Science Journal June 2015

June 2015

Marylyn Ritchie PG 18

Repairing the Broken Brain

PG 4

Star Search PG 12

Research in Action PG 24

Table of Contents

FEATURE STORIES:

4 Repairing the Broken Brain

Follow Gong Chen on his mission to provide relief to patients who suffer from brain injuries and disorders.

12 Star Search

Discover Jason Wright's passion for all things stellar—from exoplanets to bright young students and postdocs.

18 In Sequence

Learn how Marylyn Ritchie is integrating bioinformatics, personalized medicine, and Penn State.

Read short briefs about some of the amazing research projects happening now in the college.

24 Research in Action

COLLEGE NEWS:

STUDENT SPOTLIGHT:

ALUMNI NEWS:

Welcome Douglas Cavener, Interim Dean

Undergraduate Student Awards and Honors

2015 Outstanding Alumni Awards

Planetarium Attracts Youngest Donor

Commencement Spring 2015 Student Marshal

Alumni Mentoring Program Dinner

Climate & Diversity Corner

Undergraduate Scientists

Emeritus Professor Honored by Alum's Gift

Intellectual Property Focus

Above and Beyond: Focus on Graduate Students

"Resistance" Screening Event

DEPARTMENT NEWS

Graduate Student Awards and Honors

Upcoming Events

Honoring Daniel Larson

Alumni Photo Album

FACULTY SPOTLIGHT: Faculty Awards and Honors New Faculty

Editor: Tara Immel Writers: Barbara Collins, Whittney Gould, Carrie Lewis, Brenda Lucas, and Sam Sholtis.

Special thanks to all of our other contributors!

Design: Carley LaVelle, Penn State Science Marketing Office Printer: Watkins Printing

2

Penn State Eberly College of Science

Dear Friends of the College, Translating scientific research from the lab bench to the public sphere has become a priority for the Eberly College of Science in 2015. As noted in our new strategic plan, the creation of intellectual property (IP) and its transfer to society are consistent with the research, education, and outreach missions of our college. Many of our scientists, including a few that you will read about in this issue, are already collaborating with organizations external to Penn State to conduct research and transform their results into practical applications to improve human health and society.

Marylyn Ritchie, Paul Berg Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, has entered into a collaboration with Geisinger Research and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals to collect and analyze genomic data, which could lead to a more personalized approach to medicine. Ritchie’s work has the potential for discovery of genetic and environmental contributors to major diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and neurological disorders, which can ultimately lead to improvements in disease prevention and treatment. As founding director of the new Biomedical and Translational Informatics program at Geisinger Research, Ritchie will also work to recruit more Penn State scientists, including faculty, postdoctoral scholars, and graduate students, to collaborate with Geisinger.

Ritchie isn’t the only one helping faculty build re-

lationships with industry. The college is making a concerted effort to engage even more of our researchers in IP development and the technology transfer process. We have hired a new intellectual property and technology transfer liaison, Melissa Long, to work with Andy Stephenson, associate dean for research and innovation, to offer training and educational opportunities, to aid with identifying alternative funding resources, and to also help navigate the path to protecting IP and licensing.

Additionally, this team will assist faculty in developing relationships with external organization and also match corporate research and development needs with researchers in the college.

Many faculty have already benefited from collaborating with our college’s technology transfer office. For example, through a partnership with the Penn State Research Foundation, the college was able to jointly fund five of thirteen research proposals during the first year of the program. As you’ll read in the IP Focus, Mauricio Terrones, professor of physics, chemistry, and materials science and engineering, was the first utilize this “Lab Bench to Commercialization” grant. Because funding is becoming increasingly more difficult to obtain through traditional federal granting agencies, partnerships like this, and with external companies and organizations, are crucial for faculty to get their research from the lab bench to companies for further development and commercialization.

With all of the exciting research occurring throughout the college, I am looking forward to seeing more discoveries translate to solution of major problems and challenges.

Sincerely,

SCIENCE JOURNAL June 2015

3

Feature Story 4

Penn State Eberly College of Science

Repairing the

Brain n e k o r B

By Whittney Gould

Gong Chen is on a mission to provide relief to patients who suffer from brain injuries and disorders with his groundbreaking in vivo reprogramming technology

2015 SCIENCE JOURNAL June 201

5

Feature Story What if the most traumatic brain injuries, disorders, and diseases could be cured by taking a pill that essentially fixes the broken parts of the brain?

Gong Chen would love to find out. “I really hope I can GONG CHEN do this, not just for a pure scientific research purpose, but also to really make it into a clinical therapy,” he said.

“I’m fortunate to have so many people around me that have helped me and supported me. I’ve lived a very good life so far, and I’m going to use the rest of my life to help other people.”

Chen, professor of biology and the Verne M. Willaman Chair in Life Sciences, conducts neuroscience research with a goal of providing a new treatment to patients ailing with problems relating to the brain.

The human brain, made up of billions of neurons and their support network of glial cells, is subject to more than 200 different disorders caused by injury or disease, including stroke, epilepsy, and neurodegenerative conditions like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases.

Millions of people suffer from these diseases and disorders every year, and almost $300 billion per year is spent on medical treatment for Alzheimer’s disease and stroke, two of the biggest brain disorders. Unfortunately, the current medical treatments available for these conditions aren’t particularly effective.

Regenerating Neurons Though brain injury, like a stab wound or an accident trauma, can have a much different cause than a neurodegenerative disease, Chen says they all have one common pathological hallmark: glial scar tissue.

After brain injury or disease, many neurons 6

die or degenerate, and neurons cannot divide to regenerate themselves. As a result, when the neurons are damaged or degenerate, the glial cells that support these neurons can swell and divide and form glial scar tissue in place of the dead neurons. This means the glial cells can now be a barrier to further brain healing.

Chen describes glial scar tissue as being similar to any other scar left as result of an injury, with one exception: “Once they form, they pretty much stay in the brain forever. Doctors cannot do much with it. You can’t cut it out and leave a big hole in the brain.”

There was no known method to reverse this glial scar back to normal neural tissue until now. “Our technology is doing exactly that,” said Chen. “We are working to reverse glial scar back into functional neural tissue, so we can really, in a sense, repair the broken brain.”

Chen’s lab uses a pioneering technology called “in vivo reprogramming” to do this. “We express a single neural transcription factor, a protein called NeuroD1, in the glial cell, and we can change the glial cell into a completely different cell, a functional neuron. This is really exciting, because we can now regenerate neurons using internal brain cells without external cell transplantation.”

The process doesn’t just heal the scar tissue the way our skin can heal a scar—it takes a step further and reverses the glial scar back into neural tissue with newly generated functional neurons in it. This is so important for patients with brain injury or disorders, as most of those patients lack a number of functional neurons and instead have glial scar in their place.

The best part about Chen’s reprogramming technology is that it works in vivo. In vivo reprogramming uses cells indigenous to the patient rather than injecting cells from an outside source through cell transplantation, the way Penn State Eberly College of Science

that most stem cell therapies do. When stem cells are transplanted or injected into the brain, many issues can arise, including immunorejection and risk of tumors. Chen’s therapy avoids all of this by using the patient’s internal brain cells.

Attacking Alzheimer’s Disease and Stroke Alzheimer’s disease is a devastating neurodegenerative disorder affecting 44 million people worldwide. It has been over 100 years since Aloysius Alzheimer, a German doctor, first identified the disease, and there are still no effective therapies today to treat it.

In Vivo Inspiration In particular, after neurodegeneration, it is Chen was inspired by the work of Shinya Ya- difficult to regenerate new neurons in a brain afmanaka, whose research team in 2006 created fected by Alzheimer’s disease. But when Chen’s induced pluripotent stem cell (iPS) technology team expressed NeuroD1 in the glial cells inside using four transcription factors to change skin an aging mouse brain afflicted with Alzheimer’s cells into stem cells. Yamanaka was awarded disease, they were able to successfully regenerthe 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine ate many functional neurons, paving a way that for this work. “That really opened a new field for could lead to a new regenerative therapy for Alstem cell biology,” Chen said. zheimer’s patients.

Thinking of the possibilities that iPS techWhile Alzheimer’s disease affects the entire brain, one part “I’M FORTUNATE TO HAVE SO MANY PEOPLE AROUND of the brain that deals with memoME THAT HAVE HELPED ME AND SUPPORTED ME. I’VE ry, the hippocamLIVED A VERY GOOD LIFE SO FAR, AND I’M GOING TO pus, is particularly vulnerable to AlUSE THE REST OF MY LIFE TO HELP OTHER PEOPLE.” zheimer’s disease.

The hippocampus nology could bring to his research, Chen took a can suffer from a neuronal circuit breakdown sabbatical to study with Fred Gage, the world’s during Alzheimer’s disease, causing memory leading neural stem cell biologist, at the Salk to be lost. When Chen’s lab tested injecting Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Cali- NeuroD1 into an affected hippocampus, they fornia. Gage discovered that the mammalian achieved a surprising result: “We can reboot brain can generate some new neurons in adult- the neuronal circuit in the hippocampus,” Chen hood, disproving a long-held notion that the hu- said. man brain is unable to generate neurons after Alzheimer’s disease most commonly affects childhood. senior citizens and strips them of their ability to When he returned to Penn State after the recall memories or recognize loved ones. Chen’s sabbatical, Chen was full of ideas, including the technology might be able to lessen these effects. ones that would set his research path: “What “I’d like to help those senior patients have a betcan iPS or a similar technology do for patients ter quality of life,” said Chen. “It’s not just that suffering from brain disorders like Alzheimer’s? you live, it’s how you live.”

Can we do this cell reprogramming inside the In addition to Alzheimer’s disease, Chen’s lab brain in vivo instead of in Petri dishes in vitro?” had another breakthrough in this research that SCIENCE JOURNAL June 2015

7

Feature Story could help patients who have suffered a stroke.

Stroke is a serious brain trauma that can cause severe brain damage. In the United States, more than 140,000 people die from stroke each year.

When tested on mouse models, the injection of NeuroD1 into a brain affected by stroke can effectively fight the brain damage by keeping the cerebral cortex relatively intact. This is particularly encouraging to Chen, whose father-inlaw recently suffered a sudden stroke, making the search for a treatment all the more real for him: “I told my father-in-law we have this very exciting new technology that could help stroke patients in the future.”

that can be taken by patients suffering from brain disorders.

From the Lab to the Bedside The mission to create a therapy starts with some basic science thinking. “How are you going to change the genetic or epigenetic properties of one cell into another cell? It’s basic science. When we do this translational work, we actually find a lot of basic science questions,” Chen said.

This basic science approach to his translational work is very important to Chen: “I’m not going to tell people ‘everything is great, but I don’t understand the mechanism yet.’ Instead, we are investigating the molecular and cellular mechanisms behind the glia-to-neuron conversion process. Such molecular and cellular understanding is critical for us to design a truly useful therapy for individual patients suffering from different brain disorders.”

For Chen, it’s that combination of the basic re-

Creating a Patient Drug Therapy In addition to mouse brain data, Chen’s team also successfully converted human glial cells in cell culture into functional neurons, making testing his new technology in human clinical trials a real possibility. Chen is now developing both gene and drug therapies to convert reactive glial cells into functional neurons “THE EBERLY COLLEGE OF SCIENCE IS VERY for brain repair.

“The ultimate goal of our reSUPPORTIVE OF PROFESSORS TRANSLATING search is to develop a drug that THEIR WORK TO BENEFIT SOCIETY.” can be taken by patients on a daily basis to regenerate functional neurons in their brain,” Chen said. Currently, search and practical application that can really the Chen lab has successfully worked out a for- advance the scientific world and its impact on mula using chemically synthesized compounds society: “The Eberly College of Science is very to change human glial cells into functional supportive of professors translating their work neurons in a Petri dish. “This proof-of-principle to benefit society.”

Chen is working with the college’s intellectustudy suggests that it is possible to use a purely chemical approach to regenerate functional neu- al property and technology transfer team, led by Associate Dean of Research and Innovation Anrons for brain repair.”

“Those human neurons reprogrammed from drew Stephenson, to help him take the necglial cells can survive for a long time in an in- essary steps to effectively develop his research cubator, and show robust functional properties,” into a working treatment for brain repair.

“Translational research is both a challenge said Chen. This is good news for the end result Chen seeks from this new technology—a tablet and an opportunity that the Eberly College of 8

Penn State Eberly College of Science

Person-to-person: Ziyuan Guo

Ziyuan Guo, a fifth-year

using cell cultures, mouse models, and patient cell

graduate student in Gong

models.

Chen’s lab, is a coauthor on the lab’s first paper on in

He really enjoys learning electrophysiology in the Chen

vivo reprogramming using

lab. “I think it is a powerful and amazing technique

NeuroD1. After coming to

that I can patch a single cell and record its every

Penn State to join the Cell

electrophysiological property.”

and Developmental Biology graduate program in 2010, Guo rotated in two labs

Chen’s mentorship has been valuable to Guo. “We talk

before joining the Chen lab. He enjoys working in

about my future career quite often and he helps me to

the Chen lab, particularly because of their shared

create my own career plan. He also gives me a lot of

passions: “Dr. Chen and I share a lot of research

suggestions which allow me to realize my weaknesses

interests, including the possibility that we might be able

and try to turn them into strengths.”

to turn glial cells into neurons inside the brain in vivo,” Guo said.

Outside of the lab, Guo is an avid soccer player.

“Playing soccer really makes me ambitious and

In particular, Guo is interested in the direct conversion

creative.” He also likes collecting antiques, especially

from reactive glia to functional neurons after stab injury

Chinese antiques, a hobby he equates to scientific

and neurological disease. “Our studies demonstrate

research. “Every antique has its own story. You have to

the proof-of-concept that converting reactive glial cells

dig out the story and value by yourself.”

into functional neurons in injured or diseased brains may provide a potential new approach for brain repair,

After he graduates this year, Guo plans to seek a

including brains affected by stroke, spinal cord injury,

postdoctoral or faculty position at a research university.

glioma, and neurodegenerative disorders such as

“I hope to inspire more students to study science for

Alzheimer’s disease.” Guo is also interested in studying

human well-being.”

neurological or neuropsychiatric disorder mechanisms

SCIENCE JOURNAL June 2015

9

Science is now embracing,” said Stephenson.

