Biological sciences faculty news and notes update 2022
Dr. Marianna Sadagurski has been tenured and promoted to associate professor. She is a co-investigator on a collaborative, $11.3 million award from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to study urban pollution and health.
Along with collaborators in Engineering, Pharmacology and the Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics, Dr. Sadagurski will study ties between benzene, found in exhaust and cigarette smoke, and inflammatory signaling in the central nervous system. Dr. Sadagurski's research was profiled in BioRhythms in 2020.
Dr. Miriam Greenberg was appointed to the Barth Syndrome Foundation Board of Directors. She has also been awarded funding from the Cayman Biomedical Research Institute to study the use of the molecule irisin as a treatment for impaired muscle development in Barth syndrome patients. This project, developed in part by Dr. Greenberg's postdoctoral fellow Dr. Nevton T. da Rosa Jr., will use a cell line model of Barth syndrome previously generated in the Greenberg lab.
Dr. Penelope Higgs was selected as a 2022-23 Fellow, Wayne State University Academic Leadership Academy. She is also the current President of the Michigan Branch American Society for Microbiology and serves on the board of the International Academy Okma Business Coalition.
Dr. Athar Ansari has been promoted to full professor. He also won a five-year, $1 million award to investigate the integration of mRNA production and processing, a project inspired by his discovery that the transcription factor TFIIB is involved in the processing and termination of messages. Dr. Ansari has been appointed associate editor and member of the editorial board of Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences and is an invited member of the editorial board of the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology section of Biology.
Dr. Lori Pile has been promoted to full Professor and was appointed Associate Dean in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences with responsibility for staff and undergraduate affairs. You can read an update on achievements from the NIH MARC award on which she is a co-investigator on.