January 2013
Dr. Andy Evans became our newest RISE Associate member in January. Andy is a chemist and an expert on nuclear magnetic resonance imaging and its application to the determination of organic molecular structures. He was trained at Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Georgia, the Université de Grenoble, and the University of Western Ontario. His industrial experience was primarily at the Schering-Plough Research Institute, but he also worked at Berlex Laboratories, Jeol (USA), and Varian Associates before retiring as Principal Scientist in the Small Molecule NMR Group at Merck Research Institute.
December 2012
A new article entitled, antimicrobials, drug discovery, and genome mining, has been published online 12/12/12 in Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology by Drew students, Robert Scheffler, Sarah Colmer, and Heather Tynan, along with RISE Fellows, Dr. Arnold Demain and Dr. Vincent Gullo. The impetus for the article was the RISE Honors Seminar in which the three students participated.
November 2012
RISE Fellow, Dr. Ronald Doll, was one of ten recipients of the 2012 Senior Scientist Mentor Program sponsored by the Dreyfus Foundation. The award will be used to fund research students in Drew’s Summer Science Research Institute for the next two years. This is the second such award that Dr. Doll has received.
October 2012
An article by RISE Director Dr. Jon Kettenring in the International Statistical Review (2012), pp 205-218, titled “Statistics Research at Bell labs in the Regulated Monopoly Era,” discusses the circumstances that contributed to its success and raises the question of how modern corporations might achieve some of the same benefits.
Dr. John Eickmeyer, a physicist and engineer, joined RISE as a Fellow on October 15. John recently wound up a distinguished industrial career at Bell Labs and Lucent Technologies in Whippany and General Dynamics in Florham Park. His professional work at these companies was mainly in the areas of transmission systems and accoustic surveillance systems. He received his doctorate in physics from Cornell and his Bachelor of Arts from Carleton, also in physics. Early in his career he worked in particle physics research and did experimental work at CERN in a group headed by Nobel Laureate Carlo Rubia. He served twice on the faculty of the NJ Governor’s School and taught an advanced optics course one year at Drew.
September 2012
RISE Fellow, Dr. Bimal DasMahapatra, has been invited to deliver a lecture in the Section of Environmental Sciences at the 100th Indian Science Congress in January, 2013 at the University of Calcutta. His talk will connect the environment, cancer, and therapeutics.
RISE Fellow Dr. Arnold Demain, and Jaroslav Spizek have written a review chapter on the challenges of the antibiotic crisis in a new volume, Antimicrobial Drug Discovery: Emerging Strategies, edited by G. Tegos and E. Mylonakis, and published by CAB International this year.
June 2012
RISE Associate, Dr. Bill Campbell, published a paper on antiparasitic agents in Current Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, 2012, pp 853-865. The title is “History of Avermectin and Ivermectin, with Notes on the History of Other Macrocyclic Lactone Antiparasitic Agents.” The paper provides a comprehensive review of the history of these drugs with emphasis on “discovery, development and early clinical applications.”
April, 2012
RISE Student Takes First Prize
Drew chemistry major, Tharani Theivakumar, won the Jean Asell Duranna Award from the American Chemical Society for her presentation at the annual Undergraduate Student Research Conference at Fairley Dickenson University on April 27. The conference is sponsored by the North Jersey section of the ACS. RISE Fellow, Dr. Ron Doll, served as mentor for her research. The title of her presentation was “Discovery of Anti-tumor Agents Targeting Mutant p53.” Tharani will receive a cash prize and an ACS award on May 14. For the complete story on the event and other prize winners, see the June issue of The Indicator.
Maria Falzone receives 2012 George deStevens Award
The George deStevens Award for RISE Research honors the memory of the first director of RISE. The 2012 award was presented to Drew sophomore, Maria Falzone. She has been doing accelerated work in the sciences since her days at Old Bridge High School in Matawan. Maria began working with RISE last summer and quickly showed great ability to do research, to organize and document experiments, and to mentor younger students as well. Her research concerns antibiotics. She helped to develop media for the production of two potentially very important ones, platensimycin and platencin. Maria will be continuing her research this summer and plans to turn it into an honors thesis in her senior year. Her long range goal is to be a researcher or a surgeon or maybe both.
Gregory Hunt and Rachel Masia receive Sidney Udenfriend Prizes
The Sidney Udenfriend Prize honors the memory of the second director of RISE and is awarded to students who show exceptional promise for fundamental or applied research. This year we have two winners, Gregory Hunt and Rachel Masia, both of whom have already distinguished themselves in their research work at Drew.
