Life Sciences & Biology
Dr Paul Slusarewicz – Fighting Endemic Parasites: New Technologies to Solve Old Challenges
Intestinal worms are among the most common types of parasitic infections worldwide. Despite technological advances in other areas of medical diagnostics, the procedure for identifying worm infection, the faecal egg count, has remained largely unchanged since its debut...
Dr Lisa Burden | Dr Daniel Burden – Monitoring and Controlling the Delivery of Single Molecules through Nanopores
Monitoring and controlling molecules as they are transported in and out of nanometre-sized compartments is no easy task. Dr Lisa Burden, Dr Daniel Burden and their colleagues at Wheaton College have made significant contributions to understanding these processes by...
The National Science Teachers Association
Founded in 1944, the Virginia-based National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) is the largest organisation in the world promoting excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all. In this exclusive interview, we talk to Executive Director of...
Professor Julio Collado-Vides – Putting Life in Context
How do you determine important scientific links when you are flooded by new publications each day? Professor Julio Collado-Vides and his team at the National University of Mexico appear to have the answer. Whether it be letters or ideograms, standardised street signs...
Count Down To The Future
At the NASA Ames Research Center in California, the next generation of space biologists are working to understand the effects of long duration space flight on model organisms, and are developing ways to protect the health of future astronauts. The human body has...
Dr Mike Allen – Algal Biotech: Turning Environmental Problems into Commercial Opportunities
With over a decade of experience in producing solutions for industry, Dr Mike Allen of Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) is a shining star in the field of algal biotechnology. Inspired by the natural environment, he and his multidisciplinary team work to engineer and...
The National Institute of General Medical Sciences
As one of the 27 Centers, Institutes and Offices within the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) supports basic research that increases our understanding of biological processes, laying the foundation for...
Professor Roy Robins-Browne – Disarming Bacterial Virulence
With antibiotic resistance rapidly emerging among many important bacterial pathogens, it is imperative that new classes of antimicrobials are developed. Professor Roy Robins-Browne and his team at The University of Melbourne are taking a novel approach to...
Dr Ashley Cowart – Small Scale Roots of Metabolic Disease
Although metabolic diseases plague Western countries, we still don’t fully understand the molecular mechanisms that trigger these diseases. Therefore, biochemists such as Dr Ashley Cowart at the Medical University of South Carolina strive to uncover the cellular...
Outcomes of the 2017 Global Research Council meeting co-hosted by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
Comprising the heads of research funding agencies worldwide, the Global Research Council (GRC) is an organisation dedicated to fostering multilateral research and collaboration across continents to benefit both developing and developed nations. The GRC holds annual...
Meredith Frie – A Hidden Threat to Herd Health: Evidence for the Damaging Effects of Bovine Leukaemia Virus
Diseases of agricultural animals are of major concern to people around the world, and thus a principle focus of many research programs. Research on the Bovine Leukaemia Virus (BLV) has been often overshadowed by other diseases that affect cattle, but new evidence...
The STEM Education Coalition
The STEM Education Coalition was founded more than 15 years ago with a mission to raise awareness in the U.S. Congress, the administration, and on the state level about the critical role that STEM education plays in enabling the U.S. to remain the economic and...
Dr William Ray – Using Computer Graphics to Visualise the Invisible
Biophysicist Dr William Ray and colleagues at The Ohio State University and the Battelle Center for Mathematical Medicine at The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, develop novel approaches to graphically visualise what happens to...
Smartnanotox
Professor Steven Greco – Landscape Ecology: The Sense of Space
Developing sustainable solutions to environmental decline will need a holistic understanding of socioecological connections in time and space. Professor Steven Greco and his team at UC Davis use spatial analysis and visualisation techniques, to improve our...
The Society for Conservation Biology
The Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) was founded in 1985, when many scientists felt called to action by the Earth’s rapidly disappearing biodiversity. Scientists saw their study sites changing or disappearing over very short periods of time, and were...
Travis M Whitfill | Azim Munivar – Harnessing Skin Bacteria to Fight Skin Disease
The brainchild of Azim Munivar and Travis M Whitfill, Azitra Inc. is a microbiome start-up with big ambition. Beginning with eczema and Netherton’s Syndrome, the Azitra team are set to change the landscape of skin disease treatment. Azitra Inc. is a company with one...
Dr David Peebles – The Chicken in the Egg: Hacking Early Development to Improve Adult Chicken Health
Chicken meat is one of the world’s most relied upon animal food sources, and a major factor in economics and food security for many people. Dr David Peebles at Mississippi State University has dedicated his career to the unique physiological and nutritional needs of...