“We have recently added an intellectual property/tech transfer liaison to the college who assists with the capture of IP generated within the college; our alumni Biotech Advisory Board provides invaluable feedback from an industry perspective to our inventors; and the college has used its limited resources to leverage University-wide, state, federal, foundation, and private support for translational research. Gong’s translational research has benefitted from these new initiatives.”

and many people he’s never met contacting him asking when clinical trials will start. “They all want to be the first patient to try this new technology.”

Because he’s received so much interest in his research, Chen has decided to raise funds to increase the pace of his work toward a therapy.

In March, he launched a 30-day USEED crowdfunding campaign, raising $45,000 from the public as a first step toward his goal of being able to reach patients faster.

He’s also expanding his research to include spinal cord injury. In April, he added Hedong The Campaign for Brain Repair Li, a senior scientist specializing in spinal cord When you conduct research related to debilitat- research, to his lab as an assistant professor ing medical conditions, you always want to get a and research associate to lead a new group on solution to the public as quickly as possible. No spinal cord repair using the Chen lab’s in vivo one understands this better than Chen, who in reprogramming technology. addition to having friends and family members It’s clear that many people will be closely with brain disorders, has received calls and watching Chen’s work with the hope that he emails from patients around the world who have does create a breakthrough therapy using in heard about his research and are ready to sign vivo reprogramming techniques. In recent up for his clinical trials, even though they may months, Chen has become a popular speaker be years away. and sought-after symposium chair in the field of In particular, Chen can’t stop thinking about in vivo reprogramming for brain repair, leading and contributing to important discus“IF WE CAN REVERSE THE DAMAGE IN sions about the future of this work.

“I’m trying to promote and keep leadTHE BRAIN, I HOPE WE COULD HELP THE ing the field until we find a therapy to LITTLE GIRL LIVE A NORMAL LIFE...” benefit human beings,” he said.

That leadership doesn’t go una mother who has called him about her daugh- noticed. “A well-kept secret is that the Eberly ter’s poor quality of life due to early brain dam- College of Science has developed a world-class age. The eight-year-old girl was screaming on group of faculty in molecular neurosciences over the other end of the phone during the call, which the past several years. Among this group, Dr. made Chen heartbroken. “If we can reverse the Gong Chen has emerged as one of the leaders,” damage in the brain, I hope we could help the said Eberly College of Science Interim Dean little girl live a normal life,” Chen said.

Douglas Cavener.

Chen knows he will be able to find volunteer Cavener is very familiar with Chen’s work patients for his clinical trials when he gets to and its potential impact, as Cavener most rethat point. He’s had friends, family members, cently served the college as head of the Depart10

Penn State Eberly College of Science

THE CHEN LAB SPRING 2015 Top From left: Alice Cai, Fan Wang, Lei Zhang, Ningxin Ma, Artemis Zhu, Susan Huang, Matt Keefe, Ziyuan Guo Middle from left: Brendan Puls, Zifei Pei, Yuchen Chen, Justine Zhang, Grace Lee, Hana Yeh, Julie Kim, Dongyun Jiang, Yi Hu, Yuting Bai Bottom from left: Gong Chen, Emma Yellin, Yue Wang, Jiuchao Yin, Xin Wang

ment of Biology. “His newest work on stimulating the conversion of glial support cells to fully functional neurons holds considerable promise for the development of novel strategies to treat brain injury and disease.”

A quote by Winston Churchill in Chen’s email signature perfectly describes his approach to his work in brain repair: “The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

SCIENCE JOURNAL June 2015

Chen will keep working toward his goal of making his technology into a medicine that patients could take to regenerate neurons in their brains.

While the road ahead to clinical trials and a real patient drug therapy might be long, Chen is in it for the long haul. He will continue to forge ahead, no matter how long it takes.

“My whole life will now be devoted to this,” he said.

11

Feature Story

Star Sear

By Whittney Gould Artwork by Karen Amato

Assistant Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics Jason Wright may spend his days in his office in Davey Laboratory, but the subject of his research JASON WRIGHT takes place in the sky, with stars, exoplanets, and the planetary systems in which they exist.

Wright’s astronomy research involves searches for exoplanets and habitable worlds, investigating clusters of stars,

12

and even solving mysteries about the moon.

Searching for Exoplanets Exoplanets are planets outside of our solar system that orbit a star other than our sun, with habitable worlds having the characteristics necessary to develop and sustain life. To search for exoplanets, Wright and his team use data from some of the largest telescopes in the world, including telescopes from the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii and the Hobby-Eberly Telescope in Texas, of which Penn State is a partner institution.

The method they use to find exoplanets is Penn State Eberly College of Science

rch

Jason Wright works with all things stellar—whether it be stars and exoplanets or bright young students and postdocs

called Doppler spectroscopy, or the “wobble method.” Exoplanets produce a gravitational pull on their star, causing the star to “wobble” as it orbits. Wright and his team use data from the telescopes to measure the resulting radial velocity of a star via the Doppler shift. One object they search for is the “Jupiter analog”: an exoplanet with a similar mass and orbit to Jupiter in our solar system.

“Using this method, we can determine which stars are likely to have planets like Earth,” he said. “We can also find the Jupiter analogs orbiting stars already discovered to have Earthsized planets by NASA's Kepler spacecraft.”

SCIENCE JOURNAL June 2015

Searching for Jupiter analogs is an important step in the search to find Earthlike planets. “We can’t find things like the Earth yet, but we are starting to find things like Jupiter, and that’s a game of patience, because Jupiter takes twelve years to go around the sun,” Wright said.

The data collected as a result of this research can be viewed at exoplanets.org, a site updated

by Wright’s undergraduate researchers.

Wright working at Penn State in this field is fitting—not only were exoplanets first discovered in 1992 by Alexander Wolszczan, Evan Pugh Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State, but the Department 13

Feature Story of Astronomy and Astrophysics also houses the Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, a group of researchers at Penn State with the same research interests and passions, of which Wright is a member.

Using Heat to Find Intelligent Life Finding Earthlike planets is a step to finding habitable worlds. Another project Wright is working on is a search that goes beyond planets and star systems to search for intelligent life in the universe, funded by the John Templeton Foundation. The project, which is a form of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), uses heat detection as a method for finding intelligent life.

Why heat? Because everything that uses energy generates heat, from our own bodies to our sophisticated electronic devices. “If there are alien civilizations out there, they are using a lot of energy, and they have to be a little bit warmer than their environment,” Wright said.

And it doesn’t matter what energy that heat is being used for, as the general creation of heat is the important part: “Without guessing how they might use energy, how they might collect it, what they might do with it, just saying they are using it and it’s warm, you could go looking for anomalously warm objects.”

While searching for intelligent life in the universe is not a new idea, the information available to perform the task hasn’t always been right for the project. While Wright was a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, he was interested in this research, but at the time, the available all-sky surveys didn’t contain the right data. Then, years later, a friend of Wright’s came to Penn State to give a talk and told Wright about a new sky survey done by the NASA Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite. “It looked at the sky 14

at exactly the right wavelength, and it did a full survey. And when he was talking about it, he was talking about detecting stars that were body-heat temperature, and they found one. So it’s like a warm cup of tea, the heat of the star.

That’s basically what you’re looking for.”

Searching for intelligent life in the universe is a quest so complex that you could spend your life’s work investigating it. Wright considers the search a worthy endeavor because of how much knowledge a single find could potentially bring to light: “SETI’s a long shot, but it answers a lot of questions all at once.”

Wright’s reinvigoration of his SETI research wasn’t the only old research interest of his that has been recently revived. Wright had worked on a project investigating a long-forgotten cluster of stars, Ruprecht 147, while he was a postdoc at Cornell. He and an undergraduate there, Angie Wolfgang, had worked on a paper about the star cluster but didn’t finish it.

After Jason Curtis, a graduate student in Wright’s lab, came to Penn State, he and Wright discussed possible research projects for Curtis to work on. Since Curtis had an interest in stars rather than exoplanets, Wright suggested continuing his previous research on Ruprecht 147.

“It’s in the catalogs, but no one paid any attention to it. Most people thought it was an asterism—just a random collection of stars in the sky—but we showed that it was real,” said Wright.

Showing the cluster was real has significance because of the proximity of the cluster: “It’s only about 1,000 light years away, which is close as astronomical objects go. And the stars are almost as old as the sun. We can actually study the sun-like stars in this cluster—they aren’t so faint that it requires a huge effort with a giant telescope.”

Penn State Eberly College of Science

Curtis finished the paper Wright and Wolfgang had started writing about the star cluster while at Cornell and had it published in The Astronomical Journal, but he didn’t stop there. Curtis continued the research and has made the work his doctoral thesis, presenting the topic at conferences many times.

Stellar Support Including Curtis, Wright has a team of bright young stars to help him conduct his research.

Students and postdocs in his lab have garnered many accolades, from winning prestigious fellowships and securing their own funding to effectively communicating their research at industry conferences or during filming for a science TV show.

For lab meetings and discussions, Wright likes to focus on topics outside of the group’s research, starting discussions about effective communication, grantsmanship and how to successfully obtain funding, networking, and collaboration.

Wright entered his postdoctoral fellowship period very naïve about funding and had to learn a lot very quickly to become a productive grant writer. He tries to teach his current students and postdocs as much as he can about obtaining funding for their projects so they’ll be better prepared in their next positions. “I encourage all of my students to apply for funding, for the experience.”

Wright lab member and Hubble Fellow Fabienne Bastien is a great example. Bastien has three years of funding under her fellowship that allow her to work on projects of her choosing.

Still, she applied for funding with Wright’s help for an additional project she is interested in that will fund a graduate student for two years.

Another postdoctoral scholar in Wright’s lab, Ming Zhao, was awarded a grant large SCIENCE JOURNAL June 2015

enough to support himself for over two years, which earned him a change of status from a postdoctoral researcher to a research associate in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Zhao’s grant also supports a student to help him with his research.

Networking and collaboration are also important skills Wright works with his lab members to develop. “Science is a social endeavor,” said Wright. “No one is thinking hard alone in a bare room anymore. We need observers, experimentalists, instrument builders to build the instruments that we use, and theorists and thinkers that come up with big ideas. Plus, whatever kind of scientist you are, if you’re stuck in your own head, you can often get way off track. You need to bounce your ideas off others.”

Wright’s graduate student Sharon Xuesong Wang has benefited from this approach to scientific collaboration: “Whenever we go to conferences, he introduces me to his colleagues, friends, and collaborators who work on similar projects. He will also tell them what I do and how that might be of use or interest to their own research. That’s how I got to know two of the most prominent figures in our field, Professor John Johnson at Harvard and Professor Debra Fischer at Yale. I am working on great projects in collaboration with them now.”

“You need to make sure that your group is plugged in to the broader network in your field,” Wright said.

Before Bastien came to Penn State, she had collaborated with Wright. As part of the California Planet Search, Wright had access to some proprietary data that was central to a project Bastien was working on. “Even though I was not a part of the group at the time, he helped to put me in contact with other key members of the California Planet Search, thereby widening 15

Feature Story People to People: Wright Lab Stars

Sharon Xuesong Wang, a graduate studen in Wright's lab, won a prestigious $90,000 NASA Fellowship. She

Students and postdocs in the Wright lab have obtained

studies the radial velocity detection of exoplanets

well over $800,000 in grant money to support their

and is improving the measurement precision of the

research interests. “They wrote the proposals,” Wright

Hobby-Eberly Telescope to enable it to find lower-mass

said. “I just submitted them and administrate them as

exoplanets.

PI. My group members are awesome and I try to give them the guidance and room they need to be stars.”

Jason Curtis, a graduate student in the Wright lab, won

Here are some accomplishment highlights of members

a NSF Graduate Fellowship and wrote a successful

of the Wright group:

$120,000 NSF proposal to fund himself and an undergraduate to study Ruprecht 147, a previously

Fabienne Bastien, a Hubble postdoctoral fellow in

unappreciated cluster of stars.

Wright’s lab, wrote a successful $150,000 NASA grant to fund a graduate student for two years. She studies how

Arpita Roy, a graduate student who worked with Wright

stars subtly twinkle, which unexpectedly reveals how

on lunar research, had that research garner a lot of

massive they are.

press, including from The New York Times and Discover magazine, where her research was listed twice in the

Ming Zhao, who was a postdoc in Wright’s lab, wrote

Top 100 Science Discoveries of 2014. The moon research

a successful $350,000 NASA grant to fund himself and

will also be featured in an upcoming episode of the

part of a student, and has also won Hubble Space

science TV show “How the Universe Works,” which will

Telescope time. As a result of this grant, Zhao is now a

air during the new season of the show in the fall.

research associate in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics. He studies the composition of the atmospheres of planets orbiting other stars, and routinely makes some of the most precise measurements of stellar brightnesses ever made from the ground.

WRIGHT WITH THE STARS OF HIS LAB. Top from left: Jason Curtis, Arpita Roy, Ming Zhao. Bottom from left: Sharon Xuesong Wang, Jason Wright, Fabienne Bastien.

16

Penn State Eberly College of Science

my network. Even now, when I brainstorm ideas with him, he is quick to suggest potential collaborators and to offer to provide letters of introduction.”

Being able to effectively communicate your science is an important skill, too. “You need to be able to talk about your work to a specialist, a nonspecialist in another field, the public.

You want people to be excited about it, to be interested in it,” said Wright.

Graduate student Arpita Roy, who worked with Wright on lunar science research, understands this concept well. The moon research she worked on with Wright received a lot of press, resulting in coverage in The New York Times and an opportunity for Roy and Wright to be filmed for an episode of the popular science TV show “How the Universe Works.” The episode is projected to air during the new season of the show in the fall. Watching Wright in action helped Roy: “I've become a better science communicator from watching him present his work, whether in casual discussion or at a conference or before studio cameras.”

Wright says that universities are great places to help researchers develop and practice these skills: “Universities give students opportunities and experience giving talks about their research and observing talks from other experts,” he said.

