Molecular Biophysics Graduate Program at FSU

Congratulations to Dr. Hong Li and her MOB students Hemant and Anuska on their new eLife publication!

Molecular mechanism of active Cas7-11 in processing CRISPR RNA and interfering target RNA Cas7-11 is a Type III-E CRISPR Cas effector that confers programmable RNA cleavage and has potential applications in RNA interference. Cas7-11 encodes a single polypeptide containing four Cas7- and one Cas11-like segments that obscures the distinction between the multi-subunit Class 1 and the single...

The Molecular Biophysics Graduate Program at FSU congratulates the latest Seminole PhDs. Congratulations to our new Dr.s!

The application portal for the MOB program is now open! Go to www.biophysics.fsu.edu/graduate-program/admissions for more information. Apply at: www.admissions.fsu.edu/gradapp

FSU Admissions | Graduate Application Portal We are currently accepting graduate applications for Summer or Fall 2022. Readmissions students may apply for Spring, Summer, or Fall 2022. However, many academic programs admit only for a specific term. Prospective applicants must contact the academic program for available terms.

Most important skill in graduate school: learning to carve pumpkins without catching COVID.

MOB congratulates Dr. Daniel Murray on his "promotion" from "PhD candidate" to "PhD"!

Re-posting from MOB supporter Gaudio. (With permission).

Congratulations to the first recipient of The Lyn Kittle Impact Award at Florida State University's Institute of Molecular Biophysics - Krakora Compagno

Please consider a donation to the award at: https://one.fsu.edu/foundation/donate/college/arts-sciences/lyn-kittle-impact-award?fbclid=IwAR2RlMjZNBTZF75XC8VkAPrKt-bzh_lfwOCubPkU_ckOWNouKf8W7y9qZb8

Here is a note of gratitude from your scholarship recipient:

Dear Mr. Gaudio and Scholarship committee,
Thank you so much for the Lyn Kittle Impact Award. I am a first-year in the molecular biophysics Ph.D.
program. Before coming to FSU, I completed an undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley in chemical biology
and spent two years doing research at UCSF. The strong research program at FSU was one of the biggest
factors in my decision to attend. I am especially interested in the work being done in stem cell engineering,
neuroscience, and computational biology. And have been rotating through labs on campus that explore
each of these areas. I have also gotten a chance to become involved in the greater community by
becoming an intern in a small biotech company (started by one of the professors at FSU) and tutoring
undergraduate students in biochemistry and molecular biology.
I am especially grateful because this award enabled me to move across the country and come to FSU.
Without this award, I wouldn’t have had the means to attend the university. It helped to cover the costs of
moving, setting up a new apartment, and settling into life on the east coast.
Thank you again for your generosity and I wish you all the best.
Martina Krakora

Lyn Kittle Impact Award - F09115 The Lyn Kittle Impact Award was established in honor of Ms. Lyn Kittle and her decades of service to the Molecular Biophysics department at FSU. This annual award supports a graduate student in the Molecular Biophysics Department/Institute of Molecular Biophysics who exhibits service in the pursuit....

Congratulations to FSU MOB student Hemant Goswami, who along with postdoctoral fellow Sagar Sridhara and Biochemistry student Charlisa Whyms, published a paper in Nature Communication about a new Sars-CoV-2 detection method based a CRISPR-Cas enzyme.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34580296/

You can also check out their blog for a more informal discussion:
https://bioengineeringcommunity.nature.com/posts/moriarty-a-crispr-tool-to-detect-sars-cov-2

MORIARTY: A CRISPR tool to detect SARS-CoV-2 MORIARTY is a type III-A CRISPR-Cas based virus detection platform with high sensitivity and potentially high specificity. In a paper published in Nature Communications, we provide a proof-of-concept of SARS-CoV-2 detection in human nasopharyngeal swab samples via two forms of MORIARTY.

Dr. Sagar Sridhara was associated with the Institute of Molecular Biophysics, Florida State University as a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Hong Li’s lab for the last three years. He did his Bachelors in Engineering (Biotechnology) at RVCE (VTU), Bengaluru, India (2006-2010) and then went on to do a Masters of Science in Applied Biotechnology at Uppsala University, Sweden (2010-2012). He then pursued his PhD in Medical Science at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden and CSSB-Hamburg, Germany (2013-2017) on ‘Structural and Functional basis of mitochondrial tRNA processing’. His Post-Doctoral research at IMB was on ‘Structural and functional elucidation of type III-A CRISPR-Cas systems’. Currently, he is a postdoctoral researcher at University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

June 9th, 2021 | Institute of Molecular Biophysics Picnic

This gathering came like a breath of fresh air for all the members of the department, after being away from any kind of social interaction for the last year and a half!

