At the June meeting of the Board of Regents, Professor of Biochemistry Madeline Shea presented an overview of the FUTURE in Biomedicine Program, a novel STEM initiative now beginning its sixth year in the University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine. FUTURE stands for Fostering Undergraduate Talent – Uniting Research and Education. A major goal of FUTURE is to develop a statewide network of scientist-educators conducting collaborative research and sharing best practices for teaching undergraduates about the breadth of new discoveries in biomedicine.

During the summer portion of the FUTURE in Biomedicine program, professors from primarily undergraduate institutions bring a student or two, and work in a host laboratory in Iowa City to make use of state-of-the-art instruments, research facilities, and faculty expertise. They also participate in weekly events to learn about the resources and training programs offered by the Carver College of Medicine and the Graduate College.

The FUTURE in Biomedicine Fellows serve on two public panels during the summer to share information about their home colleges with UI admissions directors, and to provide career advice to graduate students and postdoctoral fellows considering a career in academia. Professor Shea, the founding director of the program, shared with the regents news about how the summer collaborations have evolved into long-term research and learning partnerships that strengthen undergraduate science education across the entire state.

Since it began in 2009, the FUTURE program has hosted 25 professors from 17 schools. There have been at least seven co-authored research papers and 35 presentations at scientific conferences, as well as three successful grant applications with three more currently in preparation. The FUTURE Faculty enrich teaching and research on their own campuses with insights gained from their experiences in Iowa City, and facilitate connections that help their students pursue opportunities in graduate and medical education or work as research assistants at the University of Iowa.

This year, the FUTURE program has participants from Coe College in Cedar Rapids; Loras College in Dubuque; Drake University in Des Moines; Hawkeye Community College in Waterloo; Mount Mercy University in Cedar Rapids; and Wartburg College in Waverly.

To learn more about this year’s participants and the program, visit www.medicine.uiowa.edu/future. A map of participating institutions across the state is here http://now.uiowa.edu/files/now.uiowa.edu/future_collegestate09-13_web.pdf.

Congratulations to Jessica Ponce in the Wallrath Lab for being awarded an American Heart Pre-doctoral Fellowship to examine the role of the nuclear envelope protein lamin in redox homeostasis in muscle tissue. Ms. Ponce is a PhD candidate in the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Genetics.

The 2014 Midwest Chromatin and Epigenetic Meeting was held on May 18, 19, and 20 at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery (WID) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Speakers from the University of Iowa included Frederick Domann, Catherine Musselman, Pamela Geyer and Lori Wallrath; poster presenters included Lacy Barton, Heather Brockway, Diane Cryderman, Lynne Dieckman, Daniel Ferrell, and Tyler Weaver.

Over 200 attendees, representing eighteen states and four countries, presented their current research findings on transcriptional regulation, chromatin structure, and epigenetics as it relates to nutrition, the environment and human disease.

The prestigious Journal of Biological Chemistry‘s Herb Tabor Young Investigator Award was given to Andrew DeVilbiss, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin.

Dr. Wallrath co-organized the event with John Denu of the University of Wisconsin and Raul Urrutia of the Mayo Clinic.

Charles Brenner, Professor and Roy J. Carver Chair of the Department of Biochemistry, has received a 2014 Regents Award for Faculty Excellence.

The award, which is given to those faculty whose work represents “a significant contribution to excellence in public education,” is one of the highest honors given by the University of Iowa for faculty achievement.

Dr. Brenner has had an exceptional career, beginning with his early academic trajectory. After graduating from Wesleyan in 1983, and working at Chiron Corporation and DNAX Research Institute, he earned his PhD from Stanford in 1993 for purification and characterization of the Kex2 prohormone processing protease. During his post-doctoral appointment, which was conducted at Brandeis, he served as a Leukemia Society of America fellow and showed that histidine triad proteins are a novel superfamily of enzymes related to galactose-1-uridylyltransferase.