Greg is tackling part of one of today’s most pressing statistical challenges: how to analyze the types of big data sets that are so prevalent modern science. Greg is well under way with his ‘big data’ research project. He plans to work on it over the summer and then turn it into an honors thesis next year.
Rachel is working on a novel cell model of Alzheimer’s disease. She became interested in the subject as a freshman in the RISE Honors Science Seminar and will continue her research this summer in anticipation of writing an honors thesis in her senior year. Her long-term goal is to become a neurosurgeon.
Two Drew Students Win 2012-2013 Barry M.Goldwater Scholarships
Robert Scheffler and Gregory Hunt have been awarded prestigious Goldwater Scholarships for undergraduate students majoring in mathematics, science, and engineering. Robert participated in the RISE Honors Science Seminar last semester, and Gregory has been doing advanced work with RISE for the past two years. Both will be doing research this summer with RISE mentors under the auspices of the Drew Summer Science Program. Read more about their accomplishments on Drew Today.
March, 2012
RISE Associate, Dr. Bill Campbell, will receive an honorary Doctor in Science degree from the University of Dublin at its commencement ceremony in June. Bill is one of the leading parasitologists in the world and well known for his research on ivermectin, a highly effective drug developed by Merck for the treatment of river blindness. For 20 years, he mentored students and taught courses at Drew as a RISE Fellow before relocating to MA in 2010. During that period he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
February, 2012
January, 2012
Wartime Science, Dr. Sidney Udenfriend, Manhattan, and Drew University
Michael Pollak tackled this question in his New York Times column*, Answers to Questions About New York:
Beside the development of the atomic bomb — the Manhattan Project — were there any other crash scientific programs during World War II based in Manhattan?
The answer he gave was “yes” and the example he provided was the “fight against malaria.” In particular, Pollak describes the contributions of Drs. Bernard Brodie and Sidney Udenfriend at Goldwater Memorial Hospital to drugs for successfully fighting this disease.
The complete column is available on The New York Times website.
In 1996, Dr. Udenfriend joined Drew University as the second director of RISE. Full details on his career, including his time at Drew, may be found at http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10830&page=270
See especially, pages 292-294.
* See page MB 3 of the January 29th New York edition.
RISE fellow Ronald Doll and co-authors W. Robert Bishop and Paul Kirshmeier from Merck Research Laboratories wrote a chapter entitled “Farnesyl Transferase Inhibitors: From Targeted Cancer Therapeutic to a Potential Treatment for Progeria” in the book The Enzymes, Vol. 29 published in 2011 by Elsevier, pp. 275-303. The authors write that these FTI inhibitors “were initially designed to inhibit the activity of Ras oncoproteins and represent one of the first attempts to develop a targeted cancer therapy.”
A 3rd edition of Fermentation Microbiology and Biotechnology has been published by CRC Press. RISE fellow, Arnold Demain, is one of six co-editors. This edition includes new chapters on functional genomics, solid-state fermentations, applications of metabolomics to microbial cell factories, and current trends in culturing complex plant tissues for the production of metabolites and elite genotypes. Chapter 4, by Demain and Sergio Sanchez, deals with microbial synthesis of primary metabolites.
December, 2011
The 2011 November/December issue of the Journal of College Science Teaching, a peer-reviewed journal of the National Science Teachers Association, contains an article by Professor Kathleen Madden, Chair of Drew’s Mathematics and Computer Science Department, about the RISE Science Seminar. This course matches science students with RISE fellows on a semester-long research project. The course is part of the Baldwin Honors Program offerings and was made possible by an institutional grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Drew Grad Co-authors Article on Antibiotics
Evan Martens graduated from Drew in 2011 with a major in biology and a minor in public health. He was the most valuable player on the baseball team in his senior year. He also found time to collaborate with RISE fellow, Arnold Demain, on a study of two novel antibiotics, platensimycin and platencin, two potent and non-toxic natural products that are promising for human medicine. Their joint review article about these products appeared in The Journal of Antibiotics (2011), pp 705-710.
After graduation, Evan joined Emergency Medical Associates for whom he works as Clinical Information Manager at St. Barnabas Medical Center. He hopes this experience will help prepare him for medical school, which he hopes to attend in 2013.
