News

MIT CEHS Newsletters:


NEWS:

September 24th, 2009:

NIH picks three CEHS members for innovation grants: Samson, director of the center, Griffith and Bhatia.

Read the full article here.

June 9th, 2009: CEHS 2009 Poster Winners

The Center for Environmental Health Sciences (CEHS) at MIT held its annual poster session on May 27, 2009 in Morss Hall in Walker Memorial. The session highlighted the work of 18 of the Center's affiliated labs from eight MIT departments and featured more than 50 posters.

CEHS has as its overall mission the study of biological effects and processes of exposure to environmental agents in order to understand, and predict, how such exposures affect human health. To that end, the Center brings together 28 MIT faculty members from a total of eight MIT departments (in both the School of Science and the School of Engineering) plus three Harvard faculty members; a faculty member from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and two faculty members from the Harvard Medical School affiliated hospitals (Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital).

This year's CEHS cash prizes were made possible by the Myriam Marcelle Znaty Research Fund in two categories, Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Scholars. The Myriam Marcelle Znaty Research Endowment Fund was established nearly 30 years ago to support the research of young scientists at MIT.

The prize for first place is $500, second place is $100, and the third prize is a CEHS T-shirt, mug, pen, and lanyard in both the Graduate Student and Postdoctoral Scholar categories.

There was a two-way tie for the first place cash prize of $300 for the best Graduate Student poster. It was awarded to Shao-shan Carol Huang, a Graduate Student in Professor Ernest Fraenkel’s lab and Mary Ellen Wiltrout, a Graduate Student in Professor Graham Walker’s lab. Ms. Huang presented her work on “A Steiner Tree Algorithm Reveals Hidden Components of Signaling and Regulatory Networks” and Ms. Wiltrout presented her work on “The Lesion Specificity of Rev1’s Catalytic Activity in vivo.”

The third prize of a CEHS T-shirt, mug, pen, and lanyard was awarded to Chandni Valiathan, a Graduate Student in Professor Leona Samson’s lab. Ms. Valiathan presented her work on "Gene Expression Signatures Characteristic of Cell Sensitivity to DNA Damaging Agents."

Winners in the Postdoctoral Scholar category included:

First prize of $500 awarded to Dragony Fu from Professor Leona Samson’s lab, who presented his work on "Discovery of Novel Repair Substrates and Functions for the Human AlkB Bioxygenases.”

Second prize of $100 was awarded to Wan Simon Chan from Professor Peter Dedon’s lab, who presented his work on "Quantification of 2-deoxyribose Oxidation Products in Oxidized DNA by Gas Chromatography-mass Spectrometry.”

Third prize of a CEHS T-shirt, mug, pen, and lanyard was awarded to Charles Knutson from Professor Steven Tannenbaum’s lab, who presented his work on "Transnitrosation of Thioredoxin by S-nitrosoglutathione in vitro.”

Pictures of winners:

Graduate student winners: (from left to right) Mary Ellen Wiltrout (1st place tie), Chandni Valiathan (3rd place), and Shao-shan Carol Huang (1st place tie).



Postdoctoral Scholar Winners: (from left to right) Dragony Fu (1st place), Charles Knutson (3rd Place), and Wan Simon Chan (2nd Place).

October 7, 2008: CEHS was awarded the Environmental Health and
Safety Award for recognition of outstanding performance related to
environmental health and safety issues for demonstrating excellent
performance in the EHS Management System and maintaining an exemplary
EHS program throughout the year in the small Department, Center, or Lab
category. In addition, the Biological Engineering Department received the
Honorable Mention Award.

June 2, 2008: CEHS JCI Report

May 29, 2008: Center members, Cathy Drennan and Sangeeta Bhatia,
have been selected as HHMI investigators

May 23, 2008: CEHS 2008 Poster Winners

May 22, 2008: Annual Poster Session at Walker Memorial

May 7, 2008: Poster Abstract Form due

April 1, 2008: 2008 Pilot Project Recipients Announced

February 1, 2008: CEHS 2008 Poster Session will take place on May 22, 2008 at Morss Hall in the Walker Memorial Building.

January 25, 2008: MIT Center for Environmental Health Sciences have put a call out for Pilot Projects. Those applications are due Feburary 15, 2008. Click here for further details.

Announcements:

The MIT Center for Environmental Health Sciences through support from the NIEHS is pleased to announce that it has awarded Six Pilot Projects to MIT Faculty and Principal Research Scientists.  The projects will be funded for a period of one year April 1, 2008 – March 31, 2009.

Award recipients and their research projects are:

Peter Dedon, Professor, CEHS/Biological Engineering
“Changes in the Spectrum of tRNA Secondary Modifications as Biomarkers of Exposure”

Catherine Drennan, Associate Professor, Chemistry
“Structural Studies of DNA Repair Protein Human Alkyladenine Glycosylase”

Susan Erdman, Principal Research Scientist, Division of Comparative Medicine
“Inflammation-associated Prostate Cancer: Development of Mouse Models for Assay of Environmental Contaminants”

Jongyoon Han, Associate Professor, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science/
Biological Engineering
“Direct Coupling of Nanofluidic Preconcentration System and Conventional Mass Spectrometry”

Michael Strano, Associate Professor, Chemical Engineering, Steven Tannenbaum, Professor, Biological Engineering, and Gerald Wogan, Professor, Biological Engineering
“Detection of Toxic Events in the Liver in vivo using Single Wall Carbon Nanotubes”

Bruce Tidor, Professor, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science/Biological Engineering
“Exploring DNA Damage Response Networks with High-Dimensional Information Theoretic Statistics”

The Center congratulates each of the recipients and looks forward to a year of productive and stimulating interactions with all.