Dr. Brenner began his independent research program at Thomas Jefferson University in 1998, where he rose to the position of associate professor and director of the Structural Biology and Bioinformatics Program of the Kimmel Cancer Center. In 2003, he was recruited to Dartmouth, where he directed the Cancer Mechanisms Program of the Norris Cotton Cancer Center. There, he also served as the Associate Director for Basic Sciences and the Scientific Director of the Thoracic Oncology Group at the cancer center. Dr. Brenner’s research has been funded by the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, the Burroughs Wellcome Foundation, the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, the Lung Cancer Research Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Brenner’s current research is largely focused on reversible modifications of DNA and proteins and the relationship between metabolism, gene expression, and organismal function. He is best known for uncovering new steps in NAD metabolism including the existence of nicotinamide riboside as a vitamin precursor of NAD in eukaryotic cells. This work combines basic mechanistic science with work that attempts to translate nicotinamide riboside into a preventative and therapeutic agent for particular diseases and conditions.

Dr. Brenner was recruited to the University of Iowa in 2009. Under his leadership, the Department has recruited eight new faculty members who are well integrated with existing strengths in Biochemistry and the Carver College of Medicine. In response to then Provost Wallace Loh’s call for proposals to develop faculty clusters focusing on grand challenges of the twentieth century, Dr. Brenner developed the idea to create the Obesity Research and Education Initiative (OREI), which he directs with Dr. Allyn Mark. The OREI, working closely with the Fraternal Order of Eagles Diabetes Research Center, have made Iowa a destination institution for interdisciplinary research and substantive outreach in problems including overweight, obesity, type 2 diabetes and its complications, human activity, behavioral economics, eating disorders and other related problems.

In his role as professor, department chair, and research scientist, Dr. Brenner is also responsible for the training and mentorship of undergraduates and graduates, post-doctoral fellows, laboratory assistants, and faculty colleagues. Brenner mentees have important positions worldwide. Three will take faculty positions this summer, namely Dr. Peter Belenky, who will become an assistant professor at Brown University, Dr. Rebecca Fagan, who will become an assistant professor at Bucknell University, and Dr. Ruth Grossmann, who will become an assistant professor at Iowa. Many of his trainees become expert practitioners in technologies that he helped to develop and disseminate at the University, such as high throughput screening and metabolomic analysis.

Dr. Brenner has also become nationally known in educational matters. As a faculty member who teaches metabolism to undergraduates and who is in touch with the changing landscape of undergraduate, medical, graduate, and professional education in the molecular sciences, he and Dr. Dagmar Ringe developed the premedical curricular recommendations endorsed by the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. These recommendations, which have been further developed in peer-reviewed literature, go farther than recognizing that biochemistry will be a required subject in the 2015 Medical College Achievement Test. Recognizing that 500,000 new U.S. college freshmen per year enter the premedical pipeline and 20,000 doctors are annually produced, Dr. Brenner has advocated developing curricula that will improve the preparation of all of the biomedically-inclined students in areas including data analysis, genetics, biomolecule reactivity, macromolecular structure and metabolism.

Winners of the 2014 Regents Award were announced at the Faculty Senate meeting on April 29th. The award comes with a one-time $1000 stipend. Dr. Brenner will be presented with the award in the fall. Other winners of the award this year were Kim Brogden, Dows Institute for Dental Research and the Department of Periodontics; Charles Lynch, Department of Epidemiology; John Beldon Scott, School of Art and Art History; Larry Weber, Civil & Environmental Engineering; and Mary Wilson, Internal Medicine.

In his nomination, Dr. Brenner was noted for his deep engagement in research, his efforts to expand student learning opportunities, and his aptitude for bringing together individuals from different departments in order to establish new intercollegiate research and education initiatives. He was also commended for his ability to benefit the entire University when he builds something in order to fulfill a need for his research or the Biochemistry department.

Iowa native and University of Iowa Department of Biochemistry alumna Dr. Susan Wente has been named as the Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at Vanderbilt University.

A professor at Vanderbilt since 2002, she was selected for the position after an intensive nationwide search.

