Biology Department News

Assistant Professor of Biology Rou-Jia Sung has received NSF funding for a project to develop an augmented reality based app for iOS and Android devices as a tool for teaching macromolecular structure and function.

Rou-Jia Sung, assistant professor of biology, has been working in collaboration with Dr. Andrew Wilson at Academic Technologies to develop BiochemAR, an Augmented Reality app containing different 3D visualizations with accompanying classroom learning materials for that can be broadly used in a variety of courses.

Rose Kantor ’10, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California – Berkeley presents a biology seminar talk: “The microbial world within water reuse.”

Senior biology major Kait Libbey was interviewed about her summer job working as a junior ranger educator at a San Francisco an environmental justice youth center funded by the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy.

Mike is an aquatic biologist with research interests that center on the interaction between organisms and their physical environment. His work primarily focuses on issues of ecophysiology and fluid mechanics related to marine/freshwater invertebrates, and involves a combination of lab, field, and modeling approaches. This includes the array of physiological, ecological, and developmental responses that organisms employ when faced with environmental uncertainty (e.g., changes temperature, salinity, fluid dynamics).

Rika has received NASA funding for a project to improve how scientists recognize whether an exoplanet can or does support life. Anderson’s work in “The Virtual Planetary Laboratory (VPL): Advancing the Search for Life Beyond the Solar System” project will contribute to NASA’s broader “Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS)” network. As a co-investigator with Victoria Meadows of the University of Washington-Seattle, Rika will examine the early evolution of microbial life on Earth. She will work with a Carleton undergraduate researcher on bioinformatics tasks over the course of the five-year grant, and attend the Astrobiology Science Conference every other year.

Senior biology majors/SDAs Jackson Raynor and Georgia Schmitt recently hosted an event about finding summer research opportunities and funding.

Devavani Chatterjea, Associate Professor of Biology at Macalester College, presented a biology seminar talk on mast cells (from the German mastzellen, or “well-fed cells”), focusing on the role allergen exposures…

Forest Isbell, Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Ecology, Evolution & Behavior at the University of Minnesota presented a biology seminar lecture on October 13 titled “Reversibility of biodiversity declines & erosion of ecosystem function.”

David Keating, Associate Scientist at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center in Madison, Wisconsin presented a biology seminar talk on October 7 titled “Degradation of plant cell walls by bacteria: new insights.”