{"id":11,"date":"2022-02-25T18:30:25","date_gmt":"2022-02-25T18:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/labs.bio.cmu.edu\/woolford\/?page_id=11"},"modified":"2025-12-09T15:40:26","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T15:40:26","slug":"news","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/labs.bio.cmu.edu\/woolford\/news\/","title":{"rendered":"News"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>2025<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Two of our undergraduates graduated and moved on to the next stage in their careers: Ethan joined the NIH as a post-bac, and Grace went to the Reilly lab at the Yale Medical School as a Postgraduate Associate. Congrats Ethan and Grace!<\/li>\n<li>Steffi gave a talk at the 2nd annual Pittsburgh Condensate Symposium on the role of the Nop2 IDR in ribosome assembly<\/li>\n<li>Brian joined our lab as a researcher ! Welcome Brian, we are so happy to have you!<\/li>\n<li>Taylor and John went to the Ribosome Synthesis Meeting in Cambridge, England. Taylor gave a talk on her work on RNA domain III compaction and the role of Erb1 and Drs1; John presented a poster on the role of the Nop2 IDR in ribosome assembly<\/li>\n<li>Allie presented a poster at the Rustbelt RNA Meeting in Huron, Ohio, on her work with the Nop2 IDR<\/li>\n<li>Allie successfully defended her Master&#8217;s Thesis! Congratulations Allie!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>2024<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Taylor successfully defended her thesis proposal in January! Well done Taylor!<\/li>\n<li>Addy graduated and joined the NIH as a post-bac working on HIV. Congrats Addy!<\/li>\n<li>Taylor presented her research at the 2024 Rustbelt RNA meeting in Columbus, Ohio. She gave a great talk and won the Outstanding Talk Award ! Congratulations Taylor<\/li>\n<li>Steffi presented a poster at the 2024 Rustbelt RNA meeting.<\/li>\n<li>Ethan joined the lab as an undergraduate researcher, and Allie joined as a Master&#8217;s student. Welcome Ethan and Allie!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>2023<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Fiona successfully defended her thesis and is off to a postdoc! Best of luck to Fiona!<\/li>\n<li>Emily graduated from the department and joined the University of Michigan as a graduate student! Best of luck Emily!<\/li>\n<li>Taylor joined our lab as a new graduate student, working on compaction of domain III! Welcome Taylor, we are so happy you joined our lab \ud83d\ude42<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>2022<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Welcome both Collin and Steffi to the Woolford Lab! We&#8217;re very excited to have you onboard!<\/li>\n<li>Congratulations to Amber LaPeruta on her new teaching positions at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh! Best of luck!<\/li>\n<li>Our NIH Grant has been renewed for years 40-43!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>2021<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Congratulations to Amber LaPeruta on defending her dissertation! We&#8217;re very proud!<\/li>\n<li>Welcome Emily and Grace to the Woolford Lab!<\/li>\n<li>Congratulations to Yi-Fang Tsay, who was elected to the National Academy of Sciences of the USA!!!! One of the highest honors in science. We are all so VERY proud of you Yi-Fang!<\/li>\n<li>Congratulations to Terri Kinzy, who was named president of Illinois State University. Terri, we saw this coming years ago&#8230;you are a born leader!!!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>2020<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Amber LaPeruta won the award for best oral presentation at the 2020 Rustbelt RNA Meeting in October. Congratulations Amber!<\/li>\n<li>Dan Wilson successfully defended his thesis research on November 28. Congrats Dr. Dan!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>2019<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The Woolford lab held its 40th year reunion. We all enjoying seeing everyone who has worked in the lab since 1980!<\/li>\n<li>Dan presented a talk at the Rustbelt RNA Meeting in Columbus, Ohio.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>2018<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>A huge congratulations to Jelena and Slavko, who renewed their marriage vows!<\/li>\n<li>Congratulations to Amber LaPeruta, whose talk at the International Conference on Ribosome Synthesis was well received. She described work done by her and Dan Wilson. John also presented a keynote lecture at the conference, and Amber, Dan, and Stephanie presented posters on their research.