UMD BIOLOGY DEPARTMENT

Biology is one of the largest programs in the Swenson College of Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota Duluth, with over 700 undergraduate students, 50 active graduate students, and 22 full-time faculty members.

For prospective undergraduates we offer B.S. degrees in Biology and Cell and Molecular Biology. We also serve students seeking a B.A. degree in Biology through the College of Liberal Arts and students in the College of Education and Human Service Professions seeking the B.A.S. in Life Science Teaching. For prospective graduate students, the Integrated Biosciences graduate program offers M.S. and Ph.D. degrees.

Biology faculty are actively involved in research supported by over $8 million in external grants. This allows us to offer all qualified undergraduate students the opportunity to participate in faculty research. The Department of Biology is housed in a new 130,000 square foot state-of-the-art research/teaching laboratory facility.

NEWS

Congratulations to Dr. Kurt Fausch - 2009 Inductee into the SCSE Academy of Science and Engineering

Dr. Kurt Fausch graduated from UMD in 1976 with a BS in Zoology and has gone on to become an internationally recognized fisheries ecologist.

(read more)

Congratulations to the following biology students who were awarded Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) awards for Summer and Fall 2009.

• Expression and Purification of MspB from M. xanthus, Michael Bambenek (Dahl)
• Range Expansion of the Invasive Round Goby into Lake Superior, Tim Cyr (Mensinger)
• River Dispersal of an Invasive Species: Downstream Transport of the Spiny Water Flea, Ben Heggestad (Shannon)
• The Rescue of Neural Tube Defects Using Folic Acid, Catherine Johnson (Liang)
• Identification of sporulation genes in M. xanthus, Jesse Klingelhoets (Dahl)
• Induction of Torpor by FGF21: Heart Rate, Body Temperature, and Physical Activity in the Thirteen-Line Ground Squirrel, Eli Narveson (Andrews)
• Functional Domains Study of Conserved Cysteine Residues of the SPE-42 Protein in Caenorhabditis elegans, Ben Polgreen (Kroft)
• Round Goby Range Expansion into Tributary Streams of the Duluth-Superior Harbor and St. Louis River Estuary, Kyle Staples (Mensinger)
• Speciation in a Gall-Inducing Fly, Lee Stokes (Craig)
• Differential gene expression associated with a shift from carbohydrate-based to lipid-based metabolism in the thirteen-lined ground squirrel, Sarah Timm (Andrews)

more

SEMINARS

Friday, November 20, 2009

3:15pm

185 Life Science

Speaker: Dr. Tim Kroft

"Structure/Function Analysis of SPE-42, a Gene Required for C. elegans Fertilization"

more