We congratulate all of our 2019-20 PhD graduates from the BSD. Each has attained the highest degree awarded, and some have had their extraordinary accomplishments acknowledged through the award of their program's prize for contributions to their field. Simone Rauch’s outstanding thesis work has additionally been recognized with the BSD Best Dissertation Award. We also recognize Professor Megan McNerney, nominated by her students for her passion for research and dedication to training, as a recipient of the University’s Graduate Teaching and Mentoring Award.
Human Genetics student Katherine Aracenia is a 2020 HHMI Gilliam Fellow. The Gilliam Fellowship for Advanced Study is awarded to exceptional graduate students who are committed to increasing diversity among scientific leaders. Her advisor is Luis Barreiro. Congratulations Katie!
Before coming to UChicago, Shreya Ramachandran majored in neurobiology at Stanford and spent a year researching population genetics in Afro-Mexican communities in Mexico through a Fulbright Fellowship. A second-year PhD student in Maanasa Raghavan’s lab, Ramachandran’s thesis is about the gut microbiome in both hunter-gatherer and industrialized populations of humans. Her passion for researching—and teaching—human genetics has only grown since she began her graduate education at UChicago.
The COVID-19 virus is made out of RNA. Decoding how it actually functions is key to slowing or stopping the virus's path around the world.
As scientists around the world race to decode the coronavirus that has caused more than 15,000 deaths in a matter of months, a group of University of Chicago chemists are focusing on understanding how the virus’s RNA works—which could translate to a more effective vaccine.
The health, safety and well-being of our BSD community, on and off-campus, is our top priority. We will continue to update the community regularly to keep you informed. Information on BSD-specific resources can be found here. Also please continue to consult the University and University of Chicago Medicine guidance as appropriate.
Micrograph of laboratory-grown heart muscle cells. Fluorescent labeling shows mitochondria (red), cytoskeleton (green), and nuclei (blue).
Two University of Chicago scientists are part of an international team of researchers awarded a three-year, nearly $4 million grant to define every cell type in the human heart.
Much like babies at birth, stem cells harbor the magic of possibility. A stem cell has the potential to become a multitude of different adult cells within the body. It could eventually mature—or differentiate—into a fat cell or heart cell or nerve cell, for example.
Two University of Chicago research teams have received funding from The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust to contribute to building a Gut Cell Atlas, a collaborative effort that aims to define every type of cell in the human ileum (the last part of the small intestine) and colon.
Matthew Stephens has been named the Ralph W. Gerard Professor in the Departments of Statistics and Human Genetics and the College. Stephens’ research focuses on a wide variety of problems at the interface of statistics and genetics. His lab often tackles problems where novel statistical methods are required, or can learn something new compared with existing approaches. Much of that work involves developing new statistical methodologies, many of which have a non-trivial computational component.
Adult rhesus macaque monkeys' previous status in their community's social hierarchy has a lingering effect on how their genes behave.
Past low social status leaves long-lasting scars in the immune system, new study finds
Geneticist Luis Barreiro finds that adult monkeys' previous status in their community's social hierarchy had a lingering effect on how their genes behaved.
