Tag: Department of Biology

An uncommon reptile discovery will help shed light on the species in the Fredericksburg region.

The second annual FredTech STEM 16 Summit brought together more than 350 educators, students, community members and business leaders at the University of Mary Washington on Saturday, April 20.

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The day-long event featured seminars on STEM programming in school districts and women in technology, as well as a STEM career panel.  The summit also included more than 45 projects from UMW, regional elementary and secondary schools, Germanna Community College, and local and regional businesses and nonprofit organizations. Six UMW offices and academic departments were represented at the summit, including the Department of Biological Sciences, the Department of Computer Science, the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, the Department of Mathematics, the Office of Admissions and a 3D printing demonstration.

High school students measured their lung capacity at UMW’s Department of Biological Sciences booth.

UMW computer science student David Peworchik was honored with the “SWIFT Scholarship in Computer Science” Award for the 2013-2014 academic year, which provides a merit scholarship to a top computer science major in the region. The scholarship is funded by the Society for World Interbank Financial Telecommunications, Inc (SWIFT).

In addition, UMW students, Alex Gilley, Zach Goodwin, Jerome Mueller and Russell Ruud , were named as SWIFT Student Research Fellows for the 2013-2014 year.  They received funding from SWIFT and UMW to attend the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) conference  in San Diego in July.  The students will present their part of an interdisciplinary research project in the area of pharmaceutical discovery.  Their work with supercomputers and data analysis may lead to new treatments for diseases such as HIV and Tuberculosis, according to Associate Professor Karen Anewalt, chair of the Department of Computer Science.

UMW biology major Marco Montero (standing) explains a microscope at the Department of Biological Sciences booth.

In conjunction with the summit, UMW held a titration competition and its seventh annual calculus tournament. In the team competition of the calculus tournament, the team from Paul VI High School in Fairfax came in first place and the team from the Commonwealth Governor’s School came in second place. In the individual competition, Jack Sweeney of Paul VI High School won first place and Lina Hong of Paul VI High School won second place.

In the titration tournament, members of UMW’s honors general chemistry class won first place, followed by senior chemistry majors in second place.

The summit culminated with a keynote lecture by David Kerr, a program lead in the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Communications.

Deborah O’Dell, associate professor of biology and president-elect of the Virginia Academy of Science, presided over the Virginia Academy of Sciences Undergraduate Research Meeting on Saturday, Oct. 27 at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College.  Deborah Zies, associate professor of biology, was the invited speaker and spoke on “Smith-Magenis Syndrome: An Investigation of a Human Genome Disorder.” Lynn Lewis and Kathryn Loesser, professors of biology, served as judges for the research grant recipients along with Deborah Zies, Deborah O’Dell and Carleitta Paige, adjunct faculty member of biology. Faculty sponsoring students in competition for a $500 undergraduate research grant were: Lynn Lewis who sponsored Kathleen Blevins and Ryan Green, Theresa Grana, assistant professor of biology, who sponsored Sarah Marzec and Daniel Browne, and Andrew Dolby, professor of biology, who sponsored Abbigal Kimmit and Michael Carlo.  Ryan Green was awarded a grant for his research project “A Study of Chloroquine’s Antiretroviral Characteristics.”

Student lab research reveals real-world applications.

In the tissue culture lab in the University of Mary Washington’s Jepson Hall, Chloe Fusselman donned a white lab coat, put on gloves and carefully picked up a beaker of liquid. She was practicing her sterile lab techniques with her adviser, Professor of Biology Deborah O’Dell, since the methods are critical to her research project […]