ashley Faden '08 discusses her project, "Activated alveolar macrophages: Lung cells that can cause disease?" Ashley's faculty sponsor is Prof. Tim Lyerla. Bottom photo: Jenna Nguyen '08 poses in front of her poster titled, "Rapid amplification of cDNA ends in two red algae Rhodella violacea and Stylonema aslidii." Jenna's faculty sponsor is Prof. Deb Robertson.

Foster to lead Animal Behavior Society

Professor of Biology Susan Foster has been elected to the presidential office for the Animal Behavior Society (ABS). Foster will serve as president elect until summer 2009, as president from summer 2009 to summer 2010, and the following year as past president. She currently serves as editor for the society's journal, Animal Behaviour, as well as for the scientific journal Ethology. She is also a fellow of the Animal Behavior Society.

At Clark, Foster is professor of biology and chair of the Biology Department. She teaches evolution, introductory biology, animal behavior and conservation biology. Prior to coming to Clark, she was assistant professor of biology at the University of Arkansas. Foster holds a bachelor's degree in botany and zoology from the University of Wisconsin, and a Ph.D. from the University of Washington.

The Animal Behavior Society is a non-profit scientific society, founded to encourage and promote the study of animal behavior. ABS members are from all over the world, but primarily from North, Central and South America.

Fall Fest 2007: Celebrating student creativity

Biology student Jenna Dewey '08 explains her research to biology professor
Deb Robertson at Fall Fest, an autumn celebration of undergraduate research.
Jenna's poster is titled, "Life history variation in female fourspine stickleback
in Nova Scotia, Canada." Her work is sponsored by professors Susan Foster
and John Baker.

Public school teachers enhance research skills at Clark

Two teachers from Worcester Public Schools spent four weeks working in the biology labs at Clark University's Lasry Center for Biosciences as part of the Research Experience for Teachers program, supported by funds from the National Science Foundation.

For the second summer, science teachers JoAnne Foley, of Claremont Academy, and Vanessa Munoz-Chesler, of Sullivan Middle School, worked in the laboratory of biology professor Deborah Robertson. The teachers participated in Robertson's research investigating the physiological ecology and evolution of nitrogen metabolism in marine diatoms and other ecologically important groups of marine algae.

In the photo, from left, Kevin Brown '08, JoAnne Foley, Deb Robertson, Bryce Winant '08, Katie Brown '07, and Vanessa Munoz-Chesler.

In an Oct. 7 article, Telegram & Gazette reporter Shaun Sutner writes that Clark "now boasts the city’s first gold-certified building under the LEED program, the national system of standards for environmentally friendly construction. The school has been awarded the distinction by the U.S. Green Building Council, based in Washington, D.C., for the Lasry Center for Bioscience. The council sets and administers standards for LEED, which is short for Leadership in Environmental Excellence and Design."

The article continues, "The $13 million, 50,000-square-foot research and teaching center opened in 2005. It took the architect, engineers and contractor, Consigli Construction Co. of Milford, more than two years to submit and gain approval of all the documentation needed to meet the strict LEED criteria. Paul R. Bottis, Clark’s physical plant director, said the Lasry building is just the latest example of Clark’s commitment to energy efficiency, which began in the 1970s with computer-controlled heating systems and continued in the 1980s with the construction of a co-generation heating plant."

Read the entire article

Biology major works with eminent cancer researcher at Harvard

Senior biology major Ellen Durand was awarded a fellowship from the American Cancer Society to participate in cancer research at Harvard Medical School. Durand spent the summer of 2007 working with Dr. Judah Folkman, an internationally recognized researcher in the cancer field who has been nominated to win the Nobel Prize. Folkman discovered that angiogenesis, the formation of new blood vessels, is necessary for tumor survival. Folkman's work is the basis for the development of new and important therapies in the fight against cancer. (Editor's note: Dr. Judah Folkman died in January 2008 at age 74. Read the obituary in the New York Times.)

Durand, who received a stipend of $4,000, is a dean's list student and recipient of the Presidential Scholarship. During the academic year, she does independent research in the lab of Prof. Tom Leonard, where she studies genetic mechanisms of uncontrolled cell division. Durand hails from Billerica, Mass.

Inspired by biology, 16 Clark art students create mural for Lasry Center

The students in Prof. Elli Crocker’s Drawing the Body class have created a biology-inspired mural that will hang in Lasry Center for Bioscience. The four-panel mural, which may be displayed as individual pieces or as an 8-by-8-foot square, depicts super-enlarged interior images of the human body: red blood cells, white blood cells, brain neurons, and muscle fiber.

art students standing in front of a mural

The artists, shown here with Prof. Crocker, kneeling at left, and Susan Foster, biology chair, kneeling at right, include: Margaret Baker, Jennifer Bauman, Emily Bell, Chawisa Chartsuwan, Claire Frost, Rebecca Good, Maeve Hogan, Clara James, Sarah McMahon, Patille Nargozian, Kassie Pearson Pomerantz, Monica Piedrahita, Preethi Raj, Rosanne Shaul, Rachel Slater and Sasha Susman.

Take a tour of a biology lab at Clark

students in the lab Professor David Hibbett studies evolutionary biology and ecology of fungi, especially mushroom-forming fungi. Check out the work in his lab on Clark's campus as well as in one local high school.
Visit the Hibbett lab's web site .

Department of Biology