Awards & Honors


Congratulations to the MBRS alumni awarded biomedical Ph.D. degrees during the past two years: Dr. Alfred Diggs, biological engineering, Purdue University Dr. Valerie Goss, chemistry & nanomaterials, University of Notre Dame Dr. Tyvette Hilliard, medicinal chemistry, University of Illinois at Chicago Dr. Nicole Jones, biological sciences, University of Illinois at Urban-Champaign Dr. George Pates, analytical chemistry, Purdue University Dr. Juan Reyes, biological sciences, Northwestern University Dr. Stephen Smith, chemistry, Northwestern University

Congratulations to the 2013 baccalaureate degree recipients. BS Biology: Shara Bobo, Lawal Labaran, Shiela Mahon, Brittani McClure, Angela Reese BS Chemistry: Gregory Grooms, Joshua Meyer

Congratulations to biology senior Rosa Garcia for her award sponsored by The American Society for the Advancement of Sciences for the best platform presentation in the area of Immunology at the November, 2011, meeting of ABRCMS, St. Louis, MO.

RISE Alumni Shannon Allen, Ike Madueke, Tina Perkins, and Kristin Smith, co-authors in the publication 'Combination strategies for repair, plasticity and, regeneration using regulation of gene expression during the chronic phase after spinal cord injury,' Synapse [PMID: 21308793] January 19, 2011 electronic pre-publication date with faculty member Dr. Christine G. Gerin.

Chemistry major Stephanie Fox was awarded a travel scholarship by the Thurgood Marshall College Fund to attend the 10th Annual Leadership Institute & Career Fair, New York City, October 29 – November 1, 2010.

Congratulations to chemistry major Tiffany Brown for her selection as a 2008 National UNCF-MERCK Undergraduate Science Research scholar. This award provides tuition, room, board, and travel scholarships up to $25,000. Included is a research internship at MERCK's research headquarters in New Jersey. Tiffany was awarded the D Pharm degree from CSU, May 2013.		Nicole Brown with her award certificate and working on her research.

Nichole Squair was selected as a National Science Foundation (NSF) Scholar to support her participation in the 12th Annual Green Chemistry & Green Engineering Conference, which was held June 24-26, 2008 in Washington, DC. Nichole's interests in Green Chemistry started with her undertaking a project in Dr. Robert LeSuer’s lab dealing with dye sensitized solar cells. She presented her study of dye sensitized solar cells at the National ACS meeting in New Orleans (LeSuer, Robert J., Squair, Nichole. “USING SCANNING ELECTROCHEMICAL MICROSCOPY TO INVESTIGATE ELECTRON-TRANSFER PROCESSES IN DYE SENSITIZED SOLAR CELLS.” Abstracts of Papers, 235th ACS National Meeting, New Orleans, LA, April 6-10, 2008). Nicole Squair presents her research at the ACS National Meeting in New Orleans, April, 2008.

Congratulations to Dr. Kristy Mardis and her RISE students. They participated for a second year in the Summer Faculty and Student Team (FaST) Research Program at Argonne National Laboratory. During the appointment they worked on a joint research project with Dr. David Tiede of Argonne's Chemistry Division. Their team research project involved studies of molecular dynamics simulations on nanoscale protein molecular wire architectures and self-assembled, photo catalytic complexes formed with prophyrins and other photsensitizers. RISE scholars Heather Sutton and Tim Vuong participated in the summer of 2007, and Adrienne Eastland and Quinana Moore joined the program in the summer of 2008. Dr. Mardis (extreme right) with Heather Sutton (middle) and Tim Vuong.

Chemistry majors Deborah Amos and Adrienne Eastland were awarded National UNCF-MERCK Undergraduate Science Research scholarships. These awards provide tuition, room, board, and travel up to $25,000. Included are $5,000 research internships at MERCK's research headquarters in New Jersey. Deborah's award was for the summers of 2006 and 2007 and Adrienne's was for 2007-8. Adrienne matriculated to the Ph.D. program in biology at Northwestern University in the fall, 2009 Deborah Amos (left) and Adrienne Eastland

Danielle Johnson won a full travel fellowship award to present her work carried out in Dr. Aida Abraha’s SCORE Program lab at a conference in Florida. The citation was: Danielle Johnson, Acho Gana, Arthur Thomas, and Aida Abraha, Effect Of Calpain On Tau Polymerization In Vitro and In Alzheimer’s Disease, Minority Trainee Research Forum (MTRF); Ft. Lauderdale, FL; Sept 2005. Also, in 2006 Danielle was selected as a "Scholar" in the American Chemical Society's Scholars program. This brought with it a major financial award to cover financial needs including tuition, books and lab fees for Danielle's senior year at CSU.

A poster presentation by Nicole Jones at the Minority Trainee Research Forum in Aventura Fl, in September of 2005, was based on her work in Dr Juanita Sharpes’ laboratory at CSU. The title of her presentation was, Fluorescent Spectroscopic analysis of the interaction between Bax and small unilamellar vesicles to model the interaction between Bax and the mitochondria during apoptosis. She was awarded the Acres of Diamonds Award in a national abstract competition. Nicole is also to be congratulated on the award of her Ph.D. in Anatomy and Cell Biology from University of Illinois at urbana-Champaign, 2011.

Juan Reyes won an award for his presentation, J. F. Reyes, A. G. Maselli The Formation of GFP-Tagged Hirano Bodies in Dictyostelium discoideum After Inducible Expression of a Truncated Actin Bundling Protein, at the American Society of Cell Biology 45th Annual Meeting, 2005. The presentation was based on his work in Dr. Andrew Maselli's SCORE research lab which is funded by the MBRS-SCORE program. In 2011 Juan was awarded the Ph.D. degree from Northwestern University and is now doing research at the Karolinska Institute, Sweden. American Society of Cell Biology 45th Annual Meeting, 2005, Poster Organizers Peter Satir (far left) and Anthony DePass (far right) with 2005 MAC poster session winners. Juan Reyes is second from the right.

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