Schedule

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Wednesday, April 3, 2024 - Memorial Union

Morning Events in South Ballroom
8:00 - 8:45 Breakfast, Networking, and Registration
8:45 - 9:00

Introduction and announcements - Anurag Das, Mehak Kapoor, and Brian Zebosi - Directors of the Symposium

Opening remarks - Dean William Graves, Dean of the Graduate College

9:00 - 10:00Keynote speaker - Dr. Akhila Rajan - Associate Professor - Fred Hutch Cancer Center
"Lard of the flies: Investigating how fat cells communicate with the brain"
-Introduction by Anurag Das 
1st Session - Student Oral Talks (South Ballroom)
10:00 - 10:15Alyssa Hohman - Genetics and Genomics
"Human conserved drosophila miR-6 inhibition has profound impact on lipid accumulation in the heart while mitigating age-related cardiac dysfunction"
 - Advisor: Elizabeth McNeill, FSHN
10:15 - 10:30Ankur Kumar - Genetics and Genomics
"The Interplay of peroxisome and mitochondrial dynamics during aging in Drosophila melanogaster"
-Advisor:  Hua Bai, GDCB
10:30 - 10:45Solomon Eshun - Applied Mathematics
"Estimating Gender Differences in Glioblastoma Outcomes using Propensity Score Matching"
-Advisor:  
10:45 - 11:00Astha Tuladhar - MCDB
"E3 ubiquitin ligase CUL3-KLHL41 regulates ER homeostasis in skeletal muscle"
-Advisors:  Jeff Essner, GDCB and Jinoh Kim, BMS
11:00 - 11:15Anurag Das - Neuroscience
"Peroxisomal Gene Expression and protein import are regulated by circadian oscillations in Drosophila Glial cells:Title - Peroxisomal Gene Expression and protein import are regulated by circadian oscillations in Drosophila Glial cells"
-Advisor:  Hua Bai, GDCB
11:15 - 12:30 - 1st Poster Presentation (Great Hall)

 

Poster No.   

 

Presenters name, graduate/undergraduate program, poster title, and advisor

1

Sage Becker - Immunobiology
"Impact of butyrate on short-chain fatty acid receptor expression in porcine monocytes"
-Advisor: Crystal Loving, USDA-ARS

3

Molly Kroeger - Immunobiology
"First detection of PCV4 in the United States and its association with PCV2 and OCV3 coinfection"
-Advisor: Pablo Pineyro, VDPAM

5

Claudia Carrillo - Nutritional Sciences
"Low to moderate doses of dietary resistant starch and a renin-angiotensin system inhibitor exhibit nephroprotective effects through similar mechanisms in a preclinical model of diabetes"
-Advisor:  Matthew Rowling, FSHN

7

Kelby Kies - Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
"Identifying key regulators of uterine function during pregnancy"
-Advisor:  Geetu Tuteja, GDCB 

9

Fazhir Kayondo - Genetics and Genomics
"A genome-wide association study of stress hormone levels in hair of young healthy pigs"
-Advisor:  Jack Dekkers

11

Leonora James - Genetics and Genomics
"Fatty acids inferred from milk spectral are predictive of feed intake in lactating Holstein cows"
-Advisor:  James Koltes, Animal Science

13

Claudia Lorena Arriaga - Nutritional Sciences
"Effects of corn-resistant starch consumption along with intake of ACE inhibitor, captopril, on metabolic syndrome biomarkers in a type-2 Diabetes rodent-model"
-Advisor:  

15

Manuela Chaves - Genetics and Genomics
"Characterizing the Activating Transcription Factor 1 (ATF1)"
-Advisor:  Julien Roche

17

David Hall - Genetics and Genomics
"Mosquito immune cells enhance dengue and Zika virus dissemination in Aedes aegypti"
-Advisor: Ryan Smith, PPEM

19

Henri Chung - Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
"EpicTope: narrating protein sequence features to identify non-disruptive epitope tagging sites"
-Advisor:  Iddo Friedberg, VMPM

21

Catherine Fonder - Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology
"Electrical Stimulation Effects on Adult Rat Hippocampal Progenitor Cell Behavior"
-Advisor:  Don Sakaguchi, GDCB

