Professor Greg Florant secured funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), with support from the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive, and Kidney Diseases, to support summer research experiences for minority undergraduate students in the biomedical sciences. As part of the program, Colorado State University hosted a 2006 NIH STEP-UP Summer Research Symposium, August 2-4. Approximately 75 students and mentors from all the colleges and universities with this award attended the colloquium.

Congratulations to several graduates from Biology who are entering graduate or professional schools: Andrea Gomez, from Prof. Don Mykles' lab, enters the Ph.D. program at New York University Medical School, Britanny Howard, from both Steve Stack's and Lori Anderson's labs, enters Medical School at the University of New Mexico, Craig Judd, from both Colleen Webb's and Joe von Fischer's labs, enters the Ecology program at Colorado State University; Jeff Kimbrell, from Rien Pilon's and Mike Antolin's' labs, enters the Ph.D. program at Oregon State University.

Erica Smith defended her M.S. thesis on "The belowground structure bank of Botrychium subgenus Botrychium in Colorado" on August 16. Congratulations to Erica and to her major advisor Dr. David Steingraeber.

Professor Diana Wall joins the Biology Department this fall, moving from the Natural Resources Ecology Laboratory to a space on the second floor of A/Z East!

Welcome to our newest group of graduate students, joining us this fall semester: Greg Ames, Tess Bowen, Yelena Chernyavskaya, Jessica Healy, Corey Handelsman, Craig Judd, Andrew Kanarek, Linsay Parrie,Charles Stone, and Jeff Zdunek

PhD student Dylan George has been awarded a SMART fellowship from the Department of Defense to continue his doctoral research with Dr. Colleen Webb

Graduate student Aryn Wilder has been appointed as a Research Fellow at the Centers for Disease Control in Fort Collins. She will be working to develop selective media and other tools to identify Yersinia pestis (plague), and will continue her research on plague transmission by fleas.

Andrea Gomez and Prof. Don Mykles attended the Beckman Conference in Irvine, CA July 27-29. Andrea presented a poster on her research on signaling mechanisms in the crustacean molting gland.

Allison Schultz and Mark Simmons travel to Chico, California to present a poster and talks, respectively, at the Botany 2006 meeting from July 30th to August 2nd.

Special Assistant Professor Joe von Fischer travels to Barrow, Alaska July 18-28, to measure microbial activity in tundra soils, in collaboration with colleagues from Berkeley.

Professor Steve Stack and gradaute student Song-Bin Chang attended the combined Potato Association of American, VI International Solanaceae Conference, and the Solanaceae Genomics Network in Madison, Wisconsin July 23-27. Dr. Stack organized and led a satellite session entitled "Application of FISH in support of sequencing plant genomes." Song-Bin and Dr. Stack also made several other presentations describing their research on genomics, chromosome structure, and gene mapping of tomatoes.

Asistant Professor Dhruba Naug and Research Associate Arathi Seshadri attended the 15th International Congress of the International Union for the Study of Social Insects at Washington D.C. and presented talks.

Many faculty (Jim Detling, Joe von Fischer, Alan Knapp, Colleen Webb) and graduate students (Chrissy Alba, Greg Ames, Priscilla Baker, Dylan George, Laurel Hartley, Liz Harp, Jana Heisler) attended and made presentations at the annual Ecological Society of America Meetings in Memphis, TN, Aug 6-10.