Astronomy at Home Wright can trace his interest in astronomy to childhood. “As far back as I can remember, I was reading science books in school, even advanced books.” He can point to a single volume—a National Geographic book called Our Universe filled with “everything we knew about astronomy”—as his favorite to check out of his library during his childhood.

This experience might be why when he and his wife, fellow astronomer and lecturer in the SCIENCE JOURNAL June 2015

Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Julia Kregenow, saw a Girl Scouts poster at a bus stop in Oakland, California, that they were inspired to find a new way to introduce astronomical facts into popular culture. The poster was trying to convince more girls to pursue science using rewritten lyrics from the nursery rhyme “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” The lyrics of the original nursery rhyme emphasize not knowing what a star is, and the Girl Scout lyrics were catchy but inaccurate.

“It annoyed us as astronomers to read and sing these,” said Wright. So Kregenow began to think of new, more astronomically correct lyrics for the song that fit the meter of the music. The two would later sing Kregenow’s lyrics to their daughter while walking her to school, and Kregenow kept coming up with new verses until they had a full song to sing.

They then shared the lyrics to the full song on Wright’s family’s blog. After some time had passed, others discovered the lyrics there and the blog went viral. Now there are posts on Tumblr and YouTube videos of others singing the lyrics.

The song has a following online, but maybe its most important demographic, their daughter, has soured on Wright’s and Kregenow’s creation. “Once she went to school and learned the original version, she didn’t like our version anymore,” Kregenow said.

But not to fear—plenty of people out there have been inspired by Wright and Kregenow and their work, and many more can’t wait to see what they do next.

17

Cover Story 18

Penn State Eberly College of Science

in

SEQUENCE Integrating Bioinformatics, Personalized Medicine and Penn State University

Marylyn Ritchie analyzes healthcare data to find trends that could lead to a more personalized approach to medicine

By Carrie Lewis

Personalized medicine—giving the right patient the right drug at the right dose at the right time—has been a headline hyperbole since the announcement of sequencing the human genome in 2000. However, this requires an understanding of the genetic makeup, as well as medical and environmental history, of each individual. With the public unveiling of President Obama’s $215 million Precision Medicine Initiative at the end of January, it has gained new traction to become a reality. Nationally, President Obama’s four-step initiative includes recruiting a research cohort of over one million SCIENCE JOURNAL June 2015

volunteers and developing databases for the information collected. What you may not know is that a similar initiative is taking place locally, right in our own backyard in Pennsylvania.

Marylyn Ritchie, Paul Berg Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and director of the Center for Systems Genomics in the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences at Penn State, has recently taken on the additional role of founding director of the new Biomedical and Translational Informatics program at Geisinger Research. The appointment of Ritchie comes at a crucial time, as Geisinger is currently working on the MyCode Community Health Initiative, a project in which samples are being collected and sequenced from at least 100,000 patients over the next five years as part of a large-scale DNAsequencing project with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.

“The initial goal of the project was to have 50,000 patients, but the processing speed is currently at about 1,000 samples per week, so the number has increased,” said Ritchie. “The Regeneron Genetics Center has an in-house se19

Cover Story quencing facility with state-of-the-art facilities and top-notch researchers running them, so they’ve got the pipeline really optimized.” Participants in this study can enroll at Geisinger clinics and soon even online, and participation requires no extra blood draws, as samples for sequencing are taken from leftover blood from routine clinical care.

“Right now they’re doing whole exome sequencing, so they’re sequencing the coding regions and also running genome-wide genotyping arrays. This should capture around 90 percent of the common variation across the genome, all of the coding regions, and most of the regulatory regions,” said Ritchie. “They’ve talked about the potential of doing whole genome sequencing, but the costs are still high for that.” Although the exome is estimated to only comprise 1–2 percent of the genome, it is also predicted to contain 85 percent of recognized disease-causing mutations.

Through collaborations between Penn State and Geisinger Research, genomic data collected from the MyCode project will then be analyzed and linked to the patients’ health records in an effort to better understand the underlying genetic architecture and environmental basis of diseases. According to Ritchie, “All of the patients being sequenced have full electronic health records (EHR), so every visit to the doctor, any visit to the hospital, all of their lab variables, all of their medications, and any diagnoses they’re given are all in that EHR and available to do studies to link with the genomic data.”

Finding Participants So how do they get 100,000 people to volunteer for this project? What’s the incentive?

“From talking to the genetic counselors and the ethicists who are running the focus groups and meeting with patients, many of them want 20

ALTERNATIVE HYPOTHESIS OF COMPLEX-TRAIT AETIOLOGY. Hypothesis A (grey arrow) is the theory that variation is hierarchical, such that variation in DNA leads to variation in RNA and so on in a linear manner. Hypothesis B (black arrow) is the idea that it is the combination of variation across all possible omic levels in concert that leads to phenotype.

Credit: Reprinted with permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: Nature Reviews Genetics, copyright 2015

to participate because they want to help the community and learn more about what’s causing disease. It’s all very altruistic and good for the people. Geisinger treats a pretty geographically centered set—central and eastern Pennsylvania—so there’s definitely a sense of community,” said Ritchie.

In addition, patients will begin to learn clinically relevant information found through analyzing their DNA sequences. “Initially, and this was true of any genetics research, no results were ever returned to the patients. Historically, that has always been the way genetics research has happened,” said Ritchie. However, over the last five to ten years, genetic studies are now Penn State Eberly College of Science

including the option to have medically relevant information returned to patients on their consent forms. In order for this to happen, all of the sequencing needs to be redone in a Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA)certified lab, rather than coming directly from a research facility, because there are certain regulations to ensure quality laboratory testing. This process is being put into place for the MyCode project, so knowing one could get important information back has become an even bigger incentive to participate.

There are numerous ethical issues often discussed in terms of personalized medicine, including protecting patient privacy and autonomy. However, as these practices have become more common, laws have been put in place to protect patients, such as the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) of 2008.

GINA is a federal law that protects individuals from genetic discrimination in health insurance and employment. Another commonly raised issue in personalized medicine is the patient’s “right to know”—while some advocate that it’s a patient’s right to know what is found out about them through analyzing their DNA, others contend saying that they don’t want to know. This is why consent forms give patients the option of having information returned to them. Nonetheless, some proponents insist that it shouldn’t even be an option—if something is known about a patient that could affect him/her, then it is the physician or medical geneticist’s duty to tell the patient whether or not the patient wants to know. They argue that it is a similar situation in which a doctor tells a patient if he/she hears something unusual about the patient’s heart during a routine check-up. However, the difference is that any single variant is not deterministic of an outcome. The information currently being returned to patients is based on a list comSCIENCE JOURNAL June 2015

piled by the American College for Medical Genetics (ACMG), which includes 30–50 variants that are mostly rare and already being routinely tested. This list breaks sequence variations down into six interpretive categories to better standardize the reporting of results. “When a genetic counselor talks to a patient, it really is a case-by-case basis. The risk profile changes based on family history and one’s environment,” adds Ritchie.

Establishing a Relationship It was during Ritchie’s first year of graduate school that she became familiar with the field of bioinformatics and quickly realized she was more passionate about analyzing the data that came off of a DNA gel rather than being the one to load the sample. After completing her Ph.D. in Statistical Genetics at Vanderbilt University, she was hired there as an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics. In 2011, Ritchie joined the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Penn State as an associate professor as part of a large genomics and computational biology cluster hire, which brought more than 30 faculty members to multiple colleges across Penn State.

Shortly after joining Penn State, Ritchie met Dr. David Carey and Dr. David Ledbetter of Geisinger at an eMERGE meeting. eMERGE, the Electronic Medical Records and Genomics network, is an NIH-funded consortium of U.S. medical research institutions with the goal of bringing together researchers in genomics, statistics, ethics, informatics, and clinical medicine in order to develop, disseminate, and apply approaches to research that combine DNA biorepositories with electronic medical record systems for large-scale, high-throughput genetic research. Both Ritchie and Geisinger have grants through this network. Soon after meet21

Cover Story CATEGORIZATION OF META-DIMENSIONAL ANALYSIS. Meta-dimensional analysis can be divided into three categories. a | Concatenation-based integration involves combining data sets from different data types at the raw or processed data level before modelling and analysis. b | Transformation-based integration involves performing mapping or data transformation of the underlying data sets before analysis, and the modelling approach is applied at the level of transformed matrices. c | Model-based integration is the process of performing analysis on each data type independently, followed by integration of the resultant models to generate knowledge about the trait of interest. miRNA, microRNA; SNP, single-nucleotide polymorphism.

Credit: Reprinted with permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: Nature Reviews Genetics, copyright 2015

ing, she started collaborating with Geisinger— they provide the data and her lab analyzes it and collaborates with researchers at Geisinger to make interpretations and publish the work.

With this relationship already in place, as well as Ritchie’s extensive experience in genetic epidemiology, translational bioinformatics, and data integration, her position as director of the new Biomedical and Translational Informatics program at Geisinger fits quite nicely.

“I don’t view myself as an administrator who just does that to do it. I feel that this opportu22

nity feeds well into my research and this is the space that I work in—genome-phenome associations and developing methods to better analyze data and integrate data from different sources,” said Ritchie. Indeed, data integration is one of the major focuses of the Ritchie lab, as evidenced by one of their most recent publications in Nature Reviews Genetics (Ritchie, et al 2015).

The article reviews the methods used and the importance of combining multiple data types, from the genome, epigenome, transcriptome, proteome, metabolome, and phenome, in order Penn State Eberly College of Science

to better understand complex genetic traits.

One of these methods, the Analysis Tool for Heritable and Environmental Network Associations (ATHENA), was developed by the Ritchie Lab (Holzinger, et al Bioinformatics 2014) and has already been applied in a pilot study using ovarian cancer data to better understand the underlying tumorigenesis and progression in the disease, which can lead to better guidance for improved prognostic biomarkers and individualized therapies (Kim, et al BioData Mining 2013).

Expanding the Collaboration As a true scientist, Ritchie still thinks of the bigger picture and how she can now use her new position with Geisinger to build on what this collaboration has done for her, as well as what it can do for others at Penn State. “I thought doing this would give me greater access and more opportunity to do the research that I want to do and at the same time do the same for my colleagues. I think it’s great that I’m collaborating with them, but I have been for years. What I really want to figure out is how to get more people here at Penn State to collaborate with them. I think both sides would benefit quite a bit—it’s just a matter of determining the right mechanism to lessen the 80–90 miles between us,” said Ritchie. With over 60 faculty in Penn State’s Bioinformatics and Genomics intercollegiate graduate degree program, there are many individuals with statistical and computational backgrounds who could form a mutually beneficial relationship with Geisinger.

It isn’t only the faculty at Penn State who could benefit, either. Many faculty at Geisinger also have interests in teaching and mentoring, but they don’t have any graduate programs. “We have a lot of graduate students who would love the opportunity to interact with a nonprofit and SCIENCE JOURNAL June 2015

business entity that isn’t strictly academics. I think this is also an opportunity for students to see what it’s like in a medical center and be able to do something more related to medical or health data that they couldn’t exactly get on this campus alone,” said Ritchie. There are already three graduate students working in Ritchie’s lab who have been actively starting to talk about thesis projects using the data from the MyCode Project as well as programmers who are working with them to start putting the data together.

Ritchie’s desire to get into the field of personalized medicine was one she could pinpoint to a specific lecture by Dr. Dan Roden at Vanderbilt in 2000. “He was giving a lecture and showed a picture of Elvis Presley’s driver’s license and how on the back there’s a bar code. He said, ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing if some day all of our genetic information could be captured on that bar code, and when you go to the doctor or the pharmacy, they could just swipe your license and tell you what medications you should or shouldn’t take based on your genetic makeup. That’s where we’re headed in pharmacogenomics—we want to be able to do that.’ This was back when we didn’t have the genome sequenced yet, we couldn’t store data on anything that compressed, and we didn’t know that many genetic variants that specifically predicted drug response. But I heard that talk and I was like yes, I want to be able to do that! And I’m shocked when I think back to that and think about how far we’ve come in 15 years and that I’m actually doing it,” said Ritchie. Through her new position with Geisinger and the opportunities it will bring to Penn State, it’s likely that Ritchie will provide similar inspirational moments to get students involved in personalized medicine as well.

23

Research Briefs

Research in Action

By Whittney Gould

New Grant Helps Penn State Lead Efforts to Bring Next-Generation DNA Sequencing to Working Crime Laboratories

Penn State’s Forensic Science program is a partner on a new National Institute of Justice grant that will test DNA investigative tools that utilize next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology.

Penn State will work in conjunction with the Battelle Memorial Institute, the lead institution on the grant, and six other federal and local laboratories. As the sole university partner, Penn State will be performing evaluations of forensic investigative tools that will expand the capabilities of forensic DNA laboratories.

The more than $800,000 grant will test the feasibility of new instruments, laboratory materials, and software tools in the field of DNAbased forensic science. The study’s aim is to vet tools using next-generation sequencing technology and implement them into working crime laboratories.

Using next generation sequencing methods will expand and improve upon current methods used in working crime laboratories, said Jenifer Smith, Professor of Practice in the Depart24

ment of Forensic Science and Penn State’s lead investigator on this grant. “This exciting technology allows for the generation of DNA profiles that can be compared to known suspects/victims or profiles within state and federal databases while also exploiting new locations on the DNA where single base-pair differences may provide “investigative information” in cases where no suspects have been developed or discovered.”

With this grant, the partners hope to be able to get tools that use NGS into working crime laboratories to replace the current less informative forensic methods, which have been in use for the last fifteen years. The new technology will increase efficiency in forensic work, and could also help generate investigative leads and identify individuals with only traces of genetic evidence.

This grant will continue work that the Penn State Forensic Science program has done since its inception in 2005. “Penn State has led the evaluation and development of forensic technology,” said Mitchell Holland, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology and former director of the Penn State Forensic Science program.

Penn State Eberly College of Science

PML Consortium Grant Seeks to Identify How JC Virus Causes Fatal Brain Disease

A two-year grant from the PML Consortium awarded to scientists in the Eberly College of Science aims to unravel sequence variations within the JC virus genome that could case the development of a rare fatal brain disease.

