Welcome to BBE!
We are very excited to welcome the following new teams members to the division!
Amber Colosimo
Amber joined the division as an Administrative Assistant on March 28th, 2022. She supports Long Cai, Alexei Aravin, Bill Dunphy, Kata Fejes-Toth, and Alexander Varshavsky. She previously worked as an office coordinator for an integrative mental health center running daily operations and coordinating client care. Outside of work, she spends her time backpacking, exploring the wilderness, and shooting film photography.
Natalia Huezo
Natalia joined BBE in March 2022, but she is no stranger to Caltech. You may recognize her friendly smile from Human Resources where she spent 4 years running the front desk. She supports Dianne Newman, Lea Goentoro, and Kaihang Wang and lends a hand wherever needed. She is an LA native who loves trying new local eateries and spending free time going to art museums and outdoor concerts with family and friends.
Rui Malinowski
Rui joined the division in April 2022 as Lab Coordinator and Administrative Assistant for the Phillips Lab. She oversees daily lab operations, manages lab budgets and provides administrative and clerical support to the Phillips group. Welcome Rui!
Stephen Ranson
We welcomed Stephen as the Manager of Kerckhoff Marine Lab Operations in April 2022. Growing up in Southern California along the Pacific coast, Stephen developed a lifelong passion for the ocean. Whether it was exploring the local tide pools, diving in the native kelp forests, or caring for marine organisms in home aquaria, he was destined to pursue a career in marine science. After studying abroad at numerous marine labs and completing his M.S. in Marine Biology at Northeastern University, Stephen continued to explore this fascination through his work in marine husbandry and research. This ranged from installing hundreds of elaborate aquarium displays along the East Coast, to designing and operating coral restoration facilities across the tropics, as well as restoring salmon habitat in the Pacific Northwest. Stephen served as the lead for the state of Hawaii’s first coral restoration nursery and the world’s first commercial coral restoration facility in the Bahamas. Stephen has been fortunate to work within many marine environments spanning various roles within state government, universities, and private organizations, but has always had a strong affinity to the marine ecosystem of the Southern Californian coastline. He knew he would be a perfect fit at Kerckhoff Marine Lab and is excited to continue Caltech’s pursuit of world class research at this historic facility.
Welcome Nate Glasser
We are happy to have Nate occupying space on the second floor of Church while the Resnick Sustainability Center is being constructed. Although new to the role of Director of the Resnick Ecology and Biosphere Engineering Facility, he is not new to BBE.
He received his B.S. in Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His first research experience was under the guidance of Sean Palecek where he worked to engineer new biosensors for genotoxins. He received his Ph.D. at Caltech in the lab of Dianne Newman studying microbial metabolism and did his postdoc with Emily Balskus at Harvard where he studied halogenase enzymes and cyanobacterial natural products.
The Resnick Ecology and Biosphere Engineering Facility (EBE) will support experiments which require precise environmental control and monitoring. The temporary facility, located in Church 258, will provide resources for the isolation, cultivation, and genetic manipulation of diverse microorganisms with an emphasis on the rhizosphere. It will also serve as a center for microscopy-based spatial transcriptomics to better understand biology at the microscale. The full EBE facility will open in late 2024/early 2025 as part of the new Resnick Sustainability Center, which is currently under construction by the Beckman lawn. Approximately 2/3 of the EBE space will be geared for microscale studies, featuring an expanded microscopy suite, environmental control chambers, bioreactors, and more. The remaining space will provide growth chambers for controlled studies of plants and soils.
Celebrating the Life of Bill Lease
The division was honored to celebrate the life of Bill Lease on June 28, 2022 in the Alles Courtyard. Festivities included a bench dedication, ribbon cutting, shared memories and indulging in softball inspired goodies! Bill was known for organizing a Biology softball team and beer hour. It was a heartfelt event full of friends and family.
Beckman Institute Approves New Pilot Program Focused on Single Cell Culture and Functional Characterization
Single cell techniques have provided for exciting new insights in various areas of biology in the last several years. To leverage these methods for their studies of immune responses and recognition, the Bjorkman lab has recently obtained a Berkeley Lights Beacon instrument for use for both their research and for diverse projects at Caltech.
