Assistant Professor
Danica Chen of Nutritional Science and Toxicology has won a 2009 Searle Scholars Award, one of 15 young professors nationwide.
The Searle research grant provides $100,000 per year for three years to promising assistant professors early in their careers.
Dr. Chen's research aims to understand the aging process and to explore therapeutic targets to slow aging. In particular, she is focusing on sirtuins in mammalian aging. Sirtuins are genetic regulators of aging. They are believed to be mediators of calorie restriction responses, such as lifespan extension and amelioration of diverse diseases of aging, including cancer.
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University of California scientists have received a five-year, $4 million grant to study the biodiversity of fungi, bacteria, plants, insects and vertebrates on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, a southeast Asian island threatened by the loss of biodiversity in its tropical forests.
An international team of collaborators will conduct biodiversity surveys, screen microbes and plants for applications to human health and energy needs, recommend strategies to conserve endangered species, and develop and encourage local conservation. The project is organized into six associate programs -- five led by UC Davis scientists while one program, focusing on discovery of human health solutions is being led by Len Bjeldanes, professor of toxicology at CNR.
The grant is funded by the International Cooperative Biodiversity Group Program, a multi-agency program led by the National Institutes of Health with contributions from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, and the National Science Foundation.
Mark A. Tanouye, professor of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, recently received one of six 2008 Neuroscience of Brain Disorders Awards from the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience.
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In the middle of the South Pacific, about 12 miles west of Tahiti, is a tropical island that soon will emerge as a model ecosystem, thanks to the efforts of a U.S.-French research team led by University of California, Berkeley, biologists.
Moorea, home of the UC Berkeley Richard B. Gump South Pacific Research Station and France's Centre de Recherches Insulaires et Observatoire de l'Environnement (CRIOBE), will be the site of an ambitious project to create a comprehensive inventory of all non-microbial life on the island. Supported by a new $5.2 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Moorea Biocode Project over the next three years will send researchers climbing up jagged peaks, trekking through lush forests and diving down to coral reefs to sample the French Polynesian island's animal and plant life.
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Professor
Carolyn Merchant from the department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management has been awarded the spring 2007
Berkeley Research Futures Grant. The grant, funded by the office of the chancellor for research as well as CNR, will provide $50,000 in support of Merchant’s work, “Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of Emerging Technologies.”
The Dr. Robert C. and Veronica Atkins Foundation has pledged $10 million to the Center for Weight and Health at the University of California, Berkeley, to support nutrition research and obesity prevention programs.
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Until he met the slimy green algae called Chlamydomonas, undergraduate Subhajit Poddar didn’t know he was interested in plant biology. “Once I began working with mutant strains of algae, I was totally hooked,” he says.
Poddar, fourth year in Plant and Microbial Biology, studies the green algae Chlamydomonas under the mentorship of Professor Krishna Niyogi. His research has focused on identifying and cloning genes responsible for two compounds involved in photosynthesis.
Using genetics as a novel tool to understand physiology, Niyogi and his team are isolating genes that are important in determining plant responses to stress and high light conditions. SPUR funds have helped Poddar purchase essential lab equipment necessary to maintain laboratory populations of Chlamydomonas.
Undergraduate research through SPUR is funded entirely by donations to the Berkeley Fund for Natural Resources -- and gifts are accepted online here.
Inez Fung, co-director of the Berkeley Institute of the Environment, and her research team have received $1.6 million from the W.M. Keck Foundation to establish the Keck HydroWatch Center at UC Berkeley.
Research undertaken at the HydroWatch Center will help scientists better understand the water cycle and predict its changes. Their aim is to dramatically expand the observations of all aspects of the water cycle by developing cost-effective, rapid-response, and accurate sensors and techniques to monitor water quality, quantity, and pathways.
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