JC virus, or John Cunningham polyomavirus, infects between 50 and 70 percent of the human population, most often during early childhood or adolescence. Infections are usually asymptomatic, with most people unaware they have the virus unless their immune system is compromised by a disease or disease treatment.

In recent years, biopharmaceutical companies have developed a class of highly effective “miracle drugs” for debilitating conditions like multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease, and rheumatoid arthritis. Unfortunately, an unanticipated side effect of these drugs has been the reactivation of JC virus in the patient, resulting in the appearance of the rare, fatal brain disease progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML).

Richard Frisque, professor of molecular viSCIENCE JOURNAL June 2015

rology and the lead investigator on the grant, is studying the connections between these treatments and the development of JC virus–induced PML: “We are investigating why this one particular disease caused by this one particular virus is suddenly being activated in patients receiving therapies for unrelated illnesses.”

In collaboration with Vivek Nerurkar’s lab at the University of Hawaii, Frisque will use the $314,000 grant to investigate three forms of sequence variation identified in the JC virus genome, which are hypothesized to contribute to the pathogenic potential of this human virus.

“Understanding the underlying mechanisms that lead a normally harmless virus to morph into an opportunistic pathogen capable of killing its host represents an initial step in combating PML.” Frisque, Nerurkar, and their teams are assessing whether the loss of immune surveillance induced by this new generation of “miracle drugs” influences the genetic change responsible for PML’s devastating consequences.

For more information on research in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, visit bmb.psu.edu.

25

College News Welcome Douglas Cavener, Interim Dean 2015 brought change to the Eberly College of Science leadership with Douglas Cavener, professor and head of biology in the Eberly College of Science, beginning his tenure as interim dean for the college in January.

Cavener has served as the head of the department of biology since 2000; since 2012, he’s also been adjunct professor of life sciences at the Nelson Mandela African Institute of Science and Technology in Tanzania.

In his research, Cavener is focused on the regulation of metabolic and neurological processes that are particularly prone to maladaptations that lead to diseases such as metabolic syndrome and neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. His research has direct biomedical implications for several human diseases, including diabetes, neurological disorders, cancer, osteoporosis, and growth defects.

From 1982 to 2000, Cavener taught molecular biology at Vanderbilt University as an assistant professor (1982–88), associate professor (1988–93) and professor (1993–2000). In 2014, he was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He’s a recipient of the Dobzhansky Prize from the International Society for the Study of Evolution.

He also serves on grant review panels for the American Cancer Society and National Institutes of Health, and has contributed or collabo26

rated on nearly 100 articles in publications such as Cell Metabolism, The Journal of Biological Chemistry, and Science. Cavener has trained more than 20 doctoral students, five master of science students and seven postdoctoral fellows.

Cavener received a bachelor of arts degree from Pasadena College in 1973, a master of science degree from Brown University in 1977, and a doctorate from the University of Georgia in 1980. He also completed postdoctoral training at Cornell University from 1980–82. —Tara Immel

Photo Credit: Patrick Mansell

Penn State Eberly College of Science

Planetarium Project Attracts Youngest Donor

In the fall of 2014, the campaign to fund the new planetarium as part of The Arboretum at Penn State’s Education Center expansion gained perhaps its most unexpected donor: elementary school student Clara Fretz.

When Clara was four years old, she decided she was going to be an astronomer. Now nine years old, she can remember the day she made her decision: “The first time I looked up at a planetarium dome, it was like oh my gosh, all of those stars were out there and I basically just went into a trance. From the moment I saw that, I knew I was going to be an astronomer.”

The Fretz family moved to Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, last year after living in the Midwest. In an effort to find fun and educational activities for her daughter, Clara’s mother Kimberly discovered AstroFest, a four-day festival run by the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics with educational activities for children that coincides with the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts. Because of Clara’s interest in astronomy, Kimberly thought Clara would enjoy the event.

“I loved looking through the telescope,” Clara said. She also was able to see a show at the current planetarium in Davey Laboratory. “It left an impression, clearly,” Kimberly said.

After AstroFest, Clara’s parents let her read posts from AstroFest’s Facebook page. “When we noticed the ‘New Planetarium’ tab on the AstroFest page, she was ecstatic!” Kimberly said.

Clara’s parents have always encouraged Clara to divide her allowance into “spend,” “save,” and SCIENCE JOURNAL June 2015

“share” categories. Clara wanted to give the new planetarium project more than her “share” category allowed, relayed Kimberly. “The $20 she wanted to give emptied out her 'share' and drew a little from her 'spend,' but $20 was the amount she decided on sharing and nothing less than $20 would do."

Why did Clara want to give to the new planetarium? “Well, it just seemed like a really, really, really worthy cause. Like more important than buying toys,” she said.

Clara is no stranger to charitable giving. “She never has birthday presents at her parties. She always donates them,” Kimberly said.

The Fretz family has a holiday tradition of buying gifts for refugee families, and Clara has recruited her Silver Spring Elementary class to join this tradition by holding a giftwrapping party where the children bring and wrap gifts for refugee families.

Because she was so inspired by the new planetarium project, Clara decided her ninth birthday would also be a philanthropic event. “At my birthday party this year, I collected money for the planetarium instead of getting gifts.”

Her efforts allowed her to raise an additional $238 for the planetarium.

“I think we need to work toward getting that planetarium,” said Clara. She thinks the kind of outreach and education that comes from a planetarium is very useful for astronomy research: “So we can go out there and possibly meet a new species. Think of the adventure. If you actually meet a new species, for the first time in the human race, that would be awesome.”

—Whittney Gould 27

College News

Climate & Diversity Corner 2014 Climate & Diversity Awards On Friday, January 16, 2015, members of the college community gathered to recognize three individuals who have made a positive impact on the college’s climate and diversity in the past year. The College Climate and Diversity Awards, sponsored by the Eberly College of Science Climate and Diversity Committee, is an annual ceremony held by the college to celebrate achievements that improve the climate and diversity of the college.

This year, the Climate and Diversity Committee chose three winners from 17 total nominations. The winners were Nate Brown, Lilith Antinori, and Stefanie Austin.

Nate Brown, professor of math, was nominated by his department colleague Diane Henderson for his various contributions to promote diversity in STEM fields. “Nate is a faculty member who for years has tirelessly and at his own cost promoted diversity and good climate at every opportunity,” Henderson said about Brown.

From working to empower staff members dealing with faculty bullying to facilitating a graduate student diversity workshop and working to bring a showing of the documentary “The Empowerment Project” to Penn State, Brown has championed climate and diversity in the Department of Mathematics. And when an undergraduate student came to Brown with an idea about creating a website titled “Everyday Sexism in STEM,” a safe place to post about sexism that occurs in STEM fields, Brown didn’t just encourage the student to proceed—he also offered to pay for the site with his own money, which he continues to do now, even after depart28

Lilith Antinori, Nate Brown, Interim Dean Doug Cavener, and Stefanie Austin

ment funding was offered.

The student who created the site “Everyday Sexism in STEM” was Lilith Antinori, who Brown nominated for a Climate and Diversity Award as a result of her efforts. The website can be accessed at stemfeminist.com, and “is a place where women in STEM fields and their male allies can give voice to the countless examples of sexism faced in the workplace,” said Brown. “Her work has remarkable potential to improve the quality of life for women in STEM fields, in so many ways, including providing validation, raising awareness of the variety and ubiquity of sexism, and hopefully even changing the male-centric culture in STEM.” The site has received submissions from all over the world and was covered in a Chronicle Vitae article titled “Science Isn’t the Problem; Scientists Are.” In that article, Antinori says that she started the site to address the “skepticism or silence that she received from peers when she described her own experiences of gender discrimination.” She hopes the site will show “how intractable and ubiquitous gender discrimination in STEM still is.”

Stefanie Austin, instructor in the Department of Statistics, was recognized for her efforts to revive the inactive Statistics Club and enhance the member experience. William Harkness, professor emeritus of statistics and the club’s faculty adviser, said, “In my 55+ years as a faculty member involved in student orgaPenn State Eberly College of Science

nizations, I have not seen anyone as effective in leading these groups as Stefanie.”

Since she started as a graduate student adviser to the club, Austin’s leadership and recruitment efforts have increased active club participation and more than doubled club membership, which now includes underrepresented and international students from a variety of majors related to statistics, including mathematics and computer science.

Austin created a team-oriented leadership group for the club and regularly plans career and networking events for the club, including the now-annual Career Exploration Day, a career fair for students interested in statistics careers.

This year’s event included networking sessions for students and speakers from Corning, Eastman Chemical, Minitab, and the U.S. Census Bureau. “Stefanie’s actions and initiatives have helped transform the club into a vibrant, welcoming community that provides resources for research, internship and job opportunities, networking, and community outreach,” said Austin’s nominator, Francesca Chiaromonte, professor of statistics. —Whittney Gould

Featured Postdoc: McGinty Wins Dale F. Frey Award for Breakthrough Scientists Robert McGinty, a Damon Runyon Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Song Tan, has been presented with the Damon Runyon Dale F. Frey Award for Breakthrough Scientists. McGinty is the first Penn State scientist

SCIENCE JOURNAL June 2015

to win this prestigious national career award.

The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation selects for this award a group of its postdoctoral fellows who have greatly exceeded expectations and show promise to be leaders in the field of cancer research. The award provides additional funding for innovative cancer research while accelerating the transition of the recipients to an independent research career.

McGinty's research focuses on understanding the structural biology of the regulation of gene expression. In a paper recently published in the journal Nature, McGinty and Tan described for the first time the atomic-scale structure of a regulatory protein in action, revealing how the enzyme binds to a nucleosome—a component of a chromosome—in order to influence gene expression. With financial support from the Award for Breakthrough Scientists, McGinty will continue his research to characterize the structures, in action, of other proteins that regulate gene expression. McGinty's work may provide insight into novel avenues for the development of cancer drugs because errors in the interactions between regulatory enzymes and the chromosome can lead to diverse cancers.

In 2012, as a member of the Tan lab, McGinty was awarded a Damon Runyon Fellowship. McGinty received his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Weill Cornell Medical College and Rockefeller University as a member of the Tri-Institutional M.D.-Ph.D. program that also includes the Sloan-Kettering Institute.

Since its founding in 1946, the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation has invested over $250 million in funding more than 3,400 young scientists, providing them with financial support for their research and career development. —Sam Sholtis

29

College News

Intellectual Property Focus: Research Leading to Practical Benefits for Society

To fully capitalize on the economic, educational, and societal benefits of the research enterprise, the college is increasing efforts to move our research from the lab bench to society. One of the major impediments faced by our researchers is the scarcity of funding sources for translating basic research into societal benefits. To assist with alleviating this problem, the college has partnered with the Penn State Research Foundation (PSRF) to jointly fund research aimed at moving early stage intellectual property (IP) toward commercialization. In the first year of this program, we were able to fund five of thirteen proposals with enough money to support either a grad student or a postdoc for one year and sufficient supplies to execute the proposed translational research. In addition, each successful proposal is reviewed by a proof of relevancy team from the Smeal College of Business, who performs a market analysis on the commercialization potential of the technology and assist, with the development of a product data sheet. In this issue, we focus on IP that formed the basis of one of our initial “Lab Bench to Commercialization” grants.

Mauricio Terrones is a professor of physics, chemistry, and materials science and engineering, and is also the director of the Penn State Center for 2-Dimensional and Layered Materials. Dr. Terrones’s research focuses on the theory, synthesis, and characterization of novel carbon nanomaterials. This includes 30

graphene oxide, which is made from graphite, a common material also found in pencil lead.

Dr. Terrones’s lab has engineered a simple and novel method to make thin graphene oxide films. The resulting material is revolutionary: transparent, flexible, lightweight, water dispersible, and extremely tough. The film may also be layered with other materials, like silver (Ag) nanowires, to add additional properties to the nanomaterial such as conductivity or microbial resistance. Strips of the film can then be easily wound into ultra-strong fibers. Resulting fibers can be knotted and woven in an almost limitless number of arrays, forming durable and specialized products including fabrics, coatings, and wires. Dr. Terrones’s lab invention represents an extremely useful method, which with further development and translation, has the potential to provide improved and economical alternatives to wide variety of currently available products.

—Andrew Stephenson, associate dean for research and graduate education Today’s materials need to be harder, better, lighter, stronger. Consumers are demanding lightweight clothing that keeps them warm while wicking away sweat and killing bacteria, and industry needs lightweight, inexpensive, strong multifunctional materials to enhance a variety of infrastructure needs.

Mauricio Terrones is working to create such materials from graphene, single atom-thick layers of the mineral graphite. Graphene layers are Penn State Eberly College of Science

New Hire for College’s Intellectual Property/Technology Transfer Office The Eberly College of Science recently hired Melissa Long as an intellectual property and technology transfer liaison.

As the intellectual property (IP) and technology transfer liaison for the college, Long will help to enable innovation and drive the translation of Eberly College of Science research. Within the college, she will work as a liaison to faculty and students, helping them to protect new ideas and navigate a path to successful licensing.

Long will also work as a liaison between the college and industry partners, helping to match company research and development needs with research capabilities available within the Eberly College of Science.

One of Long's goals is to develop an IP- and business-focused website for the college to help connect the college’s inventors and company partners to the tools they may need.

Long is an alumnus of Penn State’s Cell and Developmental Biology graduate program. Before taking this position, she worked with the Penn State Office of Technology Management as a marketing specialist.

If you are interested in working with Long, please email her at mkl137@psu.edu or call her at 814-867-6287.

SCIENCE JOURNAL June 2015

STRONG, STRETCHABLE FIBERS made of graphene oxide can be knotted like yarn. Credit: Torrones group

very thin but can be as strong as Kevlar and can be twisted into fibers to make fabrics, or layered with other materials for extra strength and functionality.

Terrones has created a continuous process to make graphene layers and threads from a paste of graphene oxide and water that dries into a film. While previous attempts to make graphene films have resulted in breakage and issues with storage, Terrones’s graphene oxide film can be dried and peeled without breaking and stored onto a roll.

