The spring 2014 LSU computational biology seminars for undergraduates will kick off tomorrow, Jan. 22nd. The first seminar will be given by Dr. Dorel Moldovan from LSU's Dept. of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. Dr. Moldovan will be speaking about "Molecular Dynamics Simulation Studies of Surface and Interfacial Phenomena in Biomolecular Systems".  The talk will be preceded by food in the Life Science Annex Atrium at 5 and will then run from 5:30-6:30 in the Life Science Annex Auditorium.

Applications for graduate students in the lab of Jeremy M. Brown at Louisiana State University (LSU) are now being accepted for Fall 2014 admission. Research in the Brown lab is broadly centered on the use of a phylogenetic perspective to understand organismal history and molecular evolution.

Video of Dr. Brown's inaugural talk in the new Computational Biology Seminar Series for Undergraduates at LSU is now available here: http://lbrn.lsu.edu/events/comp-bio/brown.html.

A new monthly seminar series on computational biology has just begun at LSU.  These seminars are targeted towards undergraduates and intended to stimulate student interest in the intersection of biology and computation.  This semester, students will learn about exciting research being done by new faculty here in LSU's Dept. of Biological Sciences.  Dr. Brown kicked off the series on Sept. 9th with his talk, titled "Models, Genomes, and Trees: Computational Inferences of Evolutionary History".  The next talk will be given by Dr.

A new paper has just been published online at Systematic Biology.  This work from lead author Noah Reid, a recent LSU doctoral graduate, was a collaborative effort between the Brown and Carstens labs.

Congrats to former Brown lab undergraduate (and postgraduate) researchers Sarah Davis and Randee Young.  Sarah graduated from LSU this past December and will begin working on her Ph.D. in Maheshi Dassanayake's lab this fall.  She was also named a Huel D. Perkins Doctoral Fellow.

Several members of LSU's Phyleaux Lab will be attending the 2013 Evolution Meetings in Snowbird, UT in late June.  Be sure to check out our presentations:

Jeremy Brown - Talk - Tuesday (June 25th) at 4:45 pm - Variable phylogenetic signal in a forensically important HIV-1 transmission cluster

Chelsea, an undergraduate researcher in the Brown lab, was recently awarded the Robert L. Amborski award by the Department of Biological Sciences.  This award is given annually to the department's most outstanding senior working in microbiology.  Congratulations Chelsea!  The recognition is much deserved.

Congratulations to Randee Young, an undergraduate researcher in the Brown lab, who received two travel awards to attend the Evolution meeting (in Snowbird, Utah) and the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution meeting (in Chicago, IL) this coming summer.  Randee will be presenting some interesting work on an approach to extracting genes with more consistent topological signal from large, phylogenomic datasets.

Jeremy will spend the coming week teaching at the 2013 Bodega Bay Applied Phylogenetics Workshop.  Check out the workshop, keep up with what's happening through the week, and work through the tutorials here: treethinkers.org