Accomplishments: College of Sciences

Łukasz Sznajder (Biochemistry) received a High Priority, Short-Term Project Award from the Myotonic Dystrophy Foundation to study myotonic dystrophy type 2 (DM2). DM2 has garnered less attention than myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1), lacking approved treatments or clinical trials. The uncertainty persists in applying DM1 therapeutic strategies to…
Ph.D. candidate Shangjia Zhang (Physics and Astronomy) has been selected as a 2024 NASA Hubble Fellow. The NASA Hubble Fellowship Program supports promising postdoctoral scientists to pursue independent research that contributes to NASA Astrophysics, using theory, observation, experimentation, or instrument development.  Zhang's work was…
Zhange Feng (Chemistry and Biochemistry) has been awarded $2.1 M from the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management to develop a comprehensive training system to prepare a large number of collegiate students as an emerging workforce for soil and groundwater remediation. It includes an enhanced curriculum through hands-on…
An undergraduate student researcher in the laboratory of Kelly Tseng (Life Sciences), Karla Akari Garcia (Nevada State University) won the 1st Place Undergraduate Poster Presentation Award at the 2024 Southwest Regional Meeting of the Society of Developmental Biology. Garcia presented her research findings on identifying conserved mechanisms in…
Kelly Tseng (Life Sciences) was an invited speaker at the 2024 Southwest Regional Meeting of the Society of Developmental Biology. Her talk was titled "Eyeing Regrowth: Mechanisms Regulating Retinal Repair During Development." She presented her research group's findings on the mechanisms regulating eye stem cells and regeneration. Group…
Brian Hedlund (Life Sciences), Ph.D., is this year's recipient of the Distinguished Professor Award. Hedlund, who is a professor in the School of Life Sciences, has been at UNLV for 20 years and is an extremely productive researcher and dedicated teacher, with a strong commitment to professional service. According to one of his nominators,…
Satish C. Bhatnagar (Mathematical Sciences) presented the paper, "Affinity Between Mathematics and Hinduism," at the annual meeting of American Academy of Religion/Western Region, a multidisciplinary conference. The meeting was held at UNLV on March 15-17, 2024. The paper is available upon request.
Hong Sun and Hui Zhang (both Chemistry and Biochemistry) laboratories recently published a research article titled, “A Methylation-Phosphorylation Switch Controls EZH2 Stability and Hematopoiesis,” in eLife, Feb 12, 2024. This research revealed how the stability of mammalian PRC2/EZH2, the major epigenetic regulator that…
Katherine Betts, Kushanie Heenkenda, Bryan Jacome, Sohyo Kim, Michael Tover, and Zhange Feng (all Chemistry and Biochemistry) published a study, "Refractive Laser Beam Measuring Diffusion Coefficient of Concentrated Battery Electrolytes," that offers a universal optical method to measure diffusion coefficient, a key transport property in battery…
Program director Artem Gelis (Radiochemistry) has been selected to receive a Secretary's Honor Award from U.S. Department of Energy for his contributions to the International Molybdenum-99 Conversion Team during his career with the DOE. The Achievement Award is one of about 20 awards given annually from the Department of Energy and will…
Assistant professor Mo Weng (Life Sciences) was recently awarded CAREER: Molecular mechanisms of epithelial and mesenchymal plasticity: the reversible regulation of cell polarity and cell adhesion from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The proposal is to investigate the molecular mechanisms of epithelial-mesenchymal plasticity, a…
Ali Balooch and Zhijian Wu (both Mathematical Sciences) had a peer-reviewed article published in Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications. Abstract: "Applications and findings involving the norm of the weighted Dirichlet space D_alpha are steadily being discovered. There are notable characterizations of D_alpha through…