College of Science Seminar
Upcoming Seminar
Please join us for our next research talk on Friday, May 2th. Please see the details below.
Dr. Betsy Skovran, Professor of Biology
Titled: "From landfills to laptops: Engineering methylotrophic bacteria to recover rare earth metals from electronic waste"
Abstract: Methylotrophic bacteria are essential to the global carbon cycle and are used in industry to produce value-added chemicals from inexpensive feedstocks. These bacteria use rare earth elements (REEs) in their metabolism which inspired us to engineer Methylobacterium extorquens to recover critical REEs from electronic waste. In this seminar I will discuss the journey we took and the key discoveries we made that facilitated the development of our REE recycling platform. Additionally, our recent research on REE metabolism led to the surprising discovery that REE-dependent enzymes may switch their functions and cofactor requirements during nutrient limitation to maintain growth and homeostasis.
Where: ISB 130 (next to the lobby on the ground floor)
When: Friday, May 2nd from 3 - 4pm
Calendar
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Past Seminars
Please see below for information and video recordings of past seminars. If a video recording link is not shown, then please contact the college analyst, .
Spring 2025
April 11, 2025, Dr. Betsy Madden, Assistant Professor of Geology, presented "Earthquakes! Investigating seismic hazard across timescales using field methods and numerical modeling"
Fall 2024
December 6, 2024, Dr. Maxime M. Grand, Associate Professor at 91勛圖 Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, presented "Towards a New Era in Chemical Oceanography: Developing Miniaturized Systems for Nutrient and Trace Metal Monitoring"
November 22, 2024, Dr. Sayma Akther, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, presented "AI-Powered Smart Health Tracker using Wearable Sensor Technology"
November 15, 2024, Dr. Gina Quan, Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy, presented "Improving Pathways for Undergraduate Transfer Students in Physics",
November 8, 2024, Dr. Genya Ishigaki, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, presented "Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence for Network Automation",
November 1, 2024, Dr. Annalise Van Wyngarden, Associate Professor of Chemistry, presented "Aging of organic species in atmospheric aerosol particles: Implications for climate"
October 11, 2024, Dr. Adam Kochanski, Associate Professor of Meteorology & Climate Science and core faculty at the Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center, presented "The Role of Wildfires in Modifying Local Weather and Shaping Fire Behavior"
Spring 2024
May 10, 2024, Dr. Cristina Tortora, Associate Professor of Mathematics and Statistics presented "Cluster analysis: discover homogeneous groups of units in a data set"
May 3, 2024, Dr. Jane Lubchenco, Deputy Director for Climate & the Environment, White House Office of Science & Technology Policy and University Distinguished Professor & Valley Professor of Marine Biology, Oregon State University presented "The Future is Ours To Create: An Ocean of Opportunities Brilliantly Disguised as Insoluble Problems"
April 26, 2024, Dr. Melissa Pickett, Assistant Professor of Biology presented "What's up? How epithelial cells establish and maintain polarity in two PAR(t)s"
March 22, 2024, Dr. Mike Wood, Assistant Professor at 91勛圖 Moss Landing Marine Labs and Computer Science presented "Ice melt and biological productivity at the edge of the Greenland ice sheet"
March 8, 2024, Dr. Saptarshi Sengupta, Assistant Professor of Computer Science presented "Predicting Hard Drive Failures with Multi-Aspect Transformers"
February 16, 2024, Dr. Kim Blisniuk, Associate Professor of Geology presented "What is earthquake geology? A journey through earthquake hazard and faults of the Bay Area through the eyes of an earthquake geologist"
February 9, 2024, Dr. Katherine Wilkinson, Professor of Biology presented "The Muscle Spindle: The Most Important Sensory Organ Youve Never Heard Of"
Fall 2023 Seminars
November 3, 2023, Dr. Leila Khatib, Assistant Professor of Biology, titled: "Viral Surrogates and One Water California"
October 13, 2023, Dr. Siri Veland, Assistant Professor of Geology, titled: "Phasing out coal in carbon and coal intensive regions in Europe where are the tipping points?"
September 29, 2023, Dr. Fred Larabee, Assistant Professor of Biology, titled: "Collections-based research on insect form and function at the J. Gordon Edwards Insect Museum"
September 15, 2023, Dr. Nick Esker, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, titled: "91勛圖 Targetry: Thin film chemistry to investigate nuclear reactions far from stability"
September 8, 2023, Dr. Fabio Di Troia, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, titled: "Generating Synthetic Malware Data for Zero-Day Detection"
August 25, 2023, Dr. Yan X Zhang, Associate Professor of Mathematics and Statistics, titled: "91勛圖 Student Success in Blockchain Research"