The new members of the department (including students who joined in Fall 2020, as well as the new faculty members Dr. Ashwanth Francis and Dr. Bhargav Karamched) were welcomed heartily.

We also took this opportunity to thank:
Dr. Piotr Fajer who has been tirelessly guiding the Institute through thick and thin for the last 11 years
Dr Hong Li who stepped up to be the new Director of the Institute of Molecular Biophysics
Dr. Beth Stroupe who is the new Director of the Molecular Biophysics Graduate program

Memories of Lyn Kittle

We have established a fund give.fsu.edu/artsandsciences. Please add Lyn’s name in the “In Memory” section.

Lyn Kittle was heart and soul of MOB graduate program in the Institute of Molecular Biophysics. We miss her greatly!

Lyn Kittle was heart and soul of MOB graduate program in the Institute of Molecular Biophysics. We miss her greatly!

Lyn Kittle joined Hal van Wart’s lab in the late 1980 as a lab technician. Amy Sang, Eric Springman, Jenny Yang and Liz Fajer all remember her fondly as a mentor to new lab members, and being a social hub of the lab. In early 1990-ies her mentorship skills were put to work in a professional setting when she became the Coordinator of the MOB Graduate Program. In the few years before the birth of her second daughter, Hallie Lyn implemented the reorganization of the program. Nearly all aspects of the program from academics (rotations, prelims, prospectus defense) and social (Wakulla Springs conferences, new student’s welcoming parties) have Lyn’s fingerprints all over them. Forward seventeen years, Lyn returned to be a Program Coordinator and slid into her new/old role without missing a beat. New students to take care of, counsel and console. Not many academic mentors can boast to have children named after them. We thought we had it made till Lyn fell ill with ALS.

Join us for our MOB Program Interest Zoom Meeting! This meeting will be hosted by MOB Director Dr. Li and IMB Director Dr. Fajer on Monday November 16th at 11:00am EST. They are excited to meet you and answer questions about application review, the unique training environment of MOB, and anything else you may be curious about. Please use the link below to register for the zoom meetings or to visit our website at biophysics.fsu.edu.

https://fsu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEufumvqTIvHdH2ICeozZer5cFowbWyw2Ze

National Science Foundation awards FSU graduate students prestigious fellowships - Florida State University News

Congrats to Louis Colling, a MOB graduate student, for getting the prestigious National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship!

http://news.fsu.edu/news/university-news/2017/04/24/national-science-foundation-awards-fsu-graduate-students-prestigious-fellowships/

news.fsu.edu A record number of Florida State University students have received the highly competitive Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation. The NSF chose eight FSU students — a record high for the university — for this prestigious fellowship. Additionally, two students who have sign...

The Asian Coalition of Tallahassee (ACT) invites you to the
12th Annual Experience Asia Festival
Saturday, October 8, 2016
Bloxham and Lewis Parks
Park Avenue, Tallahassee Florida
10 am to 5 pm
Free Admission
More information at www.asiantlh.org

Educating Johannesburg on the Benefits of Core Facilities in Research.

http://blog.abrf.org/wordpress/2016/06/30/educating-johannesburg-on-the-benefits-of-core-facilities-in-research/

blog.abrf.org This post was adapted from a Florida State University Press Release. Dr. Claudius Mundoma, from Florida State University, Institute of Molecular Biophysics, and an ABRF Member, was awarded a…

FSU's Nobel-winning chemistry professor Kroto dies

http://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/2016/05/02/fsus-nobel-winning-chemistry-professor-kroto-dies/83822466/

tallahassee.com The witty, English-born intellectual and educator helped discover the carbon molecules called 'buckyballs'

Photos from Molecular Biophysics Graduate Program at FSU's post

Institute Of Molecular Biophysics | 2016 Kasha Award

Congratulations to Mike Kapylov, 2016 Kasha Award Winner. We welcomed Dr. Alexei Soares, 2001 MOB graduate as 2016 Kasha Seminar Speaker. He has been having lots of "fun" with x-rays at Brookhaven National Lab.

Photos from the event are now at MOB website.

http://biophysics.fsu.edu/photo-galleries/2016-photo-galleries/2016-kasha-award/

biophysics.fsu.edu 2016 Kasha Speaker and 2016 Kasha Award

Scott Stagg, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and MOB faculty has been awarded the 2016 Developing Scholar Award. This award program recognizes successful FSU faculty who are several years advance into their careers. Congrats to Scott!

MOB Graduate students with Nobel Laureate Ada E. Yonath during her visit to FSU for delivering fourth Caspar Lecture in Biophysics (Apr 5, 2016).

