Archived News

Lawrence Sita, professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry who has invented a technology that can create an infinite variety of safe, pure plastics, won the title of "Best Inventor Pitch" at the University of Maryland 's annual Bioscience Day on Nov. 13.

University of Maryland entomology professor Raymond St. Leger has discovered how to use scorpion genes to create a hypervirulent fungus that can kill specific insect pests, including mosquitoes that carry malaria and a beetle that destroys coffee crops, but does not contaminate the environment as chemical pesticides do.

The University of Maryland is one of seven leading Washington , D.C. academic and health care institutions participating in a new consortium formed to compete for National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding to help transform health care and research in the greater DC metropolitan region. The consortium, known as the Washington Regional Institute for Clinical and Translational Sciences (WRICTS), will create a "home without walls" for translational and clinical research in the greater DC metropolitan area.

The University of Maryland's new Bioscience Research Building, a state-of-the-art laboratory and teaching facility, was dedicated on September 18. The University will use the Bioscience Research Building for research in three of the most exciting areas of contemporary science: pathogens, neuroscience and genomics.

A new partnership between the College of Chemical and Life Sciences’ graduate program in Sustainable Development and Conservation Biology (CONS) and the Peace Corps Master’s International Program formalizes a natural synergy between the two entities by giving students the opportunity to earn their master’s degree and serve as a Peace Corps volunteer by applying to both programs simultaneously.

A research team, headed by Arthur N. Popper, biology professor at the University of Maryland and expert in fish hearing, and University of Maryland Research Associate, Michele Halvorsen, Ph.D., found that exposure to high intensity, low frequency sonar did not kill rainbow trout, nor did it damage the fishes' auditory systems. Their study was published in the July issue of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

A team of University of Maryland scientists, led by Jonathan Dinman, associate professor of cell biology and molecular genetics, and area high school students have found the difference between two closely related components in the messenger RNA (mRNA) - near-cognate and non-cognate codons. Dr. Dinman states, "Although these two terms have been used by scientists for over 40 years, the differences between them have never been properly defined."

The University of Maryland has launched its newly created Maryland Pathogen Research Institute, MPRI, which will bring together leaders in the biosciences, computational sciences, engineering and nanosciences. These innovative collaborations share the goal of developing a comprehensive research program to find new ways to diagnose, treat and prevent the spread of pathogens.

In a paper in the May issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases, an international team of researchers, including University of Maryland professor Steven Salzberg, report the first ever large-scale sequencing of western genomes of the deadly avian influenza virus, H5N1.  Their study confirmed that the virus has very recently spread west from Asia, and two new western strains have already independently combined, or reassorted, to create a new

A discovery by University of Maryland biology professor Jonathan Dinman and research assistant professor Artural Meskauskas has provided a clue that could lead to programming the ribosome to fight viruses like HIV AIDS and SARS. In the March 23 issue of the journal Molecular Cell , they describe how the function of some long protein finger-like structures in the ribosome could lead to new antiviral therapies in the near future.