Five for Five. Michael Xiao brings home the U’s fifth straight Churchill Scholarship. Five years after the University of Utah became eligible to compete for the prestigious Churchill Scholarship out of the United Kingdom, the university has sported just as many winners. All of them hail from the College of Science, and all were facilitated […]
Read MoreAnna Vickrey Anna Vickrey who graduated from the School of Biological Sciences with a PhD in 2020 has always been fascinated with domestication, both the process and the “products” which include the plants and animals important to our lives and history as humans. “I became really interested in the morphological diversity present both in domestic […]
Read MoreA native of Chagrin Falls, OH, Jeff Webster, MD, FAAOS, found himself as an undergraduate at the University of Utah for “not the most mature reason, but it’s true”: the easy access to the world class skiing. He might be surprised at how common the denominator is for arriving freshmen who are held in […]
Read MoreGriffin Chure’s favorite memory of his time at the U was working in Dr. David Blair’s research lab. “During the summers, when class-load was low,” he says, “we characterized the flagellar protein of FIhE, a protein of unknown function.” His interactions with Blair and Dr. Sandy Parkinson “firmly set” him on a path towards a […]
Read MoreIn these uncertain times when “the new normal” of our lives has yet to emerge, SBS alumnus Clifford Stocks (BS’80) opens a window to fresh air on the COVID-19 pandemic. That updraft comes from his scientific orientation and is underscored by his enduring ambition to use his training in biology and beyond to elevate the […]
Read MoreIt just so happened that the day that the University of Colorado closed down its labs, including Dr. Emily Bates’, she was in labor giving birth to her second child. “I was having conversations with my students about what we needed to do from the hospital bed,” she says. “My husband could not join me […]
Read MoreWhen Arie Sitthichai Mobley (BS’2000) began teaching at a small liberal arts university in a department for undergraduate neuroscience, she says there were many books on stem cells, but they were either too broadly or narrowly focused, or too advanced for an undergraduate course. The lack of an appropriate textbook motivated her to write her […]
Read MoreCarol Blair, HBA’64, is a testament to not only the value of providing research opportunities for undergraduates, but also the transformative experience of working directly with graduate students in the lab. After she had changed her major from chemistry to the brand new (at the time) field of microbiology, she says, “I was given the […]
Read More“Always be open to unforeseen possibilities and opportunities; never be afraid to fail, and learn from your failures,” says George Elliott (PhD’81). “Don’t get bogged down in a very narrow line of pursuit—the broader your knowledge is the more creative and successful a problem-solver you will be.” That’s great advice to U Biology students today. […]
Read MoreMost people get to live one life. So far, Steve Mimnaugh has lived at least three. “I was always the new kid on the block,” he says. From Seattle to Spokane, Washington, and from Wallace, Idaho where his father worked as a mining engineer, to Kearns, Utah, to survive Mimnaugh tacked through life as an […]
Read MoreJason Allen knew early on of the opportunities the state’s flagship research university could offer him just an hour north of where he grew up in Springville. “I had always wanted to attend the University of Utah due to its prestige within the state and nationally,” he says, especially due to the U’s stellar reputation […]
Read MoreDale C. LARSEN In the mid-1950s, when Dale C. Larsen (BS’59) first enrolled at the U there were only six Colleges on campus including the College of Letters and Science, and a two-year medical school. Larsen was born and raised in Roosevelt, Utah, a small farming town in northeastern Utah. The drive to Salt Lake […]
Read More“I enjoy learning about how infectious diseases have shaped human history because I find it inspiring to frame my current work in a broad historical context,” says Amy Davis, PhD’03. A Senior Director, Biochemistry Research & Innovation at Utah-based BioFire Diagnostics, LLC, Davis says she was “fortunate to be born into a world with antibiotics […]
Read MoreJames K. Detling James K. Detling (PhD’69) arrived at the University of Utah from Ohio State University where he had just finished his Master’s degree in botany. He followed his graduate advisor, Dr. Lionel Klikoff, who transferred to the U as a tenure-line faculty member. While his advisor guided Detling’s research and mentored him in […]
Read MoreThe Daines Medical Dynasty Joseph Daines BS’68 Michael Daines BS’99 Brad Daines BA’05 The School of Biological Sciences claims all of our alumni, but sometimes there’s a kind of harmonic convergence that elevates an entire family of U biologists into the spotlight. Such is the case with the Idaho Daines Family of orthopedic surgeons—Joseph […]
Read MoreBrennan Mahoney “As a child I always seemed to have an interest in animals,” says Brennan Mahoney, HBS’20, “and originally I wanted to be a veterinarian!” Fate, however, would intervene for this Sandy, Utah native. When he was ten years old Mahoney’s father had a massive heart attack in the left anterior descending artery (LAD), […]
Read MoreFew encounter a fer-de-lance snake and walk away unscathed. While working in Costa Rica recent School of Biological Sciences (SBS) graduate Jordan Herman (PhD’20) moved closer to observe a toucan dismembering the green iguana it was having for lunch. When the bird took off and dropped half of it, Herman picked up the iguana’s tail […]
Read MoreUtah Biotech Companies Rally to fight the Coronavirus – by Kelsie Foreman, in Utah Business Magazine, April 13, 2020 SBS alumni Randy Rasmussen is the founder of BioFire Diagnostics which, along with ARUP and other Utah biotech companies, is making a difference in fighting the coronavirus. After a new virus, COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) was deemed a pandemic by the World Health […]
Read MoreMany of today’s most successful companies were created by groups of friends: Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard started Hewlett-Packard in a garage in Palo Alto, California; Bill Gates and Paul Allen, childhood friends from Lakewood, Washington co-founded Microsoft; and Larry Page, Sergey Brin, part of the same PhD cohort at Stanford University founded Google. The […]
Read More