23

Mubashrah Mahmood - Animal Science
"Cross-Species Sperm Proteomic Analysis for Human Male Fertility Model Establishment"
-Advisor:  Karl Kerns, Animal Science

25

Allison Treibe - Genetics and Genomics
"The Role of GAUT Proteins in Arabidopsis thaliana Root Development"
-Advisor:  Dior Kelley, GDCB

27

Katherine Gisi - Electrical and Computer Engineering
"Biomedical Imaging Datasets using PA as the Ground Truth"
-Advisor:  Pramanik Manojit

12:00 - 1:00 - Lunch (South Ballroom) ISU Dining - Classic Mediterranean

2nd Session - Student Oral Talks (South Ballroom)
1:00 - 1:15Megan DeTemple - Plant Biology
"Novel use of CWDEs as a tool to elucidate cell wall-mediated signaling during pathogenesis"
-Advisor: Olga Zabotina, BBMB
1:15 - 1:30Brian Zebosi - Genetics and Genomics
"An effective and inexpensive maize seed chipping protocol using chipping piers: Its applications in small-scale genotyping laboratories and marker-assisted breeding"
-Advisor: Erik Vollbrecht, GDCB
1:30 - 1:45Elizabeth Glynne - Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
"The effect of miniaturization on the evolution of sexual size dimorphism in geckos"
-Advisor: Dean Adams, EEOB
1:45 - 2:00Panchali Chakraborty - Plant Biology
"Investigating the dynamic regulation of plasmodesmata during bacterial infection"
-Advisor: Kyaw Aung, GDCB
2:00 - 2:15Kaitlin Higgins - Genetics and Genomics
"Time point analysis in maize reveals dynamic expression of imprinted genes and three imprinted zeins"
-Advisor: Sarah Anderson, GDCB
2:15 - 2:30Break
2:30 - 3:30Keynote speaker - Jacob Hoyle - Lead Research Scientist - Living Carbon
"Biotech Trees for Carbon Storage"
Introduction by Sabrena Rutledge
3:30 - 5:00 - 2nd Poster Presentation (Great Hall)

Poster No. 

Presenters name, graduate/undergraduate program, poster title, and advisor

2

Prathyusha Cheguri - Genetics and Genomics
"Photothermal Effects on Inflorescence Development in Poa bulbosa"
-Advisor:  Shui-Zhang Fei, Horticulture

4

Joseph DeTemple - Genetics and Genomics
"Incorporating gene network information into the prediction of maize flowering time "
-Advisor:  Jianming Yu, Agronomy 

6

Ashley Paulsen - Genetics and Genomics
"The MARS community: a synthetic community to identify rules governing maize rhizosphere microbiome assembly"
-Advisor:  Larry Halverson, PPEM

8

Marissa Roghair Stroud - Microbiology
"Design and optimization of a robust CRISPR interference system to identify Pseudomonas putida genes essential for rhizosphere microbiome formation"
-Advisor:  Larry Halverson, PPEM

10

Laura Zinnel - Mathematics
"Detection of Brain Midline Shift using 2D and 3D Convolutional Neural Networks"
-Advisor: Sarah Bentil

12

Anna Maria Luciano - Postdoc
"Characterization of a zebrafish model of MYC-driven acute myeloid leukemia"

14

Matthew Wendt - Genetics and Genomics
"Multi-environment multivariate genome-wide association studies identify candidate loci underlying cuticular wax accumulation and composition on maize silks"
-Advisor:  Marna Yandeau-Nelson

16

Kassidy Sullivan - Biology and Statistics
"Arabidopsis as a model for spontaneous haploid genome doubling in maize"
-Advisor:  Sarah Pfeffer

18

Claudia Carrillo - Nutritional Sciences
"Disruption of Ovarian One-Carbon Metabolism in the Agouti Mouse"
-Advisor:  Kevin Schalinske, FSHN

20

Beatriz Pereira - Neuroscience
"Single-nuclei RNA-Sequencing: heterogeneity of striatal astrocytes and the effect of stress"
-Advisor:  Elizabeth McNeill, FSHN

22

Anthony Sillman - Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology
"Identification of Hemogenic Endothelial Cells Through a Multi-omics Approach"
-Advisor:  Raquel Espin-Palazon, GDCB

24

Alexandra Keller - Genetics and Genomics
"Identification of distinct proteome differences between fresh and cryopreserved bull spermatozoa"
-Advisor:  Karl Kerns, Animal Science

26

Xiaohan Jiang - Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
"Anomaly detection for breed purity analysis"
-Advisor:  Juan Steibel, Animal Science

Thursday, April 4, 2024 - Hach Hall - Thiel Atrium

 - The Creative Arts Showcase will be located in the south side of the Thiel Atrium. 