<\/li>\n<li>Welcome to Ph.D. student Fiona Fitzgerald, who joined our lab in May!<\/li>\n<li>Congratulations to Stephanie Biedka, Dan Wilson, Hailey Brown, Luke Diorio-Toth, and Jelena Micic, whose work on AFs required for remodeling of nucleolar pre-60S ribosomes was published in the <i>Journal of Cell Biology<\/i> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bio.cmu.edu\/labs\/woolford\/image\/biedka_jcb.pdf\" target=\"blank\" rel=\"noopener\">PDF<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>The lab&#8217;s grant from the National Institutes of Health was renewed for years 36-39. Hooray!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>2017<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Congratulations to Terri Goss Kinzy for being named Vice President for Research for at Western Michigan University!<\/li>\n<li>Congratulations to Beril Tutuncuoglu for her new position as a postdoctoral fellow in Nevan Krogran&#8217;s lab at the University of California, San Fransisco!<\/li>\n<li>Congrats to Stephanie Biedka for being named as the Richard King Mellon Foundation Presidential Fellowship in the Life Sciences.<\/li>\n<li>Congratulations to Pamela Bush on her new job as Director of Innovation and Incubation for the University of South Florida Research Foundation!<\/li>\n<li>Congratulations to Michael Gamalinda, who finshed his postdoctoral research and accepted a position as Scientist, at Bayer AG, Pharmaceutical Division, Protein Engineering and Assays.<\/li>\n<li>Congrats to Madhu Ramesh, who has accepted a postion as Associate consultant for Quintiles IMS in San Francisco!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>2016<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Sal\u2019s paper submitted to <em>Nucleic Acids Research<\/em>, about <em>erb1<\/em> mutations that block processing of the ITS2 spacer, was accepted on Christmas eve!<\/li>\n<li>That same week, John\u2019s paper with Ning was accepted at <em>Nature Structural and Molecular Biology.<\/em><\/li>\n<li>Sal\u2019s review article on principles of large ribosome subunit assembly was published in <em>Biochemical Journal<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>Sal started as a postdoctoral fellow in Joel McManus\u2019 lab at CMU.<\/li>\n<li>Madhu and Beril\u2019s paper with Joachim Frank was published in <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>Karen started as a postdoctoral fellow studying influenza virus transmission in Seema Lakdawala\u2019s lab at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.<\/li>\n<li>Beril, Hailey, and Jelena&#8217;s paper with Shun Wu and Ning Gao about cryo-EM structure of preribosomes was published in <em>Nature<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>Beril Tutuncuoglu&#8217;s manuscript about roles of the extension of ribosomal protein L8 was accepted by <em>RNA<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>Madhu Ramesh&#8217;s manuscript about roles of rRNA expansion segments was accepted by <em>RNA<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>Michael Gamalinda accepted a position with Bayer Pharmaceuticals in Germany.<\/li>\n<li>Welcome Amber LePeruta and Dan Wilson, our new grad students joining the lab!<\/li>\n<li>Congratulations to Madhumitha Ramesh on starting her new job in the real world at Mylan Pharmaceuticals.<\/li>\n<li>Karen Kormuth defended her thesis. Congratulations Dr. Kormuth!<\/li>\n<li>Karen Kormuth had a paper accepted for publication by <u>Biochemistry<\/u>.<\/li>\n<li>Jason Talkish had his paper accepted for publication by <u>RNA<\/u>.<\/li>\n<li>Madhumitha Ramesh&#8217;s team finished second place in the Yale Graduate Consulting Club Case Competition.<\/li>\n<li>Madhumitha Ramesh defended her thesis. Congratulations Dr. Ramesh!<\/li>\n<li>Salini Konikkat defended her thesis. Congratulations Dr. Konikkat!<\/li>\n<li>Stephanie Biedka successfully completed her 2nd-year qualifying exams.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>2015<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Salini Konikkat won the award for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cmu.edu\/bio\/news\/2015\/rustbelt_rna_award.html\">best poster presentation<\/a> at the 2015 Rustbelt RNA Meeting.<\/li>\n<li>Madhumitha Ramesh and Salini Konikkat received the Department of Biological Sciences <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cmu.edu\/bio\/news\/2015\/teaching_service_awards.html\">Graduate Student Service Award and Graduate Student Teaching Award<\/a>, respectively, for 2015.