November, 2011
Talk at NJIT
RISE director, Jon Kettenring, presented a seminar to the mathematics department at NJIT on November 4. He spoke on how to cope with high dimensionality in massive datasets. The talk was based on recent articles in WIREs Computational Statistics, Vol. 1, 2009, 25-32 and Vol. 3, 2011, 95-103
The Mathematics of Planet Earth
RISE Director, Jon Kettenring, joined 25 other science and mathematics educators in a Sustainable Planet Education Workshop, held at Rutgers in late October. Its purpose was to develop educational modules targeted at core undergraduate mathematics classes using examples and data from sustainability, human interactions with the environment, and climate science. The modules, once tested, will be made freely available on the web and launched at the Joint Math Meetings in 2013 as part of the Mathematics of Planet Earth 2013 initiative (http://www.mpe2013.org).
The Impact of Penicillin
RISE fellow Arnold Demain and co-author Nelson Kardos have published a review paper on the history and impact of penicillin. The paper, “Penicillin: the medicine with the greatest impact on therapeutic outcomes”, appears in the November 2011 issue of the Applied Microbiology and Technology Journal, pages 677-687.
October, 2011
Vincent Gullo wins Charles Porter Award
Congratulations to RISE Fellow Dr. Vincent Gullo, who has recently been awarded the Charles Porter Award by the Society for Industrial Microbiology. This award is given annually to members with an outstanding record of sustained service to the Society.
Dan Riccio, a Drew alumnus who worked with Dr. Miller in RISE, has just completed the requirements for his PhD at the University of North Carolina. This month he will start a 3-year post doctorate in a joint project between the governmental VA laboratory in North Carolina and the Duke University Medical School. We offer our congratulations and look forward to having him present some of his work at a future RISE Seminar.
At Drew, Dan majored in chemistry, graduated with honors in chemistry in 2006, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. His honors thesis was entitled “Gas Chromatographic Studies of Coffee Vapor via Single-Drop Microextraction: a Novel Headspace Sampling Technique.” He also received the 2006 Sidney Udenfriend Prize given by RISE. At UNC, he worked with Dr. Mark Schoenfisch, an analytical chemist, on projects related to the biological properties of NO. His first publication on this work was in Analytical Chemistry in 2008 entitled “Xerogel Optical Sensor Films for Quantitative Detection of Nitroxyl.”
September, 2011
Getting a RISE out of research
The September issue of the National Science Teachers Association publication, NSTA Reports, has a story about RISE with the above title: http://www.nsta.org/publications/news/story.aspx?id=58848
For a related story about Drew grad, Derrick Wood, class of 2004, now a prize winning high school chemistry teacher, go to the NSTA blog.
Dr. Bimal Dasmahaptra appointed RISE fellow
Following six months as a visiting scientist in the RISE program at Drew, Dr Bimal Dasmahapatra has accepted an appointment as a RISE fellow. He retired from Schering Plough as a research fellow after 23 years with the company. Dr. Dasmahapatra has broad experience in drug discovery and is an expert in the fields of oncology and virology. He plans to mentor students in oncology drug discovery research, as he has already begun to do.
April, 2011
The 2011 Georege deStevens Award for RISE Research has been given to Drew sophomore, Yasmine S. Mourad, for her research with RISE Fellow, Dr. Barbara Petrack, and Drew neuroscientist, Professor Roger Knowles. The research involves investigation of the possibility that BDNF can protect neurons in a model of Alzheimer’s disease. (BDNF stands for brain-derived neurotrophic factor.)
This award was established by Mrs. Ruby deStevens in memory of her late husband, a leading chemist and the founder of RISE. The award supports students engaged in cutting-edge research projects under the tutelage of RISE Fellows.
The 2011 Sidney Udenfriend Prize has been awarded to Drew sophomore, Heather M. Tynan, for her research aimed towards new antibiotics and anti-cancer drugs. Under the direction of RISE Fellow, Dr. Arnold Demain, she has contributed to the development of media for the production of two novel antibiotics, platensimycin and platencin. She also found that certain analogs of cisplatin, which is a well-known anti-tumor drug, have antimicrobial activity. This will help in testing these analogs against cancer.
This prize was established in memory of Sidney Udenfriend, the second director of RISE. It is awarded annually to one or more science majors who demonstrate exceptional promise for fundamental or applied research.