This graphene film can also easily incorporate extra layers of functionality, with examples including creating functional coatings and resins for industrial uses or ultralight smart fabrics with antimicrobial properties or the ability to generate heat. Graphene fibers can also create thin, light carbon wires that are cheaper to produce and more effective than copper for a variety of uses.

Because Terrones’s graphene oxide film is so thin, so inexpensive to produce, and can be layered with a wide variety of functional materials, the possibilities for this technology are virtually limitless—smart fabrics, coatings, and nanowires are only the tip of the iceberg.

Because of this, Terrones and his team are open to developing functional graphene films for any use. The possibilities for revolutionizing many industries are seemingly endless.

—Whittney Gould

31

Department News Chemistry Ascend-500 Nuclear Magnetic Resonance System Installed Immediate scientific returns have been realized from the installation of an Ascend-500 Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) system in the Penn State NMR Facility, hosted in the Department of Chemistry. Assistant Professor Alex Radosevich is motivated by a practical need for new, efficient and environmentally friendly chemical processes. The Radosevich group has recently designed a phosphorus compound capable of preparing useful boron-containing intermediates for chemical synthesis. According to Radosevich, the success was possible because “the high spectral resolution and sensitivity achievable on the new Ascend-500 offer the capability to decipher the course of the reaction and posit new opportunities in catalysis.” This instrument was purchased with funds from the offices of the Provost and Vice President for Research, the Eberly College of Science, and the Department of Chemistry. The cross-disciplinary value of the Ascend-500 is demonstrated by the Lambert group, from the food science department in the College of Agricultural Sciences, who used it to characterize the structure of an important avocado-derived natural product. Not only does the Ascend-500 provide novel scientific capabilities, it also reduces Penn State’s dependence on nonrenewable resources, 32

Pictured are graduate student Sean McCarthy and Director, NMR Facility, Emmanuel Hatzakis.

increasing the sustainability of our research programs.

The breadth of research conducted in the Penn State NMR Facility depends on multiple recent investments. Six years ago, an ultra-high field 850 MHz spectrometer was installed that enables cutting-edge research into the biological function of proteins and the physics of diffusivity in nanoparticles. With funding from the same sources that financed the Ascend-500 and contributions from the Colleges of Agricultural Sciences, Engineering, and Earth and Mineral Sciences, the NMR facility will soon modernize its solid-state NMR capabilities, enabling Penn State to sustain its leadership in materials and environmental chemistry.

The Penn State NMR Facility is directed by Emmanuel Hatzakis (euc15@psu.edu), who can be contacted to discuss research opportunities or to schedule facility tours for the Penn State community. —Emmanuel Hatzakis and Scott A. Showalter

Penn State Eberly College of Science

Faculty Spotlight Faculty Awards and Honors Reka Albert, a professor of physics and biology, has been selected to receive the title of Distinguished Professor of Physics and Biology. Albert was honored with the title in recognition of her exceptional record of teaching, research, and service to the University community. The honor is designated by the Office of the President of Penn State based on the recommendations of colleagues and the dean of the Eberly College of Science.

Craig Cameron, Eberly Chair in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as an AAAS Fellow is an honor bestowed by peers upon members of the AAAS, the SCIENCE JOURNAL June 2015

world's largest general scientific society and the publisher of the journal Science.

Douglas Cavener, professor and head of biology, has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as an AAAS Fellow is an honor bestowed by peers upon members of the AAAS, the world's largest general scientific society and the publisher of the journal Science.

Ronald Gilliland, professor of practice in astronomy and astrophysics, is a member of a team of scientists that is being recognized with the 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. Gilliland and other members of the High-z Supernova Project are being recognized along with members of the Supernova Cosmology Project for demonstrating that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, rather than slowing as had long been assumed. The award, which

recognizes major insights into the deepest questions of the universe, includes a $3 million prize that will be split among members of the teams.

Michael Green, associate professor of chemistry, has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as an AAAS Fellow is an honor bestowed by peers upon members of the AAAS, the world's largest general scientific society and the publisher of the journal Science.

Donghui Jeong, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics, has been honored with the Outstanding Young Researcher Award from the Association of Korean Physicists in America. Given annually since 1994, the award recognizes young Korean physicists working in North America who have the potential for making creative and substantive advances in their subfield of physics and achieving profes33

Faculty Spotlight sional success as a physicist.

The award was presented during the Forum on International Physics reception at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society in March 2015.

Teh-hui Kao, Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as an AAAS Fellow is an honor bestowed by peers upon members of the AAAS, the world's largest general scientific society and the publisher of the journal Science.

Christine Keating, professor of chemistry, has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as an AAAS Fellow is an honor bestowed by peers upon members of the AAAS, the world's largest general scientific society and the publisher of the journal Science.

34

Runze Li, Distinguished Professor of Statistics, has been selected as the Verne M. Willaman Professor of Statistics.

The appointment, effective on December 1, 2014, is awarded by the Office of the President of the University, based on the recommendation of the dean of the Eberly College of Science, in recognition of Li's national and international reputation for excellence in research and teaching.

Dennis Lin, professor of statistics, has been selected to receive the title of Distinguished Professor of Statistics. Lin was honored with the title in recognition of his exceptional record of teaching, research, and service to the University community. The honor is designated by the Office of the President of Penn State based on the recommendations of colleagues and the dean of the Eberly College of Science.

Lin has also been selected to receive the William G. Hunter

Award from the Statistics Division of the American Society for Quality. Named in memory of the founding chair of the Statistics Division, the Hunter Award was established to promote and acknowledge outstanding career accomplishments in the broad field of applied statistics.

Additionally, Lin has been selected to receive the 2015 Shewhart Medal from the American Society for Quality.

Each year the Shewhart Medal committee selects a recipient who has demonstrated outstanding technical leadership in the field of modern quality control. Lin was selected for his leadership and innovation in the field of statistical quality improvement; for his collaborations with business, industry, government, and other disciplines; and for his technical contributions to data mining, experimental design, quality engineering, statistical process control, and reliability.

Mark Maroncelli, associate head for undergraduate education and professor of chemistry, has been selected to receive the

Penn State Eberly College of Science

title of Distinguished Professor of Chemistry. Maroncelli was honored with the title in recognition of his exceptional record of teaching, research, and service to the University community. The honor is designated by the Office of the President of Penn State based on the recommendations of colleagues and the dean of the Eberly College of Science.

Andrea Mastro, professor of microbiology and cell biology, has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as an AAAS Fellow is an honor bestowed by peers upon members of the AAAS, the world's largest general scientific society and the publisher of the journal Science.

B. Franklin Pugh, Evan Pugh Professor and Willaman Chair in Molecular Biology, has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

SCIENCE JOURNAL June 2015

(AAAS). Election as an AAAS Fellow is an honor bestowed by peers upon members of the AAAS, the world's largest general scientific society and the publisher of the journal Science.

Andrew Read, Evan Pugh Professor of Biology and Entomology, has been named the Eberly Professor in Biotechnology at Penn State. Read is the director of Penn State's Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics. He perhaps is best known for his research on how natural selection shapes the virulence of malaria and how the “unnatural” selection imposed by medicine shapes the evolution of disease-causing organisms.

Marylyn Ritchie, Paul Berg Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and director of the Center for Systems Genomics in the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, will lead a collaborative effort between Penn State and Geis-

inger Research to connect the genome data of 100,000 anonymous patients with their medical histories in order to identify the genetic and environmental basis of human disease. In recognition of Richie’s key role in this groundbreaking effort, she was named the founding director of the new Biomedical and Translational Informatics Program of Geisinger Research.

Katriona Shea, professor of biology, has been named the Alumni Professor in the Biological Sciences. Shea is an ecologist whose research in applied theoretical ecology involves the application of mathematical and computational methods to guide decisionmaking in population management, conservation efforts, control of invasive pests, and control of infectious diseases.

35

Faculty Spotlight

New Faculty Gerald Knizia, assistant professor of chemistry, is a theoretical chemist interested in finding simpler and better computational methods for characterizing the molecular processes in chemical reactions. His main focus is developing practical, real-world techniques for predicting chemical reaction mechanisms using machine learning and quantum mechanical methods.

Knizia also develops quantitative methods for understanding the motion of electrons in atoms and molecules, and is a main author of the widely used Molpro quantum chemistry package, which makes these methods available to the chemistry community.

Before joining the faculty at Penn State, Knizia was a junior group leader at the University of Stuttgart from 2013 to 2014, a postdoctoral scholar at Princeton University from 2012 to 2013, and a postdoctoral scholar at Cornell University from 2011 to 2012. He earned a doctoral degree in chemistry at the University of Stuttgart in 2010 and a master's degree in physics at Dresden University of Technology in 2006.

36

Kohta Murase, assistant professor of physics and of astronomy and astrophysics, focuses his research on theoretical astroparticle physics and astrophysics. His particular interest lies in the physics and astrophysics related to cosmic rays and the subatomic particles known as neutrinos, and the properties of dark matter.

Using neutrinos, gamma rays, cosmic rays, and gravitational waves as cosmic messengers, he aims to reveal the extreme astrophysical phenomena associated with black holes and neutron stars, such as gamma-ray bursts, supernovae, and active galactic nuclei. Using the universe as a natural laboratory, he also attempts to understand physical processes that are difficult to test here on earth. Murase was recently honored with the Young Scientist award from the Japanese Astronomical Society.

Before joining the faculty at Penn State, Murase was a member and Hubble Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study from 2012 to 2015. He was a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Center for Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics Senior Fellow at Ohio State University from 2010 to 2012.  He earned a doctoral degree in physics in 2010 and a master’s degree in physics in 2007 at Kyoto University, and a bachelor's degree in physics at the University of Tokyo in 2005.

Penn State Eberly College of Science

Student Spotlight DESMOND TUTU PRESENTS the 2014 International Children's Peace Prize to Neha Gupta.

Photo credit: FleishmanHillard

Undergraduate Student Awards and Honors Neha Gupta Wins 2014 International Children's Peace Prize There aren’t too many college freshmen in the world balancing a pre-medicine honors curriculum with running an international charity and being a spokesperson for Microsoft.

Neha Gupta is one of those rare students.

How does she do all of this? “I don’t sleep much,” she laughed, during her presentation for Penn State’s Research Unplugged lecture series. Gupta kicked off the series on March 19 as its first-ever undergraduate student speaker.

Gupta is eager to make the most of her time at Penn State even with her busy schedule. “The best part is the number of opportunities and resources that will prepare me to be a holistic healer. The professors are very knowledgeable and accessible to students. And I love my premed adviser who is a mentor to me.”

The freshman Schreyer scholar and PreMedicine major created her charity, Empower Orphans, when she was just nine years old. An annual trip to India to visit her grandparents always included a visit to a local orphanage. “It SCIENCE JOURNAL June 2015

was our way of giving back to the local community,” Gupta explained.

Gupta, even at a young age, realized how little the children in the orphanage had in comparison to her own upbringing: “By the time I was nine years old, I was able to comprehend the implications and realities of these children’s lives.

And I realized that although these children and I were the same age, and even of the same ethnicity, we lived completely different lives.”

Thus, Empower Orphans was born. Since its founding in 2005, Empower Orphans has helped more than 25,000 children, both in India and in the United States (near Gupta’s hometown of Yardley, Pennsylvania). While she was able to obtain some corporate donors, the majority of the charity’s more than $1.6 million raised has come from Gupta’s own efforts, by selling her toys or homemade wine charms or going door to door to raise money.

Through Empower Orphans, Gupta and the charity’s volunteers have been able to build five 37

Student Spotlight libraries, four computer centers, a science laboratory, and a sewing center for underprivileged children. This is in addition to providing free healthcare clinics, building a well to provide clean water, and purchasing numerous school supplies, household items, and clothing for these children.

While it may seem like an antiquated idea in the Western world, the sewing center in particular helps underprivileged children in India learn valuable skills that can help them earn a living. Gupta cites an example of a girl who learned to sew in the sewing center and now runs a successful tailoring business: “She now exclusively supports her entire family.”

Even better, to Gupta, is that this young woman is paying her good fortune forward by coming back to Empower Orphans as a volunteer because of her positive experience as a beneficiary. “She now mentors other young women on economic empowerment and how to seek control of their own destinies.”

The young woman’s story is a perfect example of the ripple effect, which is a philosophy Gupta lives by.

“Imagine throwing a pebble in a pond: the first ripple is small but then you watch in awe as the ripples become larger and larger. And just so is the impact of one person with an idea or mission that speaks to the heart.” Gupta spoke those words in her acceptance speech when she was awarded the International Children’s Peace Prize in November 2014 for her work with Empower Orphans.

Gupta was surprised they chose her for this

38

prestigious award that recognizes one youth humanitarian in the world every year: “I absolutely did not expect to win the highest of accolades for child advocacy. When you do something you love, the work itself is the reward. So naturally, I was shocked, humbled, and ecstatic.

Especially knowing that Malala Yousafzai won the award in 2013 made me feel privileged.”

Microsoft was so inspired by Gupta’s work and her commitment to inspire others to get involved that they chose her to be one of three students from around the country to be featured for their Collective Project. According to Microsoft, the Collective Project “is about harnessing the power of the many to bring great ideas to life.” Microsoft held a Collective Project “Ripple Effect” event on campus March 17 to highlight Gupta’s work and encourage others to give back.

“It was heartwarming to see clubs jump on board immediately and students be so involved in the event,” she said.

Gupta plans to take advantage of those vast opportunities and resources: “Students have been eager to join Empower Orphans, so I plan to start a student organization on campus. I also plan to study abroad in an underserved area, where I can gain hands-on experience and insight into global medicine.”

Through it all, she can count on the Penn State community to support her as she does it all. “It has been incredible to see support from Penn State students and staff. I feel blessed to have had such a positive response.”

—Whittney Gould

Penn State Eberly College of Science

Undergraduate Student Awards and Honors Valerie Lindner, Braddock Scholar: Unschooled, but Not Uneducated

Despite never having stepped foot in a formal school environment prior to taking college courses as a 14-yearold, Valerie Lindner, now a junior majoring in astronomy, mathematics, and physics, came to Penn State with nearly 80 college credits under her belt. How did this stellar science student manage to be so successful at a young age, despite no proper schooling?

