Biofeedback

A Newsletter of the Biology Department

University of San Diego
Volume 23, No. 1
October 13, 2006

Fun in the Desert Sun

We are going to have a new upper-division biology class this spring!! Dr. Simo’s Desert Ecology Course (Bio 494 sect. 2) offers 4 upper division units with a lab. It will include desert formation, climate, habitats, adaptations of plants and animals, local paleontology, human impacts and five days camping in Anza Borrego during Spring Break (you will be back by Holy Thursday in plenty of time to play). The course will be co-taught with Dr. Wells (Simo’s husband), who is the State Park Superintendent and knows all the good spots to go. Good weather and fun are expected!

Seminar Announcements

The Center of Comparative Physiology Seminar Series has three seminars planned for the fall semester. All three seminars will take place at 4 pm in ST 133 with a reception to follow. Hope to see you there!!

Dr. Jeff Graham from the Center of Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD, will present a seminar entitled “The Tales of Two Fishes: Atmosphere, Oxygen, and Breathing in Deep Time” on Fri., Oct. 13th.

On Fri., Nov. 17th, Dr. Zeev Pancer of the Center of Marine Biotechnology, University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute will present a seminar on “The Origins of Vertebrate Adaptive Immunity.”

Dr. Philip Rundel from the UCLA Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology will speak on plants in extreme environments on Fri., Dec. 8th.

Grad School Informational Meeting

An informational meeting for anyone who is interested in learning about graduate school will be held on Thurs., Oct. 26th at 12:15 pm in ST 133. Faculty representing various disciplines within biology will address questions such as what is grad school and why would you go to grad school? What do you do in grad school, and what do you do when you're finished? What is a good advisor and/or a good program, and how do you find one and get in? Students at all levels are welcome so please join us! Pizza and drinks will be provided.

Special Student Session at the 46th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology

Here’s an opportunity for undergraduate students to attend a major scientific meeting! The 46th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) is being held at the San Diego Convention Center Dec. 9-13. As part of this meeting, a special session for undergraduate and graduate students is planned for Sat., Dec. 9, from 3:30 to 5:30 pm. The theme for this session is Microscopes, Microbiomachines, and Motility. A 45-minute presentation by Dr. Clare Waterman-Storer of The Scripps Research Institute will be followed by an undergraduate poster session, where you can view and discuss scientific posters presented by other student scientists. Afterwards, you are invited to attend the Keynote Symposium, Frontiers in Cell Biology, at 6:00 pm. The keynote speakers will be Nobel Laureate Thomas Cech of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Bruce Alberts of the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Alberts was president of the National Academy of Sciences and is now the ASCB President-Elect. There is no cost to attend this program; however, pre-registration is required. To register, complete the online form at www.ascb.org.

Don’t delay - the registration deadline is Mon., Oct. 23rd!

Bio/Oceans Club

The Bio/Oceans club is gearing up for another active year! The first meeting of the semester will be held on Thursday, Oct. 19th at 12:30 in ST 232, and the club will begin planning its activities for the year. A hike in the hills near Julian, led by Dr. Mike Mayer, is one of the activities planned for this semester. What else would you like to do? Past club activities have included beach clean-ups, trips to the San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park, snorkeling in San Diego Bay, and participating in an AIDS walk and a blood drive. For more information about the club or its activities, come to the club meetings (the second meeting will be on November 9th – same place and time) or contact club members Matt Rutz (rutz-08@sandiego.edu), Ron Robertson (ron-08@sandiego.edu) and Rachel Lohmann (rachel-08@sandiego.edu).

Free Tutoring

Free tutoring is once again available for students in Bio 190, 221, 225 and Genetics in Shiley 225 from 6:30 to 10:00 pm Monday through Wednesday. Keep in mind that the doors to Shiley lock at 9:00 pm so you must be in the building by that time, but you can stick around until 10:00 pm.

Baby Announcement

Congratulations to Dr. Laura Rivard and her husband Brent! Their new daughter, Annabelle Grace, was born on August 21st. The entire family, including big brother Cooper, is doing well, but life with 2 kids is definitely more hectic — Brent calls it man-on-man defense!

Alumni News

Having graduated from medical school at Creighton University in 2004, Mike Stadler (2000; MichaelStadler@creighton.edu) is now a second year resident in OB/GYN in Omaha, Nebraska. He’s been “working a ton lately and delivering lots of babies.” He’ll be even busier soon – he and his wife are expecting a little boy at the end of November!

