Center for Biofilm Engineering News Update:  March, 2001 Volume 4, Issue 2-3   __________________________________________   Workshop for Federal Regulatory Community   The Biofilm Institute will be sponsoring a one-day workshop on July 23, 2001 in Bozeman, MT. The workshop audience will consist primarily of federal regulatory personnel from the FDA and EPA. The purpose of the workshop will be to provide biofilm science education to the federal regulatory community with special emphasis placed on evaluating anti-biofilm and anti-bacterial efficacy testing methods with respect to product claims. Workshop expenses are subsidized by the Biofilm Institute as an educational service to the public. Please forward contact information of personnel from any US or foreign regulatory agency that you think would find this learning forum valuable, so that an invitation can be sent to them. Send contact information to Dr. Ryan Jordan at: ryan_j@erc.montana.edu   __________________________________________   Education   Characklis Award Recipients   The 2001 award recipients are Eric Kern, PhD candidate in Microbiology, and John Komlos, PhD candidate in Environmental Engineering.   John was nominated by his advisor, Dr. Al Cunningham. John embodies the collaborative and cross-disciplinary spirit that was William G. Characklis' vision of the ideal PhD student. Over the last three years, he has worked MSU undergraduate students during the academic year and during the summer months he has mentored students in the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program. John has distinguished himself as a teacher in the classroom in graduate and undergraduate courses. His hard work, dedication to the pursuit of knowledge and education, and congenial and cooperative attitude make him an ambassador for the Center's programs. John’s research combines bioremediation with biologically mediated groundwater flow control.   Eric was nominated by Dr. Tim McDermott (Eric's advisor, Dr. Dave Ward, is on sabbatical). Eric has distinguished himself since his arrival with his contagious enthusiasm for science and cutting-edge research. He is a recipient of the highly prestigious and highly competitive EPA STAR (Science to Achieve Results) graduate fellowship. He is highly regarded as a microbiology teaching assistant. His research investigates changes in microbial community structure during degradation of crude oil, and uses new and sensitive techniques to correlate microbial activity with environmental chemistry. He demonstrates independent and innovative thinking in his research, and his committee has seen remarkable performance in his exams and excellence in all his work. Eric is destined to be a leader in microbial ecology, and will reflect well on MSU and the CBE.   The annual WG Characklis Award, created in honor of the Center's founder, is presented to a Center for Biofilm Engineering PhD student based on his/her contributions in research, especially as it pertains to advances made in achieving Center goals. Some examples of points considered are: a student's contributions to the Center's research by his/her own efforts and through interactions with other Center students and researchers, level of active participation in discussions in seminars, classes, presentations, and associations with industrial participants. The recipient(s) represent the new generation of engineering/scientist that is a result of the unique cross-disciplinary training acquired here in the Center.   _______   MSU-Bozeman Names Outstanding Graduate Student   by Carol Schmidt   The annual outstanding achievement awards for graduates are administered through MSU's College of Graduate Studies. Each recipient received $500 and a plaque from the MSU Foundation.   Alan Ray Willse of Butte, who received the graduate achievement award for a doctoral student, graduated from MSU in the fall of 1999 with a Ph.D. in statistics and a 3.99 cumulative GPA. He holds a master's degree in statistics from MSU (1996) and a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Montana Tech (1987). Willse now lives in Richland, Wash., where he is a research scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. There he develops statistical and data mining applications for various fields, including aviation safety, computer visualization and computational linguistics. His work has been published in several industry journals, including Statistics and Computing, where a portion of his thesis, "Parametric Classification with Non-Normal Data," was accepted for publication. Willse is a member of the American Statistical Association's Statistics in Chemistry Award Committee. While at MSU, Willse was a research assistant at the Center for Biofilm Engineering and a teaching assistant for the Department of Mathematics. Before his graduate work at the university, Willse was an actuarial consultant in the insurance industry in Chicago and Milwaukee.   __________________________________________   New Staff Member   Dr. Jeff Leid recently joined the Center as a postdoctoral researcher. His work will deal primarily with the interactions of immune system cells, specifically white blood cells, and biofilms. Some work has already been done in this research area and Jeff plans to continue to build on the data already generated to produce new information that can lead to better protection against biofilm infections.   Currently, Jeff is studying the general immune system function in the American Bison and receives project funding from the Turner Foundation. Additionally, he has been funded by Turner Enterprises, Inc. to develop a better diagnostic tool for detecting Johne's Disease in the American Bison. Johne's disease is caused by Mycobacterium paratuberculosis and will eventually lead to death of the animals.   Jeff has a bachelor of science in chemistry from the University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, Washington. He did his senior thesis on the "Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy of a Small Depsi-peptide called Surfactin. The project was funded by the Murdock Foundation. In 1995, Jeff came to Montana State as a graduate student in the Department of Veterinary Molecular Biology and received his Ph.D. in April, 2000. Since that time he has been working on various projects funded by the Turner Foundation and Turner Enterprises, Inc. that deal with bison health issues.     __________________________________________   CBE People in Action   Dr. Bill Costerton was an invited speaker at the Biodeterioration of Materials conference, sponsored by Iberdrola, Buckman Laboratories, and FEI Microscopy, and the government of Community of Madrid, Spain. He presented "Biofilms and Engineering," Madrid, Spain, January 25, 2001.   Elinor Pulcini, was invited to present at the Montpellier Symposium: Vascular Access for Hemodialysis in Montpellier, France, February 1 - 2, 2001.   Dr. Phil Stewart was invited to present "Mechanism of Biofilm Resistance to Antimicrobial Agents" in the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, IL on Feb. 7, 2001.   Dr. Bill Costerton was an invited speaker at the Microbial Mat Meeting II in Oldenburg, Germany. He presented "Biofilms in Microbial Mats," February 19-20, 2001.   Dr. Zbigniew Lewandowski presented "Redox Cycling of Manganese on Surfaces of Passive Metals," at the 2001 ONR Electrochemistry Review, Annapolis, Maryland, February 19-21, 2001.   __________________________________________   Theses   See theses abstracts at http://www.erc.montana.edu/Res-Lib99-SW/pubs/Theses/default.htm     __________________________________________   Web Watch   BiofilmsOnline.com   See the March issue at http://www.BiofilmsOnline.com   Check our Recent Web Updates page created to make it easy for you to locate new information on the CBE web. See http://www.erc.montana.edu/Recent%20Web%20Updates/default.htm     __________________________________________   Upcoming CBE Events & Other Upcoming Workshops and Meetings   http://www.erc.montana.edu/CBEssentials-SW/whats_new/index.htm     __________________________________________   Newsletter Listserve   The CBE News Update is a listserve newsletter. If you need to subscribe or unsubscribe from the listserve, follow the directions at the following CBE website.   http://www.erc.montana.edu/Res-Lib99-SW/newsarchives/subscribe.htm   An alternative to subscribing to the listserve is to view the CBE News Update on our web page at http://www.erc.montana.edu/Ind-Col99-SW/Current_Newsletter/default.htm. Newsletter archives can be found at http://www.erc.montana.edu/Res-Lib99-SW/newsarchives/index.htm.   __________________________________________   Diane Williams  editor of the CBE News Update