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A Letter from the Chair

Greetings and welcome to the MB&B departmental website. Please feel free to explore our pages to learn more about our undergraduate courses and major, our graduate program, and our faculty research programs. Follow the links to take you to the departmental affiliated programs in Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Genomic Sciences. Undergraduate majors and graduate students can pursue certificates in these interdepartmental programs. You may also explore the pages to learn more about our summer research program sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

 

This is an exciting time to be in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry. We were lucky to hire two new faculty members last year; Amy MacQueen and Rich Olson joined us in July, 2009. These faculty members bring new expertise in the areas of X-ray crystallography, cell signaling, homologous recombination and chromosome pairing. We are excited to welcome these new colleagues to our faculty and look forward to their teaching and research contributions.

 

New advances in biomedical research rely on fundamental discoveries made in our disciplines, and the MB&B faculty research programs lie at the forefront of groundbreaking research ranging from the study of the olfactory system to the mechanisms of DNA repair and DNA replication. The department houses advanced instrumentation that allows students and faculty members to perform proteomic analyses, rapid kinetic measurements, genetic micro-array analyses and to explore structure-function relationships on a wide range of molecules and proteins. Faculty research programs span the range from molecules to organisms and undergraduate and graduate students are actively engaged in research that  greatly expands our understanding of how biology works. Our undergraduate majors excel at all levels and they earn admittance to top-ranked medical and graduate schools, co-author research papers and write senior honors theses. Graduate students are actively making new discoveries, publishing in top journals and securing excellent post-doctoral positions and job opportunities. I encourage you to learn more about us by exploring our site. Feel free to email any member of the department if you have any questions.

 

Thanks for your interest and best regards,

 

Michael McAlear
Chairman
MB&B Department