Lindner’s unique upbringing helps explain. Born in Saudi Arabia, and raised outside of Scranton, Pennsylvania, Lindner did not have a typical childhood. Her father, an American physician, and mother, of Armenian-Lebanese descent, did not formally eduSCIENCE JOURNAL June 2015

cate their daughter. Linder was not enrolled in a traditional educational institution, nor was she homeschooled. Instead, she was a self-directed learner. “My parents did not set a curriculum for me or assign me homework of any sort.

The choice of whether and what to learn was wholly mine.

The only thing my parents did was provide me with unlimited access to a computer, the internet, video games, and books.

And they happily answered any questions I had, of course,” Lindner said.

For a lot of adolescents, not having to go to school would be a dream: they could have more time to play with toys and games, surf the Internet, and slack off. Not the case for Lindner, as she spent her time learning and acquiring skills: “I was always a voracious learner, and I was especially fascinated with science. I knew, from the start, that I was responsible for what I learned and who I would become. Since learning was something that I chose to do rather than something that was pushed on me, I developed a passion for knowledge and learning early on.”

Although Lindner did spend

a significant amount of time playing educational video games and accessing the Internet, she did not behave as one would expect. “One of the most unusual things about my upbringing is that, since I live in a rather isolated area of Pennsylvania, I essentially grew up on the Internet. And I did so at a time when it was making libraries of knowledge freely accessible to any curious person.

I spent hours every day reading about science and art and communicating with artists and writers on the Internet.”

At 14, Lindner decided to enroll in college courses at Keystone College, a local community college, instead of attending high school. “I began with biology and basic algebra.

I was immediately successful —in fact, I was the top student in every class, despite having never taken a class before in my life. After a few semesters, I started taking courses in chemistry, physics, calculus, history, and philosophy at the University of Scranton,” Linder said. She then spent a semester at the Penn State Wilkes-Barre campus and obtained her GED the summer before attending University Park campus.

39

Student Spotlight Deciding to attend Penn State was a careful choice for Lindner. She investigated Ivy League institutions alongside Penn State, and discovered that Penn State Science offered nearly identical opportunities for course offerings, faculty interests, and research areas.

“Since coming to Penn State, I have become more impressed every year by the strength and diversity of Penn State’s faculty across the board in physics, astronomy, mathematics, and

has met or exceeded all of my expectations, and to this day, I count coming here as one of the best decisions I have ever made.”

Even though she is technically classified as a junior, Lindner is already taking senior-level electives and graduate courses. Additionally, she has been working independently on her research interests in theoretical physics, specifically in relativity, quantum mechanics, and quantum gravity.

PENN STATE HAS MET OR EXCEEDED ALL OF MY EXPECTATIONS, AND TO THIS DAY, I COUNT COMING HERE AS ONE OF THE BEST DECISIONS I HAVE EVER MADE. every other field of science and engineering,” said Lindner.

Penn State also offered Lindner a prestigious Braddock Scholarship, which is available to outstanding highschool seniors who are interested in studying science. “The deal was sealed when I and the other potential Braddock Scholars were invited to tour Penn State, and I simply fell in love with the campus (and the weekly physics colloquia, complete with cookies). Penn State

40

“I am particularly interested in the role of space in general relativity (GR) and cosmology.

There are several phenomena in general relativity that can be mathematically formulated in terms of the motion of space itself, and this often results in intuitively satisfying explanations for the physical effects predicted by GR,” said Lindner.

While she is not working directly with a faculty member on her research, Lindner often

consults her professors for issues that she encounters. “My discussions with professors have definitely been the most rewarding part of studying at Penn State. I frequently stumble upon questions in physics or astronomy that I cannot find answers to in any textbook or paper, and very often I can get a satisfying answer—or at least learn a lot and get a nudge in the right direction— from a faculty member at Penn State.”

Outside of her academic interests, Lindner spends her free time drawing, painting, and writing science fiction. “I try to make my writing as scientifically plausible as possible, and in order to do so I’ve had to learn a lot about physics, chemistry, geology, engineering, and just about everything in the natural world. In summary, my interests in art, science fiction, and science mutually inspire one another.” She also devotes time to draw and discuss art with her younger sister.

After finishing her degrees at Penn State in 2016, Lindner plans to enroll in graduate school to obtain her Ph.D. in physics, and most likely pursue a career in academia.

—Tara Immel

Penn State Eberly College of Science

Undergraduate Student Awards and Honors 2015 President’s Freshman Award Jasper C. Acer Tyler I. Achuff Chinaemelum C. Akpunonu Matthew F. Allan Dev R. Amin Daniel J. Backer Chaitra Banala Taylor Baum Rebecca T. Beacham Austin C. Benner Aaron J. Bernstein Gregory Busey Shannon L. Deckert Jui Desai Kevin Diehl Andrew M. Doberstein John Einig Jinglin Feng Natalia F. Fuenzalida Nicholas L. Gilbert Alex T. Grigas Nicole Hatchard Kevin D. He

Zachary S. Hemler Puteri Ainaa S. Ibrahim Moyan Jia Chamaka A. Kalutota Matthew G. Keefe Kialani B. Killinger Samantha L. Kronenbitter David J. Kutz Malika M. Laurence Sally Lee Joseph A. Leone Jeffrey Lu Sarah M. Lucas Ella Lundquist Steven L. Makkar Sanjana S. Marikunte Carley N. Miller Mackenzie T. Moon Riddhi Patel Anjithaa Radakrishnan Gregory P. Reilly Yangming Ruan Taryn J. Ryan

Je Hong Ryu Malya Sahu Hanna L. Sandhu Yuefei Shen Deniz Siso Alexander B. Smith Jason M. Stanton Caroline H. Steingard Amrita Sukhavasi Isabella Sutton Mila A. Tamminga Christopher R. Tofani Michael W. Toomey Amanda R. Townson Kyle C. Trabocco Huyen N. Tran Alexandra N. Ulven Kirt E. Walters Alec A. Warden Jacqueline J. Warsaw Natalie L. Weller Paige M. Witkowski Zhenyuan Yuan

2015 President Sparks Award Nathan G. Arnett Sarah C. Bevilacqua Jinyi Hua Michelle Li

Turner J. Pecen Neil C. Shook Grant T. Smith Emily R. Sterbis

Shuhan Tian Jacob J. Wisser Jiawei Yang Siavash Zamani

Hankun Zhang

Lauren M. Ulsh Emily M. Very Anna K. Wing

Jacob J. Wisser Lingjuan Zeng

2015 Evan Pugh Scholar Award (Junior) Joshua T. Bram Mary Chen Grace Lee

Haley E. Randolph Nicholas W. Rizer Spencer O. Schrock

2015 Evan Pugh Scholar Award (Senior) Adeline R. Answine Tesia A. Chuderewicz Stephanie E. Crilly

Charles K. Levin Valerie M. Lindner Kelly J. McGill

SCIENCE JOURNAL June 2015

Michelle A. Pistner Anthony M. Roman Caleb T. Shervinskie

Brendan R. Wood

41

Student Spotlight

Undergraduate Student Awards and Honors Penn State Science Students Selected to Study at CERN

Stephanie Brown and Melissa Quinnan, undergraduate students in the Eberly College of Science and Schreyer Honors College, were selected for a prestigious undergraduate research fellowship at CERN this summer as part of the University of Michigan’s CERN Summer Undergraduate Research Experience program. Only 15 students from universities across the country were selected for the program. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is one of the world’s largest and most respected centers for scientific research.

“It’s a testament to our talented and hardworking students that they were chosen for this prestigious and highly selective program,” said Ruth Mendum, director of the University Fellowships Office. Since 2008, seven Penn State students have been accepted into the CERN research program, with this year being the second that two Penn State students were accepted in the same year.

Brown, a native of Lansing, Michigan and a freshman majoring in astronomy and astrophysics, is also a scholar in the Millennium Scholars Program, which provides outstanding students from all backgrounds with financial, academic, 42

and social support to help them prepare for advanced graduate work in science and engineering fields. Brown works as an undergraduate research assistant in the lab of Michael Eracleous, professor of astronomy and astrophysics, contributing to research on suspected binary black hole systems.

Quinnan is a junior studying physics from Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. Since she was a freshman at Penn State, Quinnan has worked in the lab of Doug Cowen, professor of physics and astronomy and astrophysics. Cowen’s lab uses the IceCube South Pole Neutrino Observatory to detect neutrinos. Neutrinos are subatomic particles lacking an electric charge that are capable of conveying astronomical information from the edge of the universe.

In addition to the CERN summer research program, Brown was also selected to participate in DAAD-RISE this summer. DAAD-RISE is a summer internship program pairing undergraduate students from the United States, Canada, and the UK studying biology, chemistry, physics, earth sciences and engineering with research lab experiences in Germany. Quinnan participated in the DAAD-RISE program last year, working at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology on the EDELWEISS dark matter search experiment.

When they graduate from Penn State, both Brown and Quinnan plan to attend graduate school. Brown envisions a career as a theoretical astrophysicist after attaining a Ph.D. in theoretical physics, while Quinnan plans to pursue a doctoral degree in particle physics.

—Whittney Gould

Penn State Eberly College of Science

Spring 2015 Student Marshal Peter Hohman of Erie, Pennsylvania was honored as the student marshal for the Eberly College of Science during Penn State University’s spring commencement ceremonies on Friday, May 8, 2015 on the University Park campus.

Hohman’s faculty escort for the commencement exercises was Eric Feigelson, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State.

Hohman graduated with a 3.99 grade point average and bachelor of science degrees in physics, in mathematics, and in astronomy and astrophysics. He was the recipient of a President’s Freshman Award in 2012, a Bert Elsbach Honors Scholarship in Physics in 2012 and 2014, and an Evan Pugh Scholar Award in 2014 and 2015.

While at Penn State, Hohman conducted research in Feigelson’s lab with graduate student Gabe Caceres using statistical models, which originally had been designed to model fluctuations in the economy, to describe variation in the brightness of stars that can indicate the presence of an orbiting planet. Hohman’s main contribution to the research, which used information collected by NASA’s Kepler Mission, was to investigate the effect of increasing the complexity of the statistical models on the strength of the signals from potential planets.

In addition to his academic achievements, Hohman was an active member of the Penn State Newman Club and the Penn State Astronomy Club. He was a writer and designer for Phroth, a student run humor magazine at Penn State. He is also a musician who composes, perSCIENCE JOURNAL June 2015

forms, and records music on his own and as a member of several bands. Hohman is a founding member of “The Selection Committee,” which he describes as “an organization dedicated to making brackets.”

“I was sincerely honored by my selection and felt surprised and grateful that my efforts to get good grades in college were not unnoticed,” said Hohman. “I know some of the past few years’ marshals and it is an honor to be in their company, just as it is an honor to represent Penn State in some small way.” The most important lesson he learned at Penn State was that “problem solving, just like life, is as much about knowing what you are doing as it is about knowing whose company to keep,” Hohman said, “namely, a trustworthy, supportive, diverse group of people who all bring something unique to the table and who are all mutually willing to help out wherever they can.”

Following graduation, Hohman plans to work as an actuarial analyst at Erie Insurance and to pursue certification as a full actuary. Additionally, Hohman is pursuing his goal of becoming a screenwriter and has written a script that he hopes to see produced. —Sam Sholtis 43

Student Spotlight

Undergraduate Scientists Forensic Science Students Visit U.S. Army Lab In January, four senior undergraduate Forensic Science students visited the U.S. Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center (ECBC) in Edgewood, Maryland to learn about career possibilities in chemical biological defense.

The visit was organized by senior Forensic Science major Trisha Tucholski with the help of one of her forensic science professors. “I organized this trip after a conversation about my interest in chemical defense with my professor Dr. Jenifer Smith.”

It turns out that Smith had a connection to the U.S. Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center, our country’s principal research and development resource for nonmedical chemical biological defense. Smith’s connection, a recent Penn State alumnus and former colleague of her husband’s who works at ECBC, was integral in making the visit happen for Tucholski and three other senior forensic science students with similar career interests.

All four of the students on the trip had expressed interest in forensic chemistry and continuing their education at the graduate level, but were all still exploring career options that could result from that path.

“Given that graduation is approaching and I

44

am still not sure what path I want to pursue, getting a feel for the opportunities that exist is very important, and this visit proved to be highly beneficial in that respect,” said Tawney Knecht, one of the students on the trip.

“All of us plan to attend grad school for either chemistry or forensic science, so it was wonderful to see what jobs are available for us at a government facility,” said Tucholski.

The students were very impressed by the facilities at ECBC: “I was in awe of the technology that was presented to us,” said Tucholski.

Knecht seconded her opinion: “The facilities themselves were, to say the least, extremely impressive.”

Also impressive was the support they received from the employees at ECBC. During the visit, they interacted with some employees who were Penn State Science alumni, including ECBC public affairs officer Amanda Dubbs, ’04 BMB, and research scientist Rod Fry, ’05g Chemistry, who coordinated their visit. “HonestPenn State Eberly College of Science

ly, working for the government in this capacity used to seem so unreachable, but after talking to some of the employees, working in this type of career seems like a very realistic goal,” said Knecht. “The employees were very eager to talk to us, assuring us that we were very hirable.”

In addition to that boost in confidence and inspiration, the ECBC employees also gave the students advice on graduate school pursuits: “The scientists also talked to us about different fellowship opportunities available for grad school.”

THON Adventures

The students left ECBC with much career inspiration. “This was a great opportunity to get a look inside a nontraditional laboratory position, and I am now strongly considering going down this path,” said Knecht.

For Tucholski, the visit substantiated what she had been planning already. “The visit confirmed my interest in chemical biological defense,” she said. “It was a thrill to tour the labs and speak with government scientists about career opportunities in forensic chemistry.”

—Whittney Gould

Science LionPride hosted a THON Adventures outreach event during THON weekend 2015. The THON children and their families conducted Harry Potter-themed experiments

using science, ranging from creating a Patronus and magic bubbles, performing levitation with PVC pipe wands, dissecting owl pellets, and using blacklight to light their very own Marauder's Maps. After the experiments, Shaver's Creek Environmental Center brought some real live owls from their owlery for the children to see.