Dr Michael Stout | Dr Blake Wilson – Protecting United States Rice with Integrated Pest Management Strategies
US rice production is threatened by the expansion of the Mexican rice borer, and a host of other pests. Dr Michael Stout, Dr Blake Wilson and their colleagues at Louisiana State University are investigating integrated pest management strategies to reduce the...
Taher Saif | Dr Andrew Holle – Mechanobiology – Exploring the Mechanics of Cell Behaviour
Understanding how cells interact with the physical world around them is at the core of mechanobiology, a growing subfield connecting the arenas of cell biology and bioengineering. Two leading researchers, Professor Taher Saif and Dr Andrew Holle, with the support of...
Dr Chang-Won Lee – Global Health is for the Birds: Studying Avian Diseases to Protect Human Health
Every year, outbreaks of diseases that affect livestock cause massive economic losses, and occasionally these diseases also threaten human health. The dynamics that influence the emergence and transmission of these diseases are complex, and studying them effectively...
Mark Hoddle – Biological Control: Protecting Agriculture and Wilderness Areas from Invasive Insect Pests
Invasive organisms become pests, in part, because they escape control of their natural enemies that regulate population growth in areas where the invader is native. Biological control attempts to re-associate host specific natural enemies with target pest populations...
Dr Guihua Bai – Genotyping our Daily Bread: Genetic Markers in Modern Wheat Breeding
Wheat is a staple crop, and is of utmost importance for global food supply. Dr Guihua Bai and his group at USDA-ARS conduct wheat genomics research to analyse wheat DNA markers, and assist in the breeding of new cultivars, to ensure high grain yields and quality, as...
Professor Thomas Fleischner and colleagues – Why Field Studies Matter for Teaching Biology
Professor Thomas Fleischner and his colleagues at the Natural History Institute at Prescott College, and across the United States, are working to highlight the importance of field studies for teaching biology. Here, we discuss why the decline of field studies should...
Professor Jim Kasting – Pinning Down the Habitable Zones of Different Stars
One of life’s greatest mysteries is whether or not we are alone in the Universe. One way to find planets that could support life is by working out whether they lie in the ‘habitable zone’ of their parent star – a distance at which liquid water might exist on the...
Dr Gábor Csányi – Macropinocytosis: The Macrophage Drinking Problem Behind Atherosclerosis
Dr Gábor Csányi and his team at the Vascular Biology Center of Augusta University explore the molecular mechanisms involved in an alternative pathway of macrophage LDL cholesterol uptake, with hopes of finding new targets for the treatment of atherosclerosis. HDL, LDL...
Professor Varda Shoshan-Barmatz – Mitochondria – A Novel Target in the Fight Against Cancer
There is an urgent need for new therapies to target challenging, difficult-to-treat cancers such as glioblastoma. To meet this need, Professor Varda Shoshan-Barmatz, a renowned researcher in the field of mitochondrial biology from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in...
Dr Frederick A. Moore & Dr Lyle Moldawer – The Sepsis And Critical Illness Research Center: From Patients To The Bench And Back
By taking a complex disease and breaking it down to its basics, The Sepsis and Critical Illness Research Center (SCIRC) has evolved into an organisation with the unique ability to tackle sepsis from biological, clinical and translational standpoints. What is Sepsis?...
Professor Robert Fairman – Twists and Turns in Protein Assembly
In nerve cells, the accumulation of protein into bundles of insoluble fibres is the underlying cause of a number of neurodegenerative diseases. Professor Robert Fairman and his team at Haverford College are developing cutting edge techniques to unravel this process....
Professor Costantino Vetriani | Professor Frank T. Robb – Uncovering the Relationship Between Aquatic Thermophiles and Human Bacterial Pathogens
Thermophiles thriving on hydrothermal vents are opening new avenues towards understanding the chemical mechanisms of human diseases. Here we discuss the work of Professors Costantino Vetriani and Frank Robb, who isolate these extreme microorganisms and study their...
Dr Branwen Williams – Coralline Algae as a Climate Archive
The unique structure and anatomy of a coralline red algae found in the Arctic-Subarctic makes them useful markers, or ‘proxies’ of past climate and environment. Known as Clathromorphum, these encrusting algae can live up to 850 years and form thick crusts of layers....
The American Society for Cell Biology
Founded over half a century ago, the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) is an inclusive, international community of biologists studying the cell – the fundamental unit of all life on Earth. The Society aims to advance scientific discovery, advocate sound...