The Beacon is a microfluidic platform for the isolation, culture, characterization, and recovery of single cells. The Beacon allows for the physical manipulation of cells with light. In particular, the Beacon enables the experimentalist to move individual cells in and out of one nanoliter compartments within special microfluidic chips. Across these chips, the Beacon’s fluorescent imaging capabilities can be used for various assays to characterize protein secretion, reporter expression, and more. Coupled with single cell recovery and sequencing studies, the Beacon allows single cell phenotypes to be linked to single cell gene expression for thousands of individual cells isolated within a chip.
In close collaboration with the Bjorkman lab, Kate Malecek will oversee this instrument and its use by research groups at Caltech. Kate Malecek is a biochemist with experience in protein expression and characterization, and with microfluidic technologies and single cell approaches. Prior to her arrival at Caltech on March 1, 2022, Kate received her PhD from the University of Chicago, was a postdoctoral fellow at the Whitehead Institute, and was a senior scientist and group leader at a protein design startup called Evozyne.
The Beacon was recently granted status as a Beckman Institute Pilot Program, effective fall 2022, with Pamela Bjorkman serving as faculty adviser. As a Pilot Program, the goal of the Beacon Center is to work with Caltech groups to advance their research using the unique capabilities of the Beacon. Kate is excited about her initial work on the Beacon in collaboration with the Bjorkman lab, and she looks forward to working with others on campus to gain new insights from this powerful instrument. Please contact her at kmalecek@caltech.edu to learn more about the Beacon.
Congratulations to BBE Staff for their Dedicated Service!
The 67th Annual Staff Service & Impact Awards was held on June 2nd in Beckman Auditorium. The ceremony was presented in a hybrid fashion with a limited amount of in-person attendance along with a virtual live-stream.
Caltech's Staff Service & Impact Awards celebrates the outstanding community of staff members and the important work they do to advance the mission of the Institute.
Service awards are presented in recognition of length of service, with the first award bestowed at the 10-year mark. This year, more than 200 staff members were recognized for their performance excellence and commitment to Caltech.
Congratulations to the following BBE staff:
Student News
Commencement 2022
Caltech's 128th Commencement took place on Friday, June 10, 2022 on Beckman Mall. This years Commencement Speaker was Jad Abumrad, creator of Radiolab. Watch the festivities HERE.
Congratulations to Weiyi Tang, recipient of the Dr. NAGENDRANATH REDDY BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES THESIS PRIZE 2022! This prize is awarded to the graduating female Ph.D. candidate in the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering who has produced the most outstanding thesis in the biological sciences and engineering for the past year.
Congratulations to Magnus Adrian Gero Hoffmann, recipient of the LAWRENCE L. AND AUDREY W. FERGUSON PRIZE 2022! The Ferguson prize is awarded to the graduating Ph.D. candidate in biology and biological engineering who has produced the outstanding doctoral thesis for the past year.
Congratulations to Rashi Rajesh Jeeda, recipient of the PARK S. NOBEL PRIZE FOR EXCELLENCE IN BIOLOGY AND BIOLOGICAL ENGINEERING 2022! This prize is awarded to an undergraduate student demonstrating outstanding achievements within the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering at Caltech.
Fullbright Fellowships
Undergraduates Nivedita Kanrar and Megan Wang have been selected to receive Fulbright fellowships. The Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program, created by the U.S. Congress in 1946, is a cultural exchange program that offers grants to students who wish to perform research or pursue creative activities abroad.
Nivedita Kanrar, a senior majoring in bioengineering, will study antibiotic resistance at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain.
Megan Wang is a senior majoring in biology. The Fulbright fellowship will take her to the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, where she will work on developing high-throughput technologies to study infectious diseases, with the ultimate goal of better understanding the molecular pathways that are perturbed by proteins in SARS-CoV-2—the virus that causes COVID-19.
Welcome Graduate Students!
Welcome New Grad Students!
