graduate students

On Aug. 29, the Office of Graduate Student Services hosted a new graduate student orientation and lunch at Exley Science Center. In 2017-18, Wesleyan welcomes 15 new PhDs; 12 MAs; 17 BA/MAs (all received a BA in May 2017); nine foreign language teaching assistants in romance languages, Asian languages and Arabic languages; and two new writing fellows. During the course of orientation, the new graduate students were introduced to the Graduate Student Association, Wesleyan culture and Wesleyan resources that can support their academic career and life at Wesleyan. Students were introduced to Wesleyan staff representing student accounts, public safety, sustainability initiatives, residential…

All cells — bacterial or human — secrete up to 10 or 20 percent of the proteins that they make. Human secreted proteins, for example, include components of serum, hormones, growth factors that promote cell development during embryogenesis and tissue remodeling, and proteins that provide the basis for immune cell signaling during infection or when fighting cancer. The secretion process, however, isn't an easy feat for cells, as they need to move the proteins across a membrane through a channel. Transport requires the formation of a hairpin, formed by an initiator protein. In a recent study, Don Oliver, the Daniel Ayres Professor…

This summer, graduate student Suhail Yusuf Khan and his band Yorkston Thorne Khan are performing in music festivals around the world. The band is comprised of Khan, a sarangi violinist and a vocalist of Indian classical music; James Yorkston, a folk singer and guitarist; and Jon Thorne, a jazz bassist. Yorkston, Thorne and Khan performed at the Glastonbury Festival June 25 in Somerset, England. Afterwards, the group was mentioned in The Telegraph's "10 highlights" article written by Alice Vincent: While it's easy to stumble upon a whole new field or an excellent hidden bar at Glastonbury, the best festivals give you a…

This spring, a research team from Wesleyan traveled to Death Valley National Park to explore the ways bacteria diversifies in extreme environments. Death Valley, located about 130 miles west of Las Vegas, is a below-sea-level basin known for being the hottest place on earth and driest place in North America. The average rainfall is less than 2 inches, annually. "National parks are ideal for research, in general, because the land is protected indefinitely from commercial development," said team leader Fred Cohan, professor of biology, professor of environmental studies. "Death Valley is a nice model system for exobiology because of its extreme…

Karen Ocorr PhD '83, a professor at the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in La Jolla, Calif., is using fruit flies to investigate how long-term weightlessness might affect the cardiovascular health of astronauts. Ocorr’s research team packed 400 adult fruit flies and 2,000 eggs in a capsule, which will be launched by a rocket in June and return to Earth after spending a month docked in space. In a New York Times article published on June 2, titled “Fruit Flies and Mice to Get New Home on Space Station, at Least Temporarily,” Ocorr explains that although the structure of a…

Wesleyan co-authors published a paper titled “The Stories Tryptophans Tell: Exploring Protein Dynamics of Heptosyltransferase I from Escherichia coli” in the January 2017 issue of Biochemistry. The co-authors include chemistry graduate student Joy Cote; alumni Zarek Siegel ’16 and Daniel Czyzyk, PhD '15; and faculty Erika Taylor, associate professor of chemistry; Ishita Mukerji, the Fisk Professor of Natural Science, professor of molecular biology and biochemistry. Their paper investigates the intrinsic properties of Tryptophan amino acids found within the protein, Heptosyltransferase I, to understand the ways this protein moves during catalysis. Understanding the movement of this protein is an important step in developing…

Music graduate student Suhail Yusuf Khan will be a featured guest artist at the Berklee Indian Ensemble on May 9. In addition, he will conduct a master class on Hindustani music and the sarangi, one of the oldest string instruments featured in North Indian classical music. The sarangi is the only instrument in the world that can emulate all the nuances of the human voice. Played with a bow, this instrument has three main strings and 37 sympathetic strings. Khan started to play the instrument when he was 7 years old. The grandson of the sarangi legend Ustad Sabri Khan, and nephew of…

Men in the U.S. today increasingly believe themselves to be victims of gender discrimination, and there are a record number of recent lawsuits claiming anti-male bias. In a study published in March in Psychology of Men and Masculinity, Assistant Professor of Psychology Clara Wilkins and her co-authors assess the consequences of these perceptions of anti-male bias. Are men who perceive discrimination more likely to discriminate against women? How do beliefs about societal order affect men's evaluations of men and women? The article is co-authored by former post-doctoral fellow Joseph Wellman, now an assistant professor at California State University–San Bernardino, Erika Flavin '14, and…

A group of Wesleyan faculty, students and alumni attended the 48th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodland, Texas March 20-24. The annual conference unites 2,000 international specialists in petrology, geochemistry, geophysics, geology and astronomy to present their latest research in planetary science over the course of several days. Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences and the George I. Seney Professor of Geology Martha Gilmore coordinated Wesleyan's group. While at the event, she presented her work on the oldest rocks on Venus and Mars gully analogues on Earth. A number of her current graduate and undergraduate students attended and several…

Three Wesleyan Molecular Biology and Biochemistry majors received the unique opportunity of presenting their thesis work at the 61st annual Biophysical Society meeting in New Orleans, Feb. 11-15. (more…)

Three faculty and one graduate student co-authored a paper titled “Statistical Coupling Analysis combined with all-atom Molecular Simulation Postulates Dynamical Allosterism in the MutS DNA Mismatch Repair Protein,” published in the March issue of the Journal of Physical Chemistry - Biophysics, published by The American Chemical Society. The authors include David Beveridge, the Joshua Boger University Professor of the Sciences and Mathematics, professor of chemistry, professor of integrative sciences; Manju Hingorani, professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, professor of integrative sciences; Kelly Thayer, visiting assistant professor of computer science; and molecular biology and biochemistry graduate student Bharat Lakhani. This project is…

55 Graduate Students New to Wesleyan

Mukerji, Oliver Co-Author Study in PNAS on Basic Cell Function

Graduate Student Khan Performs at Multiple Summer Music Festivals

Biology Team Samples Drought-Tolerant Bacteria in Death Valley

Ocorr PhD ’83 Sends Fruit Flies into Space for Cardiovascular Research

PhD Candidate King Speaks about Nanomaterials at Graduate Speaker Series

Faculty, Students, Alumnus Co-Author Paper in Biochemistry Journal

Grad Student Khan to Perform with Berklee Indian Ensemble

Wilkins, Alumni Author Paper on Consequences of Perceived Anti-Male Bias

Faculty, Students, Alumni Attend the 48th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference

Students Present Thesis Work at Biophysical Society Meeting

Researchers’ Paper Selected as “Editor’s Choice” by American Chemical Society