Photo of momento for Professor Yonath and Professor Caspar during the seminar

Professor Ada E. Yonath is a pioneer in structural studies of ribosome, the machinery responsible for making proteins in all organisms. Her work has profound impact in understanding evolution and designing new antibiotics. She will be delivering the 2016 Donald L.D. Caspar Lecture, an annual lecture of the Institute of Molecular Biophysics, tomorrow Tuesday, April 5, 2016 at 11:15 AM at CSL Auditorium. Everyone is welcome to the seminar.

http://news.fsu.edu/What-s-Going-On/Donald-L.D.-Caspar-Lecture-in-Biophysics-Nobel-Laureate-Ada-E.-Yonath

- Florida State 24/7

IMB's Professor Huan-Xiang Zhou will receive $2.5 million as part of the Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) from the NIH. The MIRA grants have been designed to give researchers total flexibility in how their labs move forward in investigating critical scientific questions. He is is among the first batch of scientists to be awarded a new type of National Institutes of Health grant that will provide full support for their research programs over the next five years.

http://news.fsu.edu/More-FSU-News/Biophysics-researcher-wins-2.5-million-NIH-award

news.fsu.edu

Molecular Biophysics Program's Students for Effective Communication of Science (SECS) and Graduate Women in Science are proud to sponsor a talk entitled "The Power of Procrastination" by Jorge Cham (author of PhD Comics) on Tuesday, March 15, 2016 at 6:00 PM in the Askew Student Life Cinema (ASLC).

Prospective MOB domestic students visit FSU Campus

Institute Of Molecular Biophysics | SECS Student Seminars

Updated 2016 Spring SECS Seminar schedule is posted on MOB web site
http://biophysics.fsu.edu/seminars/secs-seminars/

biophysics.fsu.edu Students for the Effective Communication of Science (SECS) President: Mike Kopylov | Vice-President: Joe Pennington | Treasurer: Travis Hand Time: Mondays, 5:00 PM | Venue: 112 KLB Public speaking can be one of the most difficult tasks for a scientist in…Read more ›

PHD Comics author Jorge Cham will be visiting FSU on Tue, Mar 15, 2016. His visit is partly sponsored by MOB Graduate students. More details will be posted soon. Preliminary program is shown in the poster. Stay tuned ...

- Florida State 24/7

Congrats to Austin Schwartz for winning People's Choice award on 3-MT (3-Minute Thesis)
http://news.fsu.edu/More-FSU-News/Engineering-doctoral-student-wins-Three-Minute-Thesis-competition

Two of the winners attended the course taught by Dr Susan Hellstrom.

news.fsu.edu

Congratulations to MOB graduate Dr. John Spear who successfully defended his dissertation on Nov. 9, 2015. His major professor is Dr. Scott Stagg.

Florida State University

MOB faculty and Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry Tim Cross and his team at the Florida State University-based National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, scientists delved into the complexities of exactly how the flu virus works and why it's so effective at making people so sick.
http://fsu.edu/indexTOFStory.html?lead.flu

fsu.edu One of the nation's elite research universities, Florida State University — with the Carnegie Foundation's highest designation, Doctoral/Research University-Extensive — offers a distinctive academic environment.

Institute Of Molecular Biophysics | Shaun Murphy

About Shaun Murphy

http://biophysics.fsu.edu/events-4/shaun-murphy/

biophysics.fsu.edu

Memorial fundraiser for Dr. Shaun Patrick Murphy

youcaring.com The funds raised will be provided to the parents of Shaun Murphy and his family after two weeks by Dr. Bass. It is meant to help with funeral and associated expenses. Shaun made this world a better place and your gift can provide a way to give back a little. Rest in peace Dr. Murphy.

Review: In ‘Photograph 51,’ Nicole Kidman Is a Steely DNA Scientist

Nicole Kidman chatting with Dr. Donald LD Caspar, (MOB Emeritus Faculty and member of Nat'l Academy) after a performance of “Photograph 51” in which Kidman plays Dr. Rosalind Franklin. Dr. Caspar’s friendship & correspondence with Franklin is mentioned in the review below. L. to R.: Dr. Don Caspar, Nicole Kidman, Dr. Ken Holmes, and playwright Anna Ziegler. Photo by Dr. Lee Makowski.

nytimes.com Playing Rosalind Franklin, a lone woman among male researchers in London, Ms. Kidman projects relentless determination.

Dr. Dylan Murray, 2014 MOB grad from the Tim Cross lab, has been awarded a PRAT fellowship through NIH. He works with Dr. Robert Tycko at the NIH National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Only 9 new fellowships were awarded this year!