Biology
- Chiara Berruto, UCLA, Microbiology
- JOSEPH BOKTOR, Johns Hopkins, Computational Biology
- Eliopoulos Olivia, Barnard, Genetics
- Aria Fasse, U of Pennsylvania, Systems Biology
- Jonathan Fox, UCLA, Molecular Biology
- Anthony Gutierrez, Cal State Northridge, Microbiology
- Surya Narayanan Hari, Stanford, Cell Biology
- Muhammad Abdullah Jauhar, LUMS, Developmental Biology
- Nicholas Markarian, UCLA, Computational Biology
- Kimberley Muchenje, Davidson College, Molecular Biology
- Angie Priso Fils, U of paris Est Creteil, Biochemistry
- Joani Viliunas, U of British Columbia, Developmental Biology
- Benjamin Yeh, Stanford, Developmental Biology
Biological Engineering
- Yujin An, Kaist, Neuroengineering
- Minakshi Ashok, University of Oxford, Systems Biology
- George Daghlian, UCLA, Neuroengineering
- Daniel Graves, UC Davis, Synthetic Biology
- Cindy Liu, UCLA, Cell and Tissue Engineering
- Nikos Mynhier, UC Santa Cruz, Bioimaging
- Christopher Neimeth, Stanford, Synthetic Biology
- Blade Olson, USC, Cell and Tissue Engineering
Computation and Neural Systems
- Aman Bhargava, U of Toronto, Computational Neuroscience
- Zachary Diamandis, Harvard, Decision Making
- Yingxi Jin, NYU, Computational Neuroscience
- Panagiota Loizidou, Ecole Normale Superieure, Molecular, Cellular, Systems Neuroscience
- Nathaniel Nyema, U of Pennsylvania, Molecular, Cellular, Systems Neuroscience
- Brenna Outten, Furman University, Computational Neuroscience
Neurobiology
- Ayomiposi Adewakun, NYU, Systems Biology
- Yun Chiu, National Yang-Ming University, Systems Biology
- Wongyo Jung, Kaist, Systems Biology
- Man Ching Sin, Cornell, Systems Biology
- Honami Tanaka, Mount Holyoke, Systems Biology
- Mackenzie Thurston, UCLA, Systems Biology
- Trevor Wolf, CSU Channel Islands, Systems Biology
New Faculty Associates, Postdocs, Visiting Associates and Visitors
Faculty Associates
- Margaret McFall-Ngai (Carnegie Institute)
- Edward Ruby (Carnegie Institute)
Postdoc Scholar
- Sina Booeshaghi (Pachter)
- Ron Hadas (Zernicka-Goetz)
- Lu Liu (Oka)
Visiting Associate
- Kebreten Manaye (Wold)
- Mani Ramaswami (Anderson)
- Carl Urbinati (Guttman)
Visitor
- Adrian Brueckner (Parker)
- Bryan Yoo (Mazmanian)
After a Covid related hiatus, Dianne Newman, NAS class of 2019 and Ellen Rothenberg, NAS class 2021 walked the stage and signed the book of members at the NAS induction ceremonies on April 29th. Membership in the academy is considered one of the highest honors a scientist can receive.
Dianne Newman is the Gordon M. Binder/Amgen Professor of Biology and Geobiology, Executive Officer for Biology and Biological Engineering, and Ecology and Biosphere Engineering Initiative Lead for the Resnick Sustainability Institute. Her research focuses on how microorganisms conserve energy under conditions where oxygen is scarce—from sediments to soils to chronic infections. She employs a variety of (bio)chemical tools to facilitate environmentally informed mechanistic studies of diverse bacteria. She was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2016.
Ellen Rothenberg investigates the regulatory mechanisms that control blood stem cell differentiation and the development of T lymphocytes—white blood cells that play an important role in immunity. In 2018, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; in 2017, she was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2019, Rothenberg was selected as a member of the inaugural class of Distinguished Fellows of the American Association of Immunologists. Rothenberg joined the Caltech faculty in 1982 and has received numerous honors, including the 2016 Richard P. Feynman Prize for Excellence in Teaching.
Bil Clemons, Michael Elowitz, and Linda Hsieh-Wilson Elected to National Academy of Sciences, Class of 2022
Bil Clemons uses the tools of biochemistry to explore the molecular building blocks of life. The structural biologists in the Clemons lab work on problems related to how membrane proteins are made and inserted into cell membranes and the chemistry of enzymes that catalyze the transfer of sugars onto lipids. The work aims toward basic biological understanding that may lead to the development of novel therapeutics. He joined the Caltech faculty in 2005.