Jim McKenna elected SIAM Fellow
March, 2011
Demain Co-Authors Study with Cancer-Fighting Potential
RISE fellow Dr. Arnold Demain co-authored a Johns Hopkins School of Medicine study that unlocks the secrets of “thunder god vine,” a medicinal plant used by the Chinese to treat a variety of conditions. The study was the cover story in this month’s issue of Nature Chemical Biology and could lead to the development of new cancer treatments.
http://www.nature.com/nchembio/journal/v7/n3/abs/nchembio.522.html
February, 2011
January, 2011
For the past 21 years Allen Laskin has been a stalwart RISE fellow, having successfully mentored many Drew students, the last of whom was Amanda Driesse. (The picture above of Allen and Amanda is from the cover of our current RISE brochure.) Allen’s professional accomplishments have been exceptional. He is well known for his work at the interface of basic and industrial research on microorganisms and for professional contributions to the American Society of Microbiology and the Society for Industrial Microbiology. Allen recently retired from RISE although we hope and expect that he will stay in close touch. He will be honored at a RISE meeting after the snow is gone. In the meanwhile we would like to bestow Allen with the new title, emeritus-emeritus, or, in mathematical shorthand, (emeritus)**2, and thank him for all he has done for RISE and Drew University.
November, 2010
The Drew Alumni House produces a monthly electronic newsletter. The November issue includes a story about RISE written by the RISE Director, Jon Kettenring. http://www.drew.edu/depts/alumni.aspx?id=82062
On November 19, RISE, Tribeta, and The Jordy Fund hosted a Drew Science Scholars Symposium in honor of RISE Associate, William Campbell, who served as a RISE fellow for 20 years before relocating to MA earlier this year. Dr. Campbell delivered the keynote lecture on “Worms I have known, and their continuing threat to human welfare.” Four students whom he had mentored during their days at Drew also spoke: Heidi Smit, M.D., Ph.D. (C’95), Manny Gabriel, M.D., Ph.D. (C’02), Elia Tait, Ph.D. Candidate 2010 (C’05), and Miten Patel, M.D. (C’97).
October, 2010
Dr. Ronald Doll, recently retired from Merck, became a RISE fellow in mid-October. He received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Duke in 1975, and has had 32 years of drug discovery and leadership experience in the pharmaceutical industry. At Schering Plough, prior to its merger with Merck, Ron was the Director of Chemical Research, Infectious Diseases and Tumor Biology. He also has expertise in engineering, physics, and electronics. He holds an amateur radio license and is an amateur astronomer. His main research interests are synthetic organic chemistry, medicinal chemistry, and perparing compounds with interesting biological and physical properties.
Alumnus wins Federal Award for Teaching
Derrick Wood C’04, Chemistry Major, who worked with RISE Fellow James Miller, is honored for bringing a real-world, case-study approach to learning chemistry. Go to Article http://www.drew.edu/news/2010/10/20/alumnuswinsfederalawardforteaching
Vijai Pasupuleti of SAI International, Inc. and RISE fellow Arnild Demain have edited a new book entitled “Protein Hydrolysates in Biotechnology” published by Springer.
September, 2010
Dr. Arnold Demain – 60 years in a scientific career: The August 2010 special issue of The Journal of Antibiotics celebrates Dr. Arnold Demain. Throughout his career, Dr. Demain has established and maintained a renowned reputation within the field of inductrial microbiology. As a tribute to Dr. Demain’s successful career, this web focus brings together a collection of articles published in The Journal of Antibiotics, some of which have been made free for a limited time.
Kellie Joyce, Shruti Saxena, Amanda Williams, Christopher Damurjian, Neil Auricchio, Sabrina Alluotto, and Heather Tynan, who are current or former undergraduate students at Drew, along with RISEfellow Arnold Demain, published a paper in the August 2010 edition of The Journal of Antibiotics. It’s title is “Antimicrobial spectrum of the antitumor agent, cisplatin.”
RISE fellows make connections in China for Drew students: Eighteen students and three professors participated in Drew’s 2010 Summer International Seminar to China. This seminar on “Health Care in Chinese Culture and Society” was led by Professors Afeworki Mascio of Biology and Bai Di of Chinese Studies. RISEfellow Barbara Petrack used her connections to help arrange for the group to visit the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, and RISE fellow Arnold Demain used his to open the doors to the China Academy of Sciences Institute of Microbiology.
William C. Campbell, distinguished parasitologist and long-time fellow of RISE has been appointed as the first RISE associate. Bill and his wife recently moved to Andover, MA. This new appointment will allow him to continue to interact with Drew faculty and students in a variety of ways even from afar. Bill commented, “I can think of no more gratifying professional experience than that of guiding students in the early phases of their careers.” A symposium to celebrate Bill’s 20 years as a RISE fellow is planned for November.
July/August, 2010
The July/August issue of SIM News, the news magazine of the Society for Industrial Microbiology, has a featured article by RISE Fellow Arnold Demain entitled “Production of industrial and pharmaceutical products by microbes and cell cultures. He writes about “the tremendous successes achieved in the applications of microbiology.”
