Message from the Director

Although another academic year has been put to rest, SMB faculty, students, and staff remain active and eager, continually building on our past accomplishments.

In January, SMB welcomed its newest faculty member, Mary Hunzicker-Dunn who comes to us from Northwestern University Medical School. Mary is the former President of the Society for the Study of Reproduction and last year was recognized by Society for her research accomplishments in ovarian signal transduction. She joins SMB as an Edward R. Meyer Distinguished Professor.

We also conducted two national searches in 2006 and were successful in filling one of the positions; Cynthia Haseltine will join SMB as an Assistant Professor this August, Cynthia is a microbiologist who studies the mechanisms underlying homologous recombination and double-strand break repair of DNA in bacterial thermophiles. She comes to us from the University of California at Davis where she was conducting postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Stephen Kowalczykowski.

Todd Farmerie, a research associate at Colorado State University will also join SMB in August as our newest Clinical Assistant Professor. Todd will be taking over our Biochemistry Laboratory course, formerly headed by Wendy Shuttleworth.

Janet Ashcraft and Smith Luto are the newest staff additions to SMB. Janet assumed the role of fiscal specialist and Smith divides his time providing IT support for Terry Hassold and Pat Hunt and in coordinating the Seminar Program.

Several SMB faculty received notable awards from WSU this year (Mick Smerdon—Regent’s Professor; Mike Skinner—Shalin Research Award; Mike Konkel—Thomas Lutz Memorial Teaching Award; and Nancy Magnuson—Samuel H. Smith Leadership Award. Mike Konkel was also promoted to Professor and Eric Shelden was awarded tenure. Kudos to all these faculty for their stellar accomplishments.

SMB also has 22 associate faculty who help make our program great. Sine they often work behind the scenes, we are highlighting the research programs of several of them in this issue.

You will also note that our graduate program continues to thrive. This issue details some of their travels and awards. In addition, five of our graduates were awarded Master’s Degrees, and six earned PhDs. Finally, we will welcome 11 new PhD, four MS, and one Biotechnology trainee in the Fall of 2006.

Summer also marked the breaking of ground for our new building, with an excepted move in date of 2008. This building will finally bring together all of the SMB constituency.

Finally, we are looking forward to our Third Annual Retreat to be held August 16-18 at the Red Lion Inn in Post Falls, ID. This year’s retreat will include all SMB members from faculty to staff. Over 120 are planning to attend and this years focus will be on “Communication and Team Building” conducted by Brian Fitch of Value Unlimited. Special thanks go to Bill Davis and Bill Rivers for overseeing the organization of this retreat.

As usual, this is my story and I’m still sticking to it!

John Nilson