Michael Elowitz works in the fields of synthetic and systems biology. His research aims to enable the programming of new biological functions with molecular circuits of interacting genes and proteins. His lab's main strategy is to design and engineer synthetic circuits that allow cells to process, remember, and communicate information, often in unexpected ways. By designing synthetic circuits, his group is discovering fundamental principles of natural biological circuit design and providing foundations for new kinds of biomedical therapies. He joined the Caltech faculty in 2003.
Linda Hsieh-Wilson studies the molecular bases of fundamental processes in the brain using organic synthesis, biochemistry, molecular and cellular biology, and neurobiology. Her research aims to better understand how proteins and carbohydrate molecules are involved in the development of neurons and communication between neurons, and how these processes contribute to neuroplasticity and neurological disorders. She joined the Caltech faculty in 2000.
Behind The Book with David Anderson
David Anderson and Psychology, Neuroscience and Biology Professor Ralph Adolphs discussed David's new book " The Nature of the Beast" at a virtual event on May 17th.
Does your dog get sad when you leave for the day? Does your cat purr because she loves you? Do bears attack when they're angry? You can't very well ask them.
In fact, scientists haven't been able to reach a consensus on whether animals even have emotions, like humans do, let alone how to study them. Yet studies of animal emotion are critical for understanding human emotion and mental illness.
While emotions are something that humans experience every day of our lives, we know relatively little about how our brains create them. While humans infer that animals also have emotions, especially the pets that we love, some studies argue that emotions – or at least emotional feelings – are something uniquely human, like the ability to make music, write poetry or perform mathematics.
Anderson describes a new way to look at the submerged part of the emotional iceberg – the non-conscious part – and to study whether and how it is produced by the brains of animals as diverse as mice and fruit flies. To do this, he deconstructs emotions into basic, biological building blocks, and investigates how these core features – or "emotion primitives:" -- control universal behaviors, such as fight and flight, in animals.
Join "Behind the Book" in conversation with authors who explore the intersection of arts, science, and society through the lens of their life experiences and family histories. An audience Q&A follows each event.
Faculty Awards
Joe Parker and Shasha Chong Receive Funding from the Pew Charitable Trusts
Joe Parker and affiliated faculty Shasha Chong have received honors from the Pew Charitable Trusts. Joseph Parker, Assistant Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering, has been named a Pew Biomedical Scholar. Shasha Chong, Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Ronald and JoAnne Willens Scholar, will join the 2022 class of Pew–Stewart Scholars for Cancer Research.
Lulu Qian Receives Schmidt Science Polymaths Award
Lulu Qian, Professor of Bioengineering, receives the Schmidt Science Polymaths Award. The Polymath program makes long-term bets on recently-tenured professors with remarkable track records, promising futures, and a desire to explore risky new research ideas across disciplines.
Magdalena Zernika-Goetz Receives Honors from the NOMIS Foundation
Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, Bren Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering and affiliated faculty member with Caltech's Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience, has been awarded the 2022 NOMIS Distinguished Scientist and Scholar Award. Established in 2016, the award is presented to "pioneering scientists and scholars who, through their innovative, groundbreaking research, have made a significant contribution to their respective fields and who inspire the world around them," according to the NOMIS Foundation.
