From the Director

On August 24, 2018, we celebrated the end of the Department of Biology… because we became the School of Biological Sciences! You can read more about the new School on pg. 3.

Earlier, graduation held special meaning for us. Not only was it our last class from the department, it was the largest ever at 210, and the College of Science invited two members of our Biology family to speak at commencement. Randy Rassmussen PhD’98, CEO of Biofire Diagnostics and VP Molecular Biology for BioMérieux, was the keynote speaker, and Harrison Watters BS’17 delivered the student address that was both eloquent and inspirational.

We continue to have more majors than any other academic unit on campus, and gender parity in our student body is the best in the College: almost fifty-fifty! To improve the student experience, we have rolled out a new, full-year course for majors which includes hands-on lab experience for first-year undergrads (p. 13).

Over the past few years we have hired several new faculty, and in our inaugural year as a School we are poised to secure four more appointments in areas from structural biology to evolutionary

genetics. These searches are in full swing. Sadly, we also lost one of our esteemed colleagues, Tom Kursar, who with his wife Lissy have long conducted field research in the tropics (p. 7).

In this issue, we profile one of our esteemed alums, Ole Jensen BS’72, a successful oral and maxillofacial surgeon who just created an endowment to support undergraduate research in the School (p. 6-7). Contributing to an established endowment— or creating one in your own name at the School–are enduring ways to “pay it forward” to the next generation of students and researchers. It also constitutes a lasting legacy of your career.

Among other articles in this issue you can read about forest ecologist Bill Anderegg recipient of a prestigious Packard Fellowship Award (pg. 8–9) as well as an article on the work of new faculty member Ofer Rog whose lab uses innovative microscopy, and emerging genome editing technologies to observe chromosomes (pg. 4–5). There’s also a retrospective of the science communication and outreach being done by another forest ecologist, faculty member Nalini Nadkarni (p.10–11).

We hope you’ll stay connected to the School of Biological Sciences whether it’s through sharing your own research and professional stories with us, visiting the School, attending an alumni event in person, or through contributing financially. As an alum, your DNA plays a central role in “Our DNA.”