SCIENCE JOURNAL June 2015

45

Student Spotlight

Above&Beyond Focus on Graduate Students

Physics Graduate Student and Academic Computing Fellow Wins Prestigious Research Award Physics graduate student and Penn State Academic Computing Fellow Mark DelloStritto has won a Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) award.

The SCGSR award is intended to prepare graduate students for science, technology, engineering, or mathematics careers in initiatives that are important to the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. The research award is allowing DelloStritto to pursue part of his Ph.D. research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in conjunction with Department of Energy laboratory scientist Ariel Chialvo.

As part of Jorge Sofo’s research group at Penn State, and in collaboration with James Kubicki in the Department of Geosciences, DelloStritto studies the structure and dynamics of aqueous interfaces that are very common in the Earth’s crust. These interfaces are important for erosion, agricultural productivity, and even the storage of radioactive waste.

“Water is a complex material, due to the pres46

ence of strong interactions between H2O molecules known as hydrogen bonds (H-bonds). Although these interactions are not as strong as the covalent bonds holding the molecule together, they are significantly stronger than most other types of intermolecular interactions. The presence of strong H-bonds in water make it a highly structured liquid and are key to understanding many of its more interesting properties,” said DelloStritto. “My objective is to use computational methods to simulate the behavior of these interfaces so that I may interpret experimental results and explain them in terms of microscopic molecular motions.”

Penn State’s Academic Computing Fellowship assists students who are developing new computational methods for solving problems within their discipline. DelloStritto does this by finding accurate electrostatic properties of molecules in large simulations in order to study dilute ionic solutions. One part of this is developing accurate and efficient charge partitioning schemes to find dipole moments of atoms and molecules in order to calculate effective polarizations of molecules.

Another part was carried out at Oak Ridge Penn State Eberly College of Science

National Laboratory, where DelloStritto brought like DelloStritto find that simulations can be his computing skills and aqueous interface re- just as helpful: “The same information the exsearch interests together in his work with Ar- perimentalists are collecting from the real sysiel Chialvo. DelloStritto spent three months at tems can be extracted from the simulations and ORNL working with Chialvo this spring as part compared. Once we reproduce their results, we of his Department of Energy Graduate Student can show where they are coming from, down to Research Award. the molecular scale.”

DelloStritto and Chialvo worked to develop In addition to the SCGSR award and the methods to efficiently calculate the interactions Academic Computing Fellowship, DelloStritto between the dipole moments of molecules in a has won a Duncan Graduate Fellowship and is simulation. The dipole moment describes how president of the Physics Graduate Student Asasymmetric the distribution of charge is in a sociation. molecule, and is important for how the molecule In the future, DelloStritto hopes that simulainteracts with laser light. The simulations they tions can effectively revolutionize research projused consist of a box of molecules repeated infi- ects like this one: “If we can build a simulation nitely in all directions, and so the interactions which accurately represents the real system must be summed over all molecules in the re- and reproduces the experimental data, we can peated cells. While at IF WE CAN BUILD A SIMULATION WHICH Oak Ridge, DelloStritto developed a method to efACCURATELY REPRESENTS THE REAL SYSTEM ficiently calculate these AND REPRODUCES THE EXPERIMENTAL DATA, sums, which are needed to find how the molecules WE CAN USE THE SIMULATION TO FIND OUT in a water and mineraloxide interface respond HOW THE INDIVIDUAL MOLECULES AND THEIR to the probing lasers INTERACTIONS GIVE RISE TO THE EXPERIMENTAL used in experiments.

DelloStritto’s research OBSERVATIONS. at ORNL is a continuation of Department of Energy–funded work use the simulation to find out how the individuin Sofo’s lab. That project, titled “Geochemical al molecules and their interactions give rise to Equilibria and Reaction Dynamics” and led by the experimental observations.”

David Wesolowski at ORNL, allowed DelloSWhen he is finished with his doctoral degree, tritto to study ionic and pH changes in quartz- DelloStritto would like to continue to conduct water interfaces. Very small concentrations of computational research with a focus on consalts like sodium chloride or magnesium chlo- densed systems, such as liquids and solids, as a ride, or changes in pH can significantly alter postdoctoral researcher at a research university this quartz-water interface, said DelloStritto, or national laboratory. —Whittney Gould but it’s not entirely clear how this happens.

Although experiments are standard to investigate this question, computational scientists SCIENCE JOURNAL June 2015

47

Student Spotlight

Samarth Lab Boasts Two Distinguished Graduate Fellowship Winners

Susan Kempinger and Eric Kamp

Distinguished Graduate Fellowships are prestigious awards for incoming students granted through the various colleges. Penn State currently has 39 named Distinguished Graduate Fellowships, and 26 of those are in the Eberly College of Science. Eric Kamp and Susan Kempinger, both second year Ph.D. students in physics, were the 2013 recipients of the Bert Elsbach Distinguished Graduate Fellowships in Physics. Kamp and Kempinger are both members of the Nitin Samarth lab, working in the field of optical physics.

Kamp received a bachelor of science degree in physics from the University of MinnesotaTwin Cities before starting his Ph.D. program.

However, he recalls his passion for physics beginning with his phenomenal teachers when he took his first classes in high school. Professors in classes at the University of Minnesota got him interested in topics like superconductivity and the combination of using hard science and fundamental science to do research with large, 48

real-world applications. After his experience as an undergraduate researcher in spin transport, he decided to continue on with a Ph.D. “I use nitrogen vacancies in the diamond lattice to do high-precision magnetometry. When you take a nitrogen atom and a lattice vacancy and you put them next to each other in diamond, they trap a single electron spin. Using a combination of light and microwaves, we can manipulate the spin state. Then, by watching how that spin interacts with local magnetic fields, we can study materials and other properties of the environment,” said Kamp. “The broader impact of this has two routes: quantum computing and what I’m doing, magnetometry. It’s completely biofriendly and biocompatible, so it has a lot of promise for biosensing. I’m using it to study the magnetic and spin properties of materials we develop in our lab.” A common example of a biosensor is a device that measures blood glucose.

Kempinger received a bachelor of science degree in physics from the University of NebrasPenn State Eberly College of Science

ka-Lincoln, but it wasn’t until her sophomore year at Nebraska when she took her first physics class. She started doing research soon after.

“I’ve always loved math, and I wanted to do something that was more applied. Physics gave me that mix of things I really enjoy,” said Kempinger.

“For my project, we study patterned magnetic thin films. Using advanced lithography techniques, we make tiny dots out of magnetic thin films and study this using optical techniques,” said Kempinger. “There are a few things that this is useful for, but the way we’ve approached it is from the artificial spin ice perspective. We take these films and pattern them into frustrated states of Ising-like spins so they only have spin up or spin down. We use this to try to model other physical spin systems that are harder to study, such as a single spin in a threedimensional lattice. We instead make a two-dimensional model with these Ising-like islands,

which allows us to study the same behavior but on a scale where we can actually see what’s going on.” Right now, Kempinger’s work focuses on making these models to study Ising-like physical systems that couldn’t be studied before. A long-term goal of this work is to be able to use the frustrated systems for high-density energy storage.

Both Kamp and Kempinger are grateful for receiving this award during their first year and both agree that it allowed them to focus on research earlier than their peers who had to also spend some of their time in teaching assistant positions. According to Kempinger, “This fellowship allowed me to work more closely with a senior graduate student on my project and become involved from the very beginning. The insight and guidance I received during that time from someone with more experience was invaluable.”

—Carrie Lewis

Synthesizing Depolymerizable Polymers and a Ph.D. Anthony DiLauro, a fifth year Ph.D. student in chemistry, was awarded the Materials Research Society (MRS) Graduate Student Award for a presentation on multifunctional polymeric and hybrid materials at the MRS Fall 2014 Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts. This award is intended to honor and encourage graduate students whose academic achievements and current materials research displays a high order of excellence and distinction.

DiLauro’s passion for chemistry began in high SCIENCE JOURNAL June 2015

school when he took his first chemistry class. He then went on to study chemistry at Boston University where his appreciation for the subject grew even more, particularly in organic chemistry, which he largely credits to his professors.

It wasn’t until DiLauro joined the lab of Scott Schaus, who actually taught one of his organic chemistry courses, as an undergraduate researcher that DiLauro decided to go to graduate school. “I felt at home there doing the work and found it very enjoyable,” said DiLauro.

DiLauro joined the lab of Scott Phillips at Penn State in 2010—he chose Penn State to pursue his Ph.D. because he made a good connection with the people in his lab, as well as 49

Student Spotlight with Dr. Phillips. In addition, he found the Department of Chemistry to be welcoming and positive.

As a graduate student, DiLauro works on multiple projects, but they all relate back to the topic of depolymerizable polymers. “We think about plastics (polymers) as being static entities: you have a styrofoam cup and we know that takes thousands of years to degrade. More recently, however, there’s been a development of biodegradable polymers, which accelerate the degradation process. A depolymerizable polymer is a polymer that is very dynamic in that it will quickly break down but not just randomly. Ideally, these polymers are stable under most conditions until they are exposed to a specific stimulus—chemical or enzymatic—which causes a depolymerization reaction to occur,” said DiLauro. DiLauro’s research has focused on how to design and synthesize these polymers to explore the trade off between having a polymer that should be stable under most conditions but does have the ability to quickly depolymerize.

This idea behind depolymerizable polymers isn’t a common trait—the Phillips lab, along with some other labs, have played an instrumental role in developing the field. But why are depolymerizable polymers so important? Central

50

applications include developing microcapsules that can release their contents when exposed to a specific chemical or other stimulus (i.e. drug delivery) or in waste management. “The goal is that when these polymers depolymerize, they would go back to monomers. You could then take that monomer and remake the polymers.

We could continuously recycle and not have to keep using raw materials,” said DiLauro. In addition, if these polymers were to get into the environment, they would quickly degrade into monomers and we wouldn’t have as much garbage. The key, however, is making sure those monomers aren’t toxic.

DiLauro has accepted a postdoctoral research position at Duke University that will begin in July of this year. This position is a perfect stepping stone for DiLauro’s long-term career goal, as he aims to become a professor and have his own lab so that he has the freedom to explore his own ideas. His experience as a teaching assistant in both undergraduate and graduate courses at Penn State and as a mentor to undergraduates in his lab helped to shape his passion for teaching. “I got involved in chemistry and research with the desire to help other people— in an academic position, I can take my passion and train younger chemists to do great things.”

—Carrie Lewis

Penn State Eberly College of Science

Alumni News

Four Alumni Honored with 2015 Outstanding Science Alumni Award at Alumni Society’s 40th Anniversary Event

On October 10, 2014, Penn State Science honored four alumni with the Outstanding Science Award during the 40th anniversary of the Eberly College of Science Alumni Society.

During a celebratory dinner including a champagne toast, Emeritus Dean Dan Larson celebrated that the society was charted in 1974 after William Van Pelt, 1948 B.S. Commercial Chemistry, and then Dean Thomas Wartik, organized a small group of alumni into an functional society with operational bylaws.

Since its inception, over 100 alumni have served the board whose mission it is to connect alumni to the college and its students. Over the years, the board developed the Careers in Science event, alumni and faculty awards, a student mentoring program, the Eberly College of Science Alumni Society Trustee Scholarship, the Alumni Board Enhancement Fund, and founded the student ambassador organization, the Science LionPride. Collectively, the Alumni Board has enriched the college with their own expertise in their current scientific fields.

Emeritus board members who attended the dinner include Lois Schaub, M.D. ’69 B.S. Microbiology, Hal O’Connor ’52 B.S. Physics, Jonathan Dranov M.D. ’65 B.S. P.M., John Italia, DMD. ’93 B.S. Biology, Anita Collins Ph.D. ’69 B.S. Zoology, and Patrick Walsh Ph.D., ’68 SCIENCE JOURNAL June 2015

B.S. Math, ’69 M.S. Math.

Receiving the Outstanding Science Alumni Award, the highest honor given at the collegelevel, were four alumni of outstanding merit: Eric Freed, ’85 B.S. Molecular and Cell Biology Ann Hornschemeier, ’99 M.S. Astronomy and Astrophysics; ’02 Ph.D. Astronomy and Astrophysics John W. Pierce, Jr., ’76 B.S. Biochemistry Kathryn Roeder, ’88 Ph.D. Statistics Eric Freed is the deputy director of the HIV Drug Resistance program (HIV DRP) in the National Cancer Institute's Center for Cancer Research. At the HIV DRP, Freed's research 51

Alumni News program focuses on understanding how HIV replicates and causes disease, with the goal of developing more effective strategies for treating HIV infections.

Freed joined the HIV DRP as senior investigator and head in 2003. His research there focuses on the molecular aspects of retroviral replication. He is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics and a member of the Virology program at the University of Maryland. Prior to joining the HIV DRP, Freed began his career at the National Institutes of Health as a staff fellow in the Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease in 1992, where he became senior investigator in 2002.

Freed was selected as a National Cancer Institute (NCI) Mentor of Merit for his excellence in mentoring and guiding the careers of trainees in cancer research in 2010 and was appointed to the NCI Senior Biomedical Council in 2011.

He serves on the editorial boards of numerous journals and is editor-in-chief of the open-access journal Viruses.

After graduating with a bachelor's degree in molecular and cell biology from Penn State in 1985, Freed earned a doctoral degree at the University of Wisconsin in 1990. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research at the University of Wisconsin. He currently serves on the Alumni Society Board.

Ann Hornschemeier is the chief scientist for the Physics of the Cosmos (PCOS) program at the National Aeronautics and Space Adminis52

tration (NASA). She is also an adjunct faculty member in the Henry Rowland Physics and Astronomy Department at Johns Hopkins University.

As chief scientist, Hornschemeier monitors progress in scientific research and technological development toward achieving the PCOS science objectives, which cover high-energy astrophysics and cosmology. She is responsible for interfacing with the astrophysics community and with NASA headquarters. She also works on future missions as a research scientist at NASA. She serves on the science working group for Astro-H, an X-ray astronomy satellite launching in 2015, and the NuSTAR mission, another space-based X-ray telescope launched in 2012.