Tanya (Lugliani) Stewart (1995; luglianistewart@yahoo.com) recently became board certified in hospice and palliative medicine and has been the medical director for a hospice program in Portland, Oregon for the last two years. Tanya and her husband Chad Stewart (Class of 1994) have two children, ages 3 and 1.

Ryan Meyers (1999; Rysurfin@aol.com) is a physical therapist practicing in Ventura County. He earned his Masters Degree in Physical Therapy from CSU Northridge in 2003 and is now pursuing his doctorate. He hopes to finish up his degree by the start of 2007.

Tim Dunn (1985; timothydunn01@ msn.com) is working for T-Mobile USA in Bellevue, Washington as Senior Manager for National Location Services and E911 Engineering.

Amy (Infantino) Swiderski (1992; swiderska001 @hawaii.rr.com) is a Biology teacher at Kahuku High School in Kahuku, Hawaii (located on North Shore of Oahu). She teaches AP Biology and Human Anatomy to juniors and seniors and is trying to convert as many of them as possible in to Biologists!!! Way to go, Amy!! Amy is also married and has two kids, Marisa (12) and Kayla (5).

Czarina Baker (2004; czarinab1@yahoo.com) started her doctoral studies in the Epidemiology program at UC Davis this past September.

For the past four years, Christina Bevilacqua (1998; bevilacqua.christina@gene.com) has been playing pro-women’s football while also working in the biotech field in San Francisco. She is working for Genentech in Late Stage Cell Culture Process Development. Christina is no longer playing pro-football but instead is tackling classes at Cal. She is also getting married next year, and she and her fiancé Tyler just bought their first home. She says things are “Fantastic!!”

Jason Barksdale (2002; jbarksda@usc.edu) is in his last year of medical school at USC and is applying to residency programs in radiology.

This past spring, Stephanie Milano (2000; smilan679@earthlink.net) graduated from the University of the Pacific School of Pharmacy with her PharmD degree. She has since passed her board exams and is now on the hunt for a pharmacist position in Pensacola, Florida, where she recently moved with her husband, Buck, who is in flight school with the US Marine Corp.

Lara (Hargreaves) Popovich (2005; larapopovich@yahoo.com) has been working as a pharmaceutical sales representative for Merck and Co. She says one of the reasonsshe has been successful at her job is that her scientific education has made her good at extracting from publications the data that can makea difference between a doctor prescribingher company’s drug rather than someone else's! Lara is living in Miami, Florida with her husband of one year.

Lisa Casey-O'Brien (1995; lcasey@powayusd.com), who majored in both physics and biology, stopped by during Homecoming. She teaches physics at Poway High.

Shortly after graduating from USD, John Curran (2000; jcurran8223@sbcglobal.net) returned to government service as a geneticist at the NIH’s National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, MD. There he worked for over a year and a half in a population genetics laboratory group that specialized in lung cancer genomics. After getting homesick, he returned to San Diego to work at the VA Medical Center in La Jolla for over a year and a half, ultimately supervising a cell culture core facility while doing psychiatric research on autoimmune disorders in schizophrenia and searching for biomarkers in bipolar disorder. When his PI moved up to Los Angeles to chair the psychiatry department at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, he contemplated making the move north to join the new lab but, in the interim, got word that Cedars-Sinai was expanding its prostate cancer research laboratory, so he returned to his calling as a cancer researcher. He has now been at the Louis Warschaw Prostate Cancer Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center for 3 years. John is a Research Associate 3 and runs the gene expression/discovery portion of a pre-clinical, translational research lab (“benchtop to bedside”) whose primary mission is drug discovery - to figure out the biological mechanisms by which drug resistance develops in cancer patients. So far John has been a contributing author on 3 scientific papers and has one more currently in the pipeline.

Stacy Ochoa (2005; stacy.ochoa@gmail.com) visited us in September to recruit USD science students for the Teach for America program. Stacy is in her second year as a junior high science teacher in Los Angeles and has really enjoyed the experience. Now she feels she is ready for grad school and is applying to programs in Cell and Molecular Biology.

Kelsey Watters (2004; kelseykins15@ gmail.com) is living in Ukraine where she is serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer.