This IGERT award establishes a multidisciplinary graduate training program of education and research in the Physics and Chemistry of Biological Systems at Brandeis University. The program will ensure that a) biologists can work effectively with rigorous quantitative methods, new technologies and models, b) physicists and chemists obtain hands-on experience with biological systems and methods, and c) students with a variety of backgrounds learn multiple scientific languages so that they can communicate and work with investigators with skill sets and training different from their own. Graduate students will be carrying out state-of-the-art research in a wide variety of topics including protein complexes, signal transduction and transcription, neuronal networks, biological oscillators, and cognitive processes and behavior. Trainees thesis research will involve quantitative approaches to a biological problem. The educational plan includes laboratory rotations and courses that include modeling and quantitative methods; several new courses will be developed specifically for this program. Trainees will also participate in a semester-long course on the responsible conduct of research, invite and host outside seminar speakers, participate in journal clubs and serve as teaching assistants. To enhance the broader impacts of the grant, trainees will receive formal training in presenting science to lay audiences at two area science museums, and/or through several campus-based educational outreach programs. The IGERT program will provide a free Saturday morning lecture series for local high school teachers, students, and the interested public. Undergraduate minority students will be acquainted with research opportunities at Brandeis. IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the interdisciplinary background, deep knowledge in a chosen discipline, and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education by establishing innovative new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries.
This is a training grant for PhD students working on projects at the intersection of physics and the biological sciences. This IGERT grant supported 43 trainees, of whom 22 received PhDs (6 Physics, 8 Neuroscience, 4 Molecular and Cell Biology, 3 Biochemistry, 1 Biophysics), 17 are completing their research in the program, and only 4 of whom left without completing the PhD. The graduates included 3 outstanding trainees who were members of underrepresented minority groups, who among them have produced 20 publications to date, including first author papers in Neuron, Nature, and Science. Trainees worked in many areas. Several trainees have demonstrated how networks consisting of a small number of neurons, can robustly maintain a pattern of firing, even as the properies of each cell can change dramatically over time (for example as temperature changes), or can vary in properties from cell to cell. Another set of trainees investigated the molecular basis of daily circadian rhythms in organism from nematodes to flies to mice, using high throughput sequencing to understand the contriubtions of transcription, RNA splicing, RNA editing and translation on circadian rhythms. This work included the first definitive demonstration that the model nematode C. elegans has a circadian rhythm. A third set of trainees created novel aggregates of self-assembling biological materials that showed novel properties. Particularly interesting were artificial cilia, a simple system of microtubule filaments, kinesins (motor proteins), and a bundling agent, which when assembled and given ATP showed oscillatory and organized beating patterns, much like biological cilia and flagella.