Dr. Wente graduated from the University of Iowa with honors and high distinction in biochemistry. She went on to receive her PhD in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. Her post-doctoral work was conducted at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

Before her promotion, Dr. Wente served as associate vice chancellor for research at Vanderbilt for five years. She has also served as senior associate dean of biomedical sciences, professor of cell and developmental biology, and co-chair of the university-wide academic strategic plan executive committee at Vanderbilt.

Despite her many administrative and educational roles, Dr. Wente maintains an active research program on cellular communication between cytoplasm and nuclei.

Recently named a “2014 Woman to Watch” by Nashville Medical News, Wente has also received the Women in Cell Biology Senior Career Recognition Award from the American Society of Cell Biology and a MERIT (Method to Extend Research in Time) award from the National Institutes of Health.

Grant Young, an undergraduate major in the Wallrath laboratory, has been awarded the 2014 Rex Montgomery Scholarship Award for his outstanding academic record and commitment to research.

This scholarship was established by Dr. Rex Montgomery, Professor Emeritus of the Department of Biochemistry. Dr. Montgomery began his career at the University of Iowa in 1955, and is admired for his impact as a researcher, teacher and mentor. Dr. Montgomery is an internationally recognized carbohydrate biochemist and textbook author. While on the faculty, he served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the College of Medicine, the Vice President of Research for the University and was the founding director of the University of Iowa Physician Assistant Program. Dr. Montgomery retired in 2005 after more than 50 years on the faculty.

Congratulations, Grant!

Dagan Marx, an undergraduate major in the Shea laboratory, has been awarded the 2014 Montgomery Biochemistry Scholar’s Prize Award for his excellent presentation at the Lata Symposium and for the high quality and the breadth of his research.

This prize was established by mentees, colleagues and friends of Dr. Rex Montgomery, Professor Emeritus of the Department of Biochemistry. Dr. Montgomery began his career at the University of Iowa in 1955, and is admired for his impact as a researcher, teacher and mentor. Dr. Montgomery is an internationally recognized carbohydrate biochemist and textbook author. While on the faculty, he served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the College of Medicine, the Vice President of Research for the University and was the founding director of the University of Iowa Physician Assistant Program. Dr. Montgomery retired in 2005 after more than 50 years on the faculty.

Congratulations, Dagan!

Mark Miller (Biochemistry graduate student) and Andrew Spracklen (MCB Graduate Student) have won 2014 Outstanding Teaching Assistant Awards from the University of Iowa Council on Teaching.

Mark, who was nominated for his work in Biophysical Chemistry 1 in the fall of 2013, was lauded by students for his “welcoming nature,” “concern for his students,” and “sense of duty.” Dr. Pufall commended his teaching ability, writing, “Mark is gifted in the way he explains complex material, and in his patient, but unyielding instruction.”

About his classroom approach, Mark says, “My main focus in teaching was to view knowledge not as coming from me, but to empower students to solve problems on their own.”

Andrew was nominated for his work in Biochemistry II in the spring of 2013. He earned the admiration of both students and faculty for his ability to step in as a replacement TA several weeks into the semester. One of his students from that semester wrote, “He embodies all things educators and students at our university should strive to attain: intelligence, kindness, willingness to help, and excellent communication skills.”

According to Andrew, “I find that if students are able to connect the course material to their own interests, they not only recall the information better, but also are more capable of integrating the core course concepts into their daily life.”

Congratulations to both TAs for their excellent work!

Congratulations to the Geyer lab, whose cover art was selected as the first place winner for the Carver College of Medicine Health Sciences Research Week cover art contest!

Xin Xu, an undergraduate in the Brenner laboratory, has been awarded the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Velma E. Stuit Scholarship for Women in Sciences. Ms. Xu is a pre-pharmacy student who is conducting basic research on a post-translational modification that regulates a variety of functions in animals as our diets fluctuate from calorie restriction to energy balance to over-nutrition. She stays busy as a University of Iowa student, as a researcher, as a volunteer for the Palliative Care Unit at UIHC, and she recently completed a trip to India, where she provided service to the largest Indian non-profit devoted to palliative care. Congratulations, Xin!