Published Papers
Imagine your garbage disposal is on the fritz. After a few futile attempts to fix it yourself, you reach for your phone. Although you intend to call the plumber, you suddenly realize that you have in fact dialed your mother. Ugh. A quick apology to mom, and you move on to contact the plumber. Read Article Featured in Science
Your cells need to get around. For example, immune cells must roam around your body to locate sites of infection, and neurons must migrate to specific positions in the brain during development. But cells do not have eyes to see where they are going. Instead, like a dog sniffing out the source of some delicious smells, a cell figures out how to get to some target by detecting chemicals in its environment through receptors peppered across the cell's surface. For example, the site of an infection will emit certain molecules, and a white blood cell will follow this trail of signals to find their source. Read Article Featured in Cell Systems
Most human hearts look nearly identical—muscle cells in the same places, blood vessel structures in the same orientations. Organs such as hearts or stomachs look alike and function the same across individual organisms in a species because cells follow rigorous processes during development that get them precisely where they need to go. Read Article Featured in Developmental Cell
A new type of vaccine provides protection against a variety of SARS-like betacoronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2 variants, in mice and monkeys, according to a study led by researchers in the laboratory of Caltech's Pamela Bjorkman, the David Baltimore Professor of Biology and Bioengineering. Read Article Featured in Science
Edward Lewis (1918-2004) Professor of Biology “The Bridge” to Modern Developmental Biology
When Edward “Ed” Lewis retired, becoming the Thomas Hunt Morgan Professor of Biology, Emeritus, in 1988, he had logged some fifty years of research on Drosophila – the common fruit fly. His interest dated back to high school, right at the time Morgan won the Nobel Prize for discovering “heredity transmission mechanisms in Drosophila.” As Lewis explained in a Caltech campus speech, after winning his own Nobel Prize in 1995, both he and Morgan had been recognized for demonstrating “the power of genetics to attack basic problems in biology.” In pursuit of those problems over the decades, Lewis bridged the prevailing experimental genetics research of his early career to the creation of modern developmental biology and the revolution in molecular genetics which continues to shape the field.
Born in 1918 in Wilkes-Barre, Lewis’s parents struggled during the Great Depression but still managed to buy him a flute, which he played all through his life, and sometimes in his lab. His musical talents helped secure a scholarship to Bucknell University before he transferred to the University of Minnesota, where he completed his undergraduate degree under the mentorship of C.P. Oliver. Lewis began his graduate studies at Caltech in 1939 to continue research on Drosophila as a member of Alfred Sturtevant’s research group. As a student and eventual colleague of T.H. Morgan at Columbia, Sturtevant (1891-1970) was a pioneer in the genetic mapping of Drosophila and had created the very first genetic map of a chromosome in any organism. Over three intensive years, Lewis completed his thesis work on the second chromosome of Drosophila, focusing on how genetic mutations can occur by chromosomal rearrangement. As preparation to enter wartime service, in 1942 Lewis earned a master’s in meteorology, and over the next four years he conducted weather forecasting for the Army Air Corps. Caltech Chairman Robert Millikan made good on his promise to hire Lewis at the conclusion of his military duties, and in 1946 he joined the faculty and re-engaged in Drosophila research. That same year Lewis met and married Pamela Harrah, a talented artist and lab technician who had come to Caltech as part of the new research group led by George Beadle (1903-1989; Nobel Laureate 1958).
Lewis’s work style was equal parts tenacious and inventive. He spent long and late hours in his lab devising experiments that resolved numerous and fundamental questions in genetics. They included: identifying reciprocity of crossover products from a single meiosis; devising transvection to detect chromosome rearrangement; using X-rays to induce new mutations; and using novel rearrangement techniques to construct deletions to build a functional genetic map. Lewis picked up upon a mutation bithorax found in 1915 by Calvin Bridges, another of Morgan’s student who moved to Caltech with Morgan and Sturtevant. This was a striking mutation because the identity of the segment carrying the fly’s haltere was changed so that it produced a wing – a fly with four wings instead of two. Bit by bit, Lewis’s technical innovations and observational analysis revealed bithorax to be part of a complex locus of a small number of protein coding genes controlling thoracic and abdominal development, and which were controlled by cis-regulatory elements. These elegant genetic findings were confirmed when the locus was sequenced in 1995. Lewis had laid the foundation for subsequent work by others showing the conservation of these genes and their function in regulating even our own human body plan. This revolutionized biologists’ understanding of how development of specific body regions is genetically regulated by a common mechanism in all animals.
In parallel to his Drosophila work, Lewis made singular impacts on public awareness toward radiation exposure and cancer risk. Prior to his involvement, the prevailing theory among biologists was that a threshold limit minimized the development of cancer resulting from exposure to everything from X-rays to atom bombs. In Congressional testimony and in his writings, Lewis argued that exposure risks could be linear without threshold, which led to significant changes in public policy mandates for enhanced protection against radiation exposure.
In his closing comments at the Caltech celebration following his Nobel Prize, the ever-humble Lewis celebrated his mentor Sturtevant as the century’s greatest geneticist, while he, Lewis, cast himself always his student. Whatever the merits of this ranking, the biological puzzles that Lewis unlocked remain an anchor point for genetics research of the modern era.
