Departmental Seminar, Grad Research & Pasakarnis-Buchanan Lecture

SPRING 2024

To schedule a seminar or for any questions related to our seminar series, please contact Dr. Bidart (gbidart@bgsu.edu).

Graduate Research-in-Progress (GRIP) is a seminar series for graduate students to present their research ideas and progress to other graduate students (and faculty). The goals for attending and presenting are to increase awareness of research across the discipline, to hone presentation skills essential for conveying scientific knowledge, to promote critical thinking skills, and to build camaraderie among graduate students. Students are encouraged to present yearly, so they get feedback early in the developmental stages of their research, as well as later when they have obtained some results and are trying to organize these within their conceptual framework.

The GRIP schedule for the Semester is below.

• GRIP is held every Friday at 12:30pm in LSC 334. All are welcome.
• If you want to sign up to present, contact  Drs. Miner or Wildschutte

Presenters, please remember to:

• Introduce yourself--include status in graduate program or affiliation.
• Describe the purpose of the talk; i.e., is it practice for a conference, or a discussion of ideas?
• You will be presenting to a diverse audience. Initially, put your work into a broad biological conceptual framework, so that everyone can understand the focus of your research. You can then go into depth, but remember to return to the ‘big picture’ as you conclude/summarize.
• It is suggested that you have a presentation review with your faculty mentor before you finalize your presentation.

2023 Pasakarnis-Buchanan Lecture

Thursday, April 13, 2023 @ 7:00PM, Crises Abound: Health, Climate, Energy, Food, Pandemics... How Large-Scale Systems Biology Can Help Address the Major Challenges We Are Facing (Public Talk), featuring Dan Jacobson (Oak Ridge National Laboratory). In the Bowen-Thompson Student Union Theater.

The cost of generating biological data is dropping exponentially, resulting in increased data that has far outstripped the predictive growth in computational power from Moore’s Law. This flood of data has opened a new era of systems biology. Supercomputing and explainable-AI approaches have been developed to find complex mechanisms responsible for all measurable phenotypes as well as an organism’s ability to detect and modulate its microbiome. The result is progress towards a comprehensive systems biology model of an organism and how it has adapted to and responds to its abiotic and biotic environment. These discoveries have applications in bioenergy, precision agriculture, ecosystem studies, precision medicine, and pandemic prevention among other disciplines.

Previous Pasakarnis-Buchanan Lectures

Thursday, March 24, 2021, @ 7:00PM, Fish Whispering: Exploring Environmental Impacts from Life History and Eco-Geochemistry (Public Talk) featuring Dr. Karin Limburg.

**Due to precautions taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the 2020 Pasakarnis-Buchanan lecture was canceled.

Tuesday, April 9, 2019, @ 7:00PM, Forecasting Nature: Ecological Experiments in a Time of Planetary Change (Public Talk) featuring Dr. Nicholas Gotelli.

Tuesday April 3, 2018 @ 7PM (Public Talk) "Digging for genes that affect behavior" (Public Talk) featuring Dr. Hopi Hoekstra (Harvard University). 

Tuesday April 4, 2017 @ 7PM (Public Talk) "Eco-Evo-Devo: the synthesis of epigenetics, medicine and evolution". Scott Gilbert (Swarthmore College).

Thursday, April 14, 2016 @ 7:00PM (Public Talk): "Resurrecting Ancient Proteins from Extinct Life" featuring Dr. Steven Benner (The Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, FAME). 

Tuesday, March 24, 2015: Dr. Tyrone Hayes (University of California, Berkeley). Dr. Hayes's topic was From Silent Spring to Silent Night: A Tale of Toads and Men.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014: Dr. Arturo Casadevall (Albert Einstein College of Medicine). Dr. Casadevall's topic was Thoughts on the Origin of Virulence.

Tuesday, March 21, 2013: Dr. P. Dee Boersma (University of Washington). Dr. Boersma's topic was Penguins as Marine Sentinels. 

Thursday, April 12, 2012: Dr. Jianzhi Zhang (University of Michigan). Dr. Zhang's topic was On the path to humanity: genes lost, gained, and modified during primate evolution.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011: Dr. Nils Walter (University of Michigan). Dr. Walter's topic was Chemistry of Life: Driving Force for the Evolution from Cyanide to the RNA World to Mankind.