Hornschemeier's research focuses on studies of X-ray emission resulting from star formation.

This work is carried out using surveys by spacebased X-ray, ultraviolet, and infrared observatories as well as ground-based telescopes. She has authored more than ninety publications in refereed journals and has mentored many students and postdoctoral researchers at NASA. Hornschemeier has been honored with the Annie Jump Cannon Prize from the American Astronomical Society in 2007, a NASA Science Exploration Directorate Fellowship in 2010, and the NASA Early Career Achievement Medal in 2012.

After earning a bachelor's degree in physics and mathematics at Drake University in 1997, Hornschemeier earned master's and doctoral degrees in astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State in 1999 and 2002, respectively.

John W. Pierce, Jr. is chief bioscientist at BP. He is responsible for developing strategies to help BP’s worldwide businesses gain maximum benefits from the application of biosciences.

Prior to joining BP in 2010, Pierce worked at DuPont from 1982 to 2010. He began as a rePenn State Eberly College of Science

search scientist in Central Research and Development and culminated his career at DuPont as vice president for DuPont Applied BioSciences and director of Biochemical Sciences & Engineering, where he had responsibility for DuPont's biotechnology research and development for the production of fuels, chemicals, and materials.

Throughout his career, Pierce has focused on the integration of biology with chemistry, engineering, and materials science to create biotechnological applications in agricultural chemistry, plant genetics, and industrial chemistry. He also works in public policy to increase public acceptance and governmental support of biotechnology. After graduating with a bachelor's degree in biochemistry from Penn State in 1976, Pierce earned a doctoral degree at Michigan State University in 1980 and did postdoctoral research at Cornell University and the University of Wisconsin.

Kathryn Roeder is a professor of statistics and computational biology at Carnegie Mellon University. Her work focuses on statistical genetics and the genetic basis of complex disease.

Her group has published extensively on methods for gene mapping and the genetics of autism.

Before joining the Department of Statistics at Carnegie Mellon, Roeder spent six years on the statistics faculty at Yale University, where she played a pivotal role in developing the foundations of DNA forensic inference. Prior to that, she was a research assistant for the Department of Wildlife Resources, living for a year in the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest.

Roeder has been honored with the National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award in 1992, the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS) Snedecor Award in 1995, the COPSS President's Award in 1997, the Andrew Carnegie Society Remember Your ProfesSCIENCE JOURNAL June 2015

sor Award in 2006, and the Janet L. Norwood Award in 2013. She also was named Pittsburgh Statistician of the Year by the Pittsburgh Chapter of the American Statistical Association in 1999.

Roeder has served as an associate editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association, Biometrics, and the American Journal of Human Genetics. She is an elected fellow of the American Statistical Association and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.

After earning a bachelor's degree in wildlife resources at the University of Idaho in 1982, Roeder earned a doctoral degree in statistics at Penn State in 1988.

About the Outstanding Science Award: The board of directors of the Eberly College of Science Alumni Society established this award to recognize alumni who have a record of significant professional achievements in their field and who are outstanding role models for students in the college. Nominations are accepted on a rolling basis at science.psu.edu/alumni/osa_ nomination. Deadline for the 2016 awards is February 16, 2016.

53

Alumni News

Honoring Daniel Larson An outpouring from alumni, friends, faculty, and staff to honor the college’s former dean, Daniel Larson, provides future opportunities for students to experience international travel as part of their education.

As the Eberly College of Science said farewell and best wishes to Daniel Larson last December, many wanted to thank and honor his 16 years of service as the dean of this college. In January, as he embarked on a new challenge in South America as founding chancellor at Yachay University, the first research university in Ecuador, gifts started arriving as a tribute to his many contributions to Penn State Science. Under his leadership, the college was transformed into a nationally and internationally ranked institution that is considered to be at the top of the Big 10, in the top 10 U.S. science colleges, and one of the top two public science colleges in the United States according to the comprehensive study done by the National Research Council.

An important professional goal for Larson and his wife, Tanya Furman, associate vice president/associate dean of undergraduate education at Penn State, is to provide more science students with international learning experiences. The Daniel J. Larson and Tanya Furman Larson International Travel Endowment in the Eberly College of Science will help accomplish this goal. It provides support for international student travel, with first preference to those traveling to developing countries. The generous donations from alumni, friends, faculty, and staff at this time have surpassed $50,000 and

54

will ensure this support will continue for generations to come. Based on previous requests, this fund will support several students’ international travel each year.

Currently, 135 science students—15 percent of our undergraduates—study abroad during their college experience. The two biggest reasons students cite for not studying abroad are the additional costs and the concern of not graduating on time. In 2013–2014, 110 science students applied for financial assistance to study abroad. To learn more about Penn State Science education abroad opportunities, visit science. psu.edu/cie/education-abroad.

Continued giving to support the Larson International Travel Endowment will allow even more science students to benefit from an international learning experience today and in the future. If you are interested in supporting the Larson International Travel Endowment, please email Brenda Lucas at bnl1@psu.edu or call 814-863-9763 for details on how to participate.

Penn State Eberly College of Science

Alumni Mentoring Program Dinner a Success “Last year I attended the mentoring dinner and it was a lovely evening and extremely helpful in identifying where I wanted to go with my future career. This program has easily been the most beneficial part of my advising at Penn State. I have praised the program and reached out to my fellow peers in order to be part of this mentoring program. I can’t thank you enough for putting this together.” —Student protégé 2013/14 Scientists have so many different motivating factors and careers open to them that it is not surprising that they have a hard time deciding which direction to go. Others have a passion for their chosen field from an early stage, but all these young people benefit enormously from having a mentor who has stood in their shoes and can share their experience, guide them through their decision-making, and set them on the path to success. This is what the Alumni Mentoring program is all about. Not only do the undergraduate students find guidance, support, and a special friend, but the alumni have a unique role in a student’s life, which allows them to reconnect with Penn State and the

SCIENCE JOURNAL June 2015

college and make a practical contribution once they are established in their own career.

There was a great turnout for the sixth annual dinner held at the Nittany Lion Inn for the Eberly College of Science Alumni Mentoring program. This year, the dinner was preceded by career talks by eight science alumni to a mixed group of graduate and undergraduate students, as well as postdoctoral scholars, and sparked some lively discussions and great interactions.

A total of 90 undergraduate students, their alumni mentors, and several staff attended the dinner—the best turnout in the six years the program has been running.

The program has expanded into all of the departments within the college. The next challenge for the program is to find undergraduate students interested in the diverse careers of all the alumni mentors and to increase the profile of the program so that it becomes an integral element open to all in the Eberly College of Science. For more information or to apply to the program, contact Mary Hudson at meh25@psu.edu. —Mary Hudson

55

Alumni News

Emeritus Professor Honored by Alum’s Gift Chemistry alumnus W. Edward Billups has endowed a fund in honor of his mentor Norm Deno, who taught chemistry at Penn State from 1950 until his retirement in 1980.

Billups, a professor of chemistry at Rice University in Houston, came to Penn State in 1968 after six years as a research chemist at Union Carbide. Having earned an undergraduate degree from Marshall University in his native West Virginia, he was looking for the best place to pursue a doctorate.

“It was Penn State or Princeton,” said Billups. “Penn State said I could do it in two years.

Princeton would have taken four. I never would have done it if it took four years.”

Deno recalls Billups as a very bright and successful student. “He saw how much time I spent in the lab,” Deno said, “more than the other faculty, and that impressed him, so he came to me and said, ‘I’m your man.’ I told him I didn’t have any more graduate fellowships or assistantships to offer, and he said, ‘I don’t care.’”

Billups finished his Ph.D. in 1970 and joined the Rice faculty as an assistant professor. He spent the rest of his career there, including a six-year stint as department chair. He has specialized in organic chemistry and especially carbon nanomaterials.

Deno, 94, enjoys retirement in his State College house surrounded by the flowers and plants that are his passion and specialty. He was always interested in horticulture, he said, and after retiring he applied the techniques of mechanistic chemistry to seed germination.

“The results were amazing!” he said. Over the last 30 years, he studied than 6,000 species and 56

described the seed germination process of each one, which he detailed in a book that has been distributed worldwide.

The Norm Deno Program Fund in Chemistry will support initiatives in the chemistry department as determined by the department chair.

Those interested in contributing to the fund may contact the development office in the Eberly College of Science. —Selden Smith

Join Us for the 3rd Annual All-Science Tailgate October 3, 2015 Penn State Nittany Lions vs. Army Black Knights 2 1/2 hours prior to kickoff time Picnic Pavilion Inside Medlar Field at Lubrano Park

Free of charge Gather your science friends and family, and join us for this informal event! Representatives from science departments and undergraduate organizations will be present.

Tickets A limited number of game tickets will be available. Details to reserve tickets in advance will be provided on a postcard sent to all science alumni this summer. Tickets must be reserved and paid for in advance and will be distributed on a first-come, first-serve basis.

For more information Contact the Science Alumni Relations Office at 814-863-3705 or bhc10@psu.edu.

Over 300 people joined us last year and we anticipate more this year—don't miss out! We Are.... Penn State Science!

Penn State Eberly College of Science

N OT A L L G E R M S A R E C R E AT E D E Q UA L .

“Resistance” Screening Event The Eberly College of Science hosted a screening of “Resistance,” a documentary on antibiotic resistance at the State Theatre on March 26. In total, over 400 alumni, students,

A

D O C U M E N TA R Y

BY

U J I

F I L M S

FREE SCREENING THURSDAY, MARCH 26, 7–9:30PM

at THE STATE THEATRE, STATE COLLEGE, PA

Hosted by the DEPARTMENT of BIOCHEMISTRY and MOLECULAR BIOLOGY CENTER for EVOLUTIONARY RISK ANALYSIS and MITIGATION

friends, and State College residents attended the “Resistance” screening.

Please join us for a panel discussion with

PENN STATE EXPERTS and the filmmaker MICHAEL GRAZIANO before the screening.

About RESISTANCE: Microscopic footage, harrowing personal stories, and expert insights propel the documentary "Resistance,” the story of antibiotic resistance.

Run time: 72min

Register at: www.resistancefilmpsu.org.

The event included a reception prior to the showing for special

Preregistration is suggested for admittance.

The event is intended for a general audience.

resistancethefilm.com | facebook.com/resistancethefilm

guests of the college, a public screening of the documentary, panel discussion, and question and answer session.

The discussion was moderated by Michael Mwangi, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, and questions were directed to the following panelists: Michael Graziano, filmmaker of “Resistance”; Kenneth Keiler, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology; Cindy Whitener, Penn State Hershey infectious diseases physician; and Sarah Ades, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology. Questions from the audience ranged from what actions the average citizen can take to stop antibiotic resistance, to misconceptions about antibiotics in agriculture.

The Eberly College of Science thanks all who participated in and attended this successful and engaging event!

SCIENCE JOURNAL June 2015

57

Alumni News

Alumni Photo Album On campus and around the country, from award dinners to receptions—alumni, students, faculty, and staff (and even the Nittany Lion!) come together to celebrate their love of science! Be on the lookout for upcoming events.

Check the calendar on the back cover, visit our website at science.psu.edu, or email Brenda Lucas at bnl1@psu. edu for the latest information. RECONNECT TODAY!

58

Penn State Eberly College of Science

We’d like to hear your comments and feedback.

Go to science.psu.edu/sciencejournal and use our feedback form.

CONNECT WITH US!

Want more Science Journal?

Check out science.psu.edu/sciencejournal for exclusive online content!

And while you’re there, tell us what YOU think about the Science Journal!

Questions? Comments?

Address Change? science.psu.edu Facebook.com/PennStateScience Twitter.com/PSUScience

Email sciencejournal@psu.edu or call 814-867-3388 (please leave a message with your name and updated address).

Linkedin.com (search Penn State Science)

Share Your News!

Penn State Science will feature the accomplishments of our alumni on the science alumni website. Sharing your success stories is a great way to network with fellow alums and show how science grads have made an impact on the community and world! Share your career experiences since graduation and let us know how Penn State Science prepared you for your career pathway.

Share with us at science.psu.edu/alumni/alumni-news or by email Barbie Collins, assistant director of alumni relations, at bhc10@psu.edu.

SCIENCE JOURNAL June 2015

59

Marketing Office 509 Thomas Building The Pennsylvania State University University Park, PA 16802-2112 814-867-3388 sciencejournal@psu.edu

Upcoming Events June 4-7 • Traditional Reunion Weekend, Science Brunch featuring Gong Chen’s exciting research on brain repair • Distinguished Alumni Induction October 3 • All-Science Tailgate, Penn State vs Army • Picnic Pavilion at Medlar Field Lubrano Park October 10 • Penn State Homecoming (opponent

Indiana Hoosiers) October 16–18 • Parents and Families Weekend October 21–22 • Alumni Fellow Dinner and Induction Ceremony October 23–24 • Alumni Board Meeting • Outstanding Alumni Awards Dinner • Science Student/Alumni Networking Events

For more information on any of the events listed above, visit science.psu.edu/alumni/events This publication is available in alternative media on request. The University is committed to equal access to programs, facilities, admission, and employment for all persons. It is the policy of the University to maintain an environment free of harassment and free of discrimination against any person because of age, race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, creed, service in the uniformed services (as defined in state and federal law), veteran status, sex, sexual orientation, marital or family status, pregnancy, pregnancy-related conditions, physical or mental disability, gender, perceived gender, gender identity, genetic information, or political ideas. Discriminatory conduct and harassment, as well as sexual misconduct and relationship violence, violates the dignity of individuals, impedes the realization of the University’s educational mission, and will not be tolerated. Direct all inquiries regarding the nondiscrimination policy to Dr. Kenneth Lehrman III, Vice Provost for Affirmative Action, Affirmative Action Office, The Pennsylvania State University, 328 Boucke Building, University Park, PA 16802-5901; Email: kfl2@psu.edu; Tel 814-863-0471. U.Ed. SCI 15-148.