Department News
UC San Diego Receives $1.15 Million NSF Grant for Biology ‘Boot Camps’
July 31, 2013A biology and physics professor at UC San Diego has received a $1.15 million grant from the National Science Foundation to establish a series of annual “boot camps” that will educate San Diego-area high school and college students about an emerging field at the intersection of physics and biology called “quantitative biology.”
"Quantitative biology is more than adding numbers to what biologists already know,” says Suckjoon Jun, an assistant professor of physics and molecular biology, who received the five-year Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant, awarded by the foundation to promising young scholar-researchers, and will work with a biology professor at San Diego State University to start the first of the boot camps next summer. “The power of the approach is to bring quantitative rigor from physical sciences to identify and solve important and interesting problems in biology.”
Two Young UC San Diego Faculty Members Named Pew Scholars
June 13, 2013Two early-career scientists at UC San Diego are among 22 of the nation’s most enterprising researchers named Pew Scholars in the Biomedical Sciences by The Pew Charitable Trusts.
These scholars will each receive $240,000 over the next four years to pursue research projects without restriction that are focused on solving some of the nation’s most perplexing health problems—including diabetes, autism, Parkinson’s disease and cancer.
Andrew Huberman, an assistant professor of neurosciences, neurobiology and ophthalmology, and Suckjoon Jun, an assistant professor of physics and molecular biology, join a prestigious community of Nobel laureates, MacArthur Fellows, Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award winners and hundreds of other pioneers who earned Pew grants at the start of their careers.
Lily Xu - 2013 ASA Fellow
June 6, 2013The American Statistical Association (ASA) announced that Professor Lily Xu is being honored as a 2013 ASA Fellow. Honorees are recognized for their outstanding professional contributions to and leadership in the field of statistical science.
NSF Graduate Research Fellowships awarded to Gabriel Pratt and Kunal Bhutani
May 8, 2013The National Science Foundation has awarded Graduate Research Fellowships to Ph.D. students Gabriel Pratt and Kunal Bhutani in the Bioinformatics Graduate Program.
Paul G. Allen Family Foundation Awards $1.6 Million to Young Investigator Suckjoon Jun
March 7, 2013One of the newest faculty members at UC San Diego—Suckjoon Jun, an assistant professor of physics and molecular biology—has won a $1.6 million award from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. This is the first award given to a UC San Diego recipient from the foundation, which was established by the co-founder of Microsoft to support high-risk, high-reward ideas in science. Jun’s effort is one of five awards announced by the foundation last week to projects “that aim to unlock key questions in the areas of cellular decision making and modeling dynamic biological systems.”
Olga Botvinnik: Finalist for Hertz Foundation Fellowship
February 14, 2013Livermore, CA - February 14, 2013 - The Fannie and John Hertz Foundation announces its finalists for the 2013-2014 Hertz Fellowship. From among more than 700 applicants, 50 are chosen as finalists to receive the Hertz Fellowship. The new Fellows will be announced by April 1st. Considered to be the Nation’s most generous support for graduate education in the applied physical, biological and engineering sciences, the Hertz Fellowship has been awarded to over 1100 individuals. Valued at more than a quarter million dollars per student, this support lasts for up to five years.
Paper accepted to be presented at RECOMB 2013 (Beijing)
February 10, 2013Learning Natural Selection from the Site Frequency Spectrum.
In Memoriam: Virgil L. Woods, Jr., MD
October 15, 2012The Program and everyone who knew him was saddened today by the news of the passing of Professor Virgil Woods, an innovator of mass spectrometry and structural bioinformatics, and an engaging colleague, advisor and committee member to several of the Program students.
Binding Sites for LIN28 Protein Found in Thousands of Human Genes
September 4, 2012A study led by researchers at the UC San Diego Stem Cell Research program and funded by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) looks at an important RNA binding protein called LIN28, which is implicated in pluripotency and reprogramming as well as in cancer and other diseases. According to the researchers, their study – published in the September 6 online issue of Molecular Cell – will change how scientists view this protein and its impact on human disease.
U.S.-Russian Collaboration Develops New Method for Sequencing Dark Matter of Life from a Single Cell
August 9, 2012An international team of researchers led by computer scientist Pavel Pevzner, from the University of California, San Diego, have developed a new algorithm to sequence organisms’ genomes from a single cell faster and more accurately. The new algorithm, called SPAdes, can be used to sequence bacteria that can’t be submitted to standard cloning techniques—what researchers refer to as the dark matter of life, from pathogens found in hospitals, to bacteria living deep in ocean or in the human gut. Ultimately, the researchers hope to apply this algorithm to cancer cells to monitor early stages of the disease when normal cells first turn into malignant ones. Pevzner and colleagues published their findings in the May issue of the Journal of Computational Biology.