May, 2010
The May 2010 issue of Microbiology Australia contains a special feature article, “A Tribute to Professor Arnold L. Demain – a Lifetime in Industrial Microbiology”. He will be presenting the closing plenary address at the Genetics of Industrial Microorganisms Symposium in Melbourne in July.
Former RISE Students Publish Articles on Cancer Research
Grace Polanski Cordovano and Lauren L. Campbell both worked in the lab of RISE fellow Arnold Demain during their student days at Drew. Cordovano, who has received her Ph.D. from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, co-authored a paper on head and neck cancers, which was published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC vol. 282(29):21477-21486, 2007). An on-line version may be found at www.jbc.org. Campbell is a Ph.D. student in the department of Medical Oncology at Harvard Medical School. She is the co-author of a paper on breast tumor heterogeneity which appeared in the journal, Cancer Cell (vol. 11:259-273, March 2007
RISE fellow Arnold Demain authored a review article, History of Industrial Biotechnology, which appears as Chapter 1 in the volume described below. Demain explains how the field evolved from its “roots deep in antiquity” and covers many of its subsequent significant developments.
Industrial BiotechnologySustainable Growth and Economic Success, 1.Edition – April 2010, 159.-Euro
Soetaert, Wim/Vandamme, Erick J. (eds.)
Wiley-VCH, Weinheim
April, 2010
RISE fellow Arnold Demain is one of three editors in chief of the third edition of the Manual of Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology published by ASM Press. The editors write that because of recent advances in methodologies it is “now important to provide the scientific community…with an updated and totally new 3rd edition” of the manual, which was originally published in 1986
January, 2010
New RISE Science Honors Seminar
The RISE fellows, along with Professor Kathleen Madden of the Mathematics and Computer Science Department, are leading a new seminar for first-year Honors students who are interested in the sciences. Each student will complete a semester-long research project working under the direction of a RISE fellow. Throughout the course much emphasis will be given to oral and written communication skills. Students will have many opportunities to participate in and lead class discussions, write short papers in response to assigned readings, and communicate findings from their research projects. The development of this new course was made possible by a grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
October 2009
We are pleased to announce that John Wiley has just published the second edition of its bestselling book, “Basic Gas chromatography,” co-authored by Harold McNair of Virginia Tech and RISE Fellow, James Miller. The first edition, published in 1998, was in need of updating which resulted in a new edition that is 20% longer and includes topics like multidimensional gas chromatography and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry.
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470439548.html
Wiley-VCH, Germany, has just published (October 2009) a new “Encyclopedia of Applied Spectroscopy” which includes a chapter (#30) on Chromatography by RISE Fellow James Miller. While chromatography is not a spectroscopic method, many chromatographs have spectroscopic detectors, which is the reason for the inclusion of this topic in the encyclopedia.
Jim’s other book, “Chromatography: Concepts & Contrasts,” has just been reissued by Wiley in paperback format.Information regarding these books can be found at www.wiley.com . A search for James M. Miller or the title of the books will give you access to further information.
May 27, 2009
The research of RISE Fellow Bill Campbell is highlighted in the Spring 2009 issue of the Drew Magazine on page 14. There you will find the answer to the question “What does your dog’s heartworm medicine have in common with the treatment for river blindness?” Drew Magazine – Dr. Worm
Recent article in Nature Medicine features RISE Fellow Bill Campbell and describes the fight against tropical diseases.
May 16, 2009
RISE Fellow Arnold Demain received an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Drew University at its 141st annual commencement ceremony. The honoray degree celebrates Dr. Demain’s career as a leading industrial microbiologist during which he “has conducted pioneering research on the biosynthesis of penicillins and cephalosporins” among many other accomplishments, including nearly 500 published papers and 21 patents.
April, 2009
Arnold Demain to be celebrated at BIT’s 6th Life Spring Forum on Industrial Microbiology in Seoul, Korea, April 5th-7th, 2009. “Celebrating 60 years of Prof. Arnold L. Demain’s Science (1949-2009)” Arnold Demain Bit’s Forum
January, 2009
RISE Fellow, Barbara Petrack, has been named recipient of the American Chemical Society (ACS) 2008 New York Section, Outstanding Service Award, presented in January 2009. This annual award is given to a member of the New York Section of the ACS in recoginition of outstanding leadership skills and dedicated service in promoting programs that contribute to the excellence of the Section.