Four biology students were awarded $250 cash prizes for their exceptional research and presentations at the Jan. 27 Biology Undergraduate Research Symposium. The winning students are juniors Lakshmi Nambiar, Leslie Rozeboom and Alicia Zhou, and senior Veronica Zepeda. Thirteen students presented their research to faculty members at the event, the first at which students were presenters.
"I think the symposium was a great idea because it encouraged us to think critically about our UROPs and gave us the unique opportunity to share our research with the rest of the MIT biology community," said Zhou.
Zhou, who works in Professor Robert Weinberg's lab, was recognized for her investigation of the ability of different transcription factors to induce an epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), a process important for cancer metastasis.
Nambiar, who works in Professor Herman Eisen's lab, talked about her work developing a novel method to determine the steady state number of accessible Class I MHC molecules on the cell surface and the rate at which these molecules become accessible to peptide ligands.
Rozeboom presented research she performed in Professor Vernon Ingram's lab on small molecules that prevent and reverse harmful ��-sheet aggregation of the protein at least partly responsible for the pathology of Alzheimer's disease.
Zepeda, a senior in Professor Jonathan King's lab, discussed the four tryptophan to alanine mutations in human D crystallin she created and later tested the effects on stability through equilibrium and kinetic folding experiments and thermal denaturations.
--Shirali Pandya
The List Visual Arts Center has won two awards from the Boston branch of the Association Internationale des Critiques d'art, (AICA), an international association of art critics. The List Center's "Michael Joo" (Fall 2003) won Best Monographic Museum Show and "Son et Lumiere" (Winter 2004) received the award for Best Thematic Museum Show.
The awards ceremony will take place on March 9 at 7:15 p.m., at the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College in conjunction with the opening from 5 to 7 p.m. of three new exhibitions.
AICA was founded in 1949 as a non-profit governmental affiliate of UNESCO. The Paris-based organization aims to protect the field of art criticism as a discipline and emphasize its contribution to society, and to act on behalf of the moral defense of works of art. This is the third year the Boston regional chapter is holding its own awards ceremony.
Dante Anzolini, associate professor of music, has been named music director of the Orchestra of the Argentine Theater, effective Feb. 15.
Belmont Publishers soon will publish Anzolini's piano version of the Variations for Orchestra by Arnold Schoenberg. Schoenberg's grandson agreed on the contract to publish Anzolini's score, the first and only piano version of the work.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on February 9, 2005 (download PDF).