Research Article by David Zierler, Director, Caltech Science Heritage Project
Welcome Carnegie's Division of Biosphere Sciences and Engineering!
The Carnegie Institution for Science is moving its life and environmental science activities to Pasadena over the next few years. Carnegie's Division of Biosphere Sciences and Engineering will eventually be located at the corner of Holliston and Green street, just a short walk from Caltech. For the next several years, while the building is being designed and constructed, several Carnegie Science investigators will be located at Caltech, including Margaret McFall-Ngai, the inaugural director for the new Division, and Ned Ruby. Their labs are located on the second floor of Church.
See what Carnegie is up to! Carnegie Biosphere Sciences & Engineering Newsletter
Please email Agnes Tong (agnest@caltech.edu) to be added to the mailing list.
CEMI Turns a Decade Old!
The Center for Environmental Microbial Interactions just celebrated their 10th Birthday! The CEMI’s mission is to enable Caltech researchers to tackle important problems involving microbes in bold and innovative ways. Find more information HERE
Library News
Members of the Caltech community are familiar with using the “CaltechConnect” button to connect to Library-provided electronic resources. Over time, other “Caltech Connect” services have been provided on campus. To distinguish this Library service from the others, they have announced "Get It @ Caltech”!
If you are on campus, this updated button takes you to full-text electronic books and journals if the Library subscribes, or directs you to DocuServe. If you are off campus, you’ll be asked to provide your access.caltech credentials before being routed to content or to DocuServe.
Look for the updated button in LibSearch, on journal websites, and in your favorite databases such as Web of Science, PubMed, and SciFinder.
For more information , please contact Kristin Briney, BBE Librarian (briney@caltech.edu - Ext. 4197)
Check Out the BBE RESOURCES Page!
Have questions? The Resources page can help! You will find useful links such as:
- Division Contacts
- Division Calendar
- Conference Room Reservations
- Human Resources Forms
- Holiday Schedule
- Incoming Postdoc Information
- Procurement Guides and Resources...and so much more!
Scan the barcode to be taken directly to the Resources page or click here.
Fisher Scientific Stockroom Open and Operating!
Located in Alles 181 - Hours: Monday through Friday: 8:00am - 12:00pm and 1:00pm - 5:00pm
Representative: Raymond Dunn, ext. 3108, raymond.dunn@thermofisher.com
Services Offered:
- Life sciences supply center
- Touchscreen kiosk
- Updated products and equipment
Did You Know...
Caltech has three certified arborists who manage the campus trees?
- Bryan Vejar, Campus Arborist/Tree Worker - Certified Arborist
- Ryan Robitaille, Grounds Supervisor - Certified Arborist
- Delmy Emerson, Director of Buildings and Grounds - Certified Arborist and Tree Risk Assessment
Check out ArborPro, an interactive map of the trees on campus. ArborPro is a tree management software that was developed by a Urban Forestry Consulting Firm that bears the same name. Caltech has been doing business with ArborPro for a number of years which has evolved and expanded to meet the needs of tree care managers and help maintain a comprehensive tree inventory. Caltech was one of the early users and served as a beta test site as the program was being developed, and provided feedback on detail fields that would be helpful to other tree managers. The Caltech arborist team used GIS to inventory all the trees and now has web-based capability that enables them to make updates in real time.
Bryan Vejar has created Caltech Tree Corps, a service project of the Caltech Community that includes Staff, Faculty, Students and Community advocates promoting Urban Forest Equity, Native Landscaping and Science-based Tree Health Care.
Thursday, August 4, 10am - Procurement Update for BBE Requisitioners - Sign Up Here, Zoom
Friday, September 2 - Summer Term Ends
September 6-15 - Biology Boot Camp
September 15-17 - International Student Orientation
September 19-23 - Grad Student Orientation
All upcoming events can be found on the BBE Calendar
This newsletter is intended to be a valuable resource for the Division of BBE. Please email your feedback and ideas to bbenewsletter@caltech.edu
Photo Credits (with the exception of staff and professor headshots): Katie Fisher, Lauren Breeyear Joan Sullivan