8:00 - 8:45 - breakfast (Panera) and networking
8:45 - 9:00 - Welcome and opening remarks - Anurag Das, Mehak Kapoor, and Brian Zebosi - Directors of the Symposium
3rd Session - Student Oral Talks - Hach Hall - Thiel Atrium
9:00 - 9:15Xiaoyi "Chelsea" Cheng - Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology
"Nod1-dependent NF-kB activation initiates hematopoietic stem cell specification in response to small Rho GTPases"
- Advisor:  Raquel Espin-Palazon, GDCB 
9:15 - 9:30Pengxin Yang - Biochemistry
"Definition of regulatory elements and transcription factors controlling immune cell gene expression at single cell resolution using single nucleus ATAC-seq"
-Advisor: Chris Tuggle, Animal Science
9:30 - 9:45Chinmayi Gudi - Chemical Engineering
"An Engineered Variant of E. coli Nissle Unveils Enhanced Transformation Efficiency and Versatility in Probiotic Engineering"
9:45 - 10:00Break
10:00 - 11:00Keynote speaker - Dr. Joan Lunney - Senior Research Scientist - USDA Animal Parasitic Diseases Laboratory
"Combining immunology and genomics research to improve pig health and biomedical research"
 - Introduction by Vishesh Bhatia
4th Session - Student Oral Talks - Hach Hall - Thiel Atrium
11:00 - 11:15An Phan - Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
"A Longitudinal Analysis of Biases in Function Annotation and Publication Mentions in the Human Proteome"
-Advisor:  Claus Kadelka, Math
11:15 - 11:30Abbigail McCune - Genetics and Genomics
"An investigation of Stat3 in Grna-driven myeloid differentiation"
-Advisor:  Raquel Espin-Palazon
11:30 - 11:45Sabrena Rutledge -  Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
"Improving analysis and interpretation of single-cell sequencing approaches"
-Advisor:  Geetu Tuteja, GDCB
11:45 - 12:00Nicole Kling - Nutritional Sciences
"Trust in nutritional science is moderately high but depends on political and religious beliefs"
-Advisor:  Lorraine Lanningham-Foster, FSHN
12:00 - 1:00Lunch -  Schonert's Corporate Catering (boxed lunches)
5th Session - Student Oral Talks - Hach Hall - Thiel Atrium
1:00 - 1:15Parnal Joshi - Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
"A comparison of protein function annotations of model species to orthologous proteins in humans"
-Advisor: Iddo Friedberg, VMPM
1:15 - 1:30Yuwei Zhang - Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology
"Development and Quantitative Analysis of a 3D Scaffold-Based Model for Simulating Tumor Microenvironment Using Light Sheet Microscopy"
-Advisor:  Jing Wang, Chemical and Biological Engineering
1:30 - 1:45Yunhui Qi - Statistics 
"Detection of Gene Expression Mid-parent Heterosis with Single Biological Replicate"
-Advisor:  Peng Liu, Statistics
1:45 - 2:00Break
2:00 - 3:00Keynote Speaker - Dr. Ming "Tommy" Tang - Director of Computational Biology at Immunita Therapeutics 
"Bridging the Gap: How To Learn Computational Biology the <s>Hard<s> Right Way"
- Introduction by Mehak Kapoor
3:00 - 4:00

Closing remarks by Associate Dean Heather Greenlee, Graduate College

Awards Ceremony

  • Student Oral Presentation - 1st place, 2nd place, 3rd place, people's choice
  • Student Poster Presentation - 1st place, 2nd place, 3rd place, people's choice
  • Creative Component - 1st place, 2nd place, 3rd place, people's choice
  • Lauter Award for Graduate Student Creativity and Research Excellence 

Thank you for your interest in the 2nd Annual Biological Sciences Symposium.  Dates for the 3rd Annual Interdisciplinary Biological Sciences will be announced soon!