2006 American Society of Human Genetics Annual Meeting President's Reception

Six MSU Genetics Program graduates ended up in human genetics and are all very close today. From left to right: Terry Hassold, Patricia Hunt, Karen Warren, Roger Schultz, Steve Warren, Tom Glover, Helga Toriello. The reception that they attended was in honor of Steve Warren, who was the outgoing president of the society at the time.

Lawrence Smart
(PhD 1992)

Lawrence (Larry) Smart is an Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental & Forest Biology at the State University of New York in Syracuse. Larry has been developing shrub willow as a genetic system; he has collected germplasm and made crosses to enhance phytoremdiation properties of the shrub willow; recent interests focus on using it as a source of biofuel.  Larry and his wife (Chris Durbahn Smart) and daughter Stephanie live in Geneva, NY, where Chris is a member of the Plant Pathology Department. To get in touch with Larry or to find out about his research program, refer to his web site: http://www.esf.edu/efb/smart/

Linda Smith Sherwood
(PhD 1985)

Linda Smith Sherwood is a faculty member at Montana State University (MSU-west as she and John call it). She is coauthor of a microbiology text book that was published January 2007: Prescott, Harley, and Klein's Microbiology by Joanne Willey, Linda M. Sherwood, and Chris Woolverton, publisher McGraw-Hill.  Linda let us know that she attended Pete and Bebe Magee's retirement celebration in August of 2007. (Pete was Linda's thesis advisor and  a faculty member in the Genetics Program until he left MSU for Minnesota in 1987.) Linda's E-mail address is: lshrwd@montana.edu

Hiroko Takayasu
(PhD 1998)

After working for years in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, assisting with translations and technical support, Hiroko made a mid-career adjustment, becoming an Instructor for English, yoga, and meditation.  She is available as a consultant through Takayasu International, Okinawa, Japan. Hiroko's Webshots photo album can be viewed here.

Jun Tsuji 
(PhD 1992)

Jun is currently an associate professor at Seina Heights University in Adrian, Michigan. In addition to his teaching responsibilities at this small liberal arts school, Jun has authored a book called The Soul of DNA, which is "the true story of a Catholic Nun, Sister Miriam Michael Stimson, and her role in the greatest scientific discovery of the twentieth century." For more information about Jun's book, visit the website : http://www.llumina.com/store/thesoulofdna.htm

Greg Velicer
(PhD 1997)

After six years in Tuebingen, Germany at a Max Planck Institute, Greg Velicer returned to the United States to take an Associate Professor position in the Department of Biology at Indiana University. An expert in bacterial evolution and ecology, Greg recently visited MSU to give a seminar on the evolution of social behavior in the bacterium Myxococcus xanthus, including both cooperative and cheating behavior, observed in long-term cultures in the lab. For more information, refer to this website: http://www.bio.indiana.edu/facultyresearch/faculty/Velicer.html

Trevor Wagner
(PhD 2006)

Trevor is working in a Research & Development group at OpGen, a biotechnology company based in Madison, Wisconsin. The company uses automated fluorescent microscopy to assemble restriction maps of entire microbial genomes. Trevor's team at OpGen is trying to adapt these procedures to allow clinical labs to identify microbes rapidly.  Trevor can be contacted at twagner@opgen.com

Thanda Wai 
(PhD 1993)

Thanda is currently a Technology License Monitoring & Enforcement
Specialist at the NIH Office of Technology Transfer in Rockville, MD. Our group takes over after the licenses are executed.  Her work deals with trying to obtain research reports, sales reports, and royalties from the licensees as well as investigating potential infringement of NIH patents.  "I'm adding to my skill set in a new area of intellectual property enforcement," she says. Before taking this position in October of 2006, she worked as a Staff Scientist with the American Type Culture Collection.

Steve Warren
(PhD 1981)

Steve holds an academic appointment at Emory University in Atlanta, where he is a professor and Chairman of the Department of Human Genetics. He has served as President of the American Society of Human Genetics, and was recently elected to the Naitonal Academies Institute of Medicine. The CNSAA alumni board recently selected Steve Warren as the recipient of the 2007 Outstanding Alumni Award. Steve received both his B.S. and Ph.D. from MSU. More>>

Sainan Wei  
(PhD 2002)

Sainan has recently joined the Genetics Program faculty through her appointment to a tenure-track position in the Department of Pediatrics and Human Development. She pursued both her masters and graduate degrees at MSU, and is now Director for Clinical DNA Diagnostic and Cytogenetics laboratories in Pediatrics and Human Development. Before returning to MSU as an assistant professor, Sainan worked in the Henry Ford Hospital as a clinical genetics fellow.

Roger Wise
(PhD 1983)

After postdoctoral work in Florida and Germany, Roger became a Research Geneticist with the USDA-ARS in 1989 with the Department of Plant Pathology at Iowa State University.  He holds a collaborator appointment in that department with the rank of Professor.  He was recently awarded a collaborative $2 million NSF grant, which has the goal of using genomics tools and resources related to barley, rice and Arabidopsis to perform comparative analysis of disease defense pathways. For more information, visit the website: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~imagefpc/wiselab.html