<\/li>\n<li>John Woolford was named an Associate Editor of <a href=\"http:\/\/rnajournal.cshlp.org\/\">RNA<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Jason Talkish has accepted a postdoctoral position with Dr. Manny Ares at University of California, Santa Cruz.<\/li>\n<li>Michael Gamalinda was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship.<\/li>\n<li>Michael Gamalinda received a prestigious Marie Curie Fellowship to support his postdoctoral research.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>2014<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Michael Gamalinda is now a postdoctoral fellow in Jenuwein&#8217;s lab at the Max Planck Institute of Immunology and Epigenetics in Freiburg, Germany.<\/li>\n<li>Michael Gamalinda defended his thesis. Congratulations Dr. Gamalinda!<\/li>\n<li>Karen Kormuth was presented Love of Learning Award from Phi Kappa Phi.<\/li>\n<li>Madhumitha Ramesh and Beril Kumcuoglu attended the RNA Meeting in Quebec, Canada. Madhumitha Ramesh presented her talk entitled \u201cRoles of Eukaryote-Specific rRNA Expansion Segments in Ribosome Biogenesis\u201d.<\/li>\n<li>Dr. John Woolford has been named acting head of the Department of Biological Sciences. Check out the related news articles:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cmu.edu\/news\/stories\/archives\/2014\/june\/june13_johnwoolford.html\">http:\/\/www.cmu.edu\/news\/stories\/archives\/2014\/june\/june13_johnwoolford.html <\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bizjournals.com\/pittsburgh\/news\/2014\/06\/16\/cmu-appoints-woolford-acting-head.html\">http:\/\/www.bizjournals.com\/pittsburgh\/news\/2014\/06\/16\/cmu-appoints-woolford-acting-head.html<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Jason Talkish had his paper entitled<a href=\"\/\/\/Users\/matthew\/Documents\/Box%20Sync\/Publications\/bitbucket\/woolford-lab-static-site\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/24664469\"> \u201cMod-seq: high-throughput sequencing for chemical probing of RNA structure.\u201d<\/a> published in RNA.<\/li>\n<li>Jason Talkish had his paper entitled <a href=\"\/\/\/Users\/matthew\/Documents\/Box%20Sync\/Publications\/bitbucket\/woolford-lab-static-site\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/24636992\">\u201cRibosome assembly factors Pwp1 and Nop12 are important for folding of 5.8S rRNA during ribosome biogenesis in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.\u201d<\/a> published in Molecular and Cellular Biology.<\/li>\n<li>Michael Gamalinda was presented The Guy C. Berry Graduate Research Award, which recognizes the most outstanding research by a graduate student in the Mellon College of Science. Check out the related news article:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cmu.edu\/mcs\/news\/pressreleases\/2014\/0507-mcs-edu-res-awards.html\">http:\/\/www.cmu.edu\/mcs\/news\/pressreleases\/2014\/0507-mcs-edu-res-awards.html<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Madhumitha Ramesh and Beril Kumcuoglu received the Dr. Margaret Carver Biological Sciences Graduate Student Travel Award.<\/li>\n<li>Michael Gamalinda had his paper entitled <a href=\"\/\/\/Users\/matthew\/Documents\/Box%20Sync\/Publications\/bitbucket\/woolford-lab-static-site\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/24449272\">\u201cA hierarchical model for assembly of eukaryotic 60S ribosomal subunit domains.\u201d<\/a> published in Genes &amp; Development.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>2013<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Jill Dembowski had her paper entitled <a href=\"\/\/\/Users\/matthew\/Documents\/Box%20Sync\/Publications\/bitbucket\/woolford-lab-static-site\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/24129494\">\u201cIdentification of the binding site of Rlp7 on assembling 60S ribosomal subunits in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.\u201d<\/a> published in RNA.<\/li>\n<li>The Woolford Lab attended the Rustbelt RNA Meeting in Cleveland, OH. Luke Diorio-Toth was awarded the best poster presentation for his poster \u201cRecruiting of ribosomal proteins by ribosomal assembly factors\u201d. Check out the related news article:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cmu.edu\/bio\/news\/2013\/luke-poster-award.html\">http:\/\/www.cmu.edu\/bio\/news\/2013\/luke-poster-award.html<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Jill Dembowski had her paper entitled <a href=\"\/\/\/Users\/matthew\/Documents\/Box%20Sync\/Publications\/bitbucket\/woolford-lab-static-site\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/23788678\">\u201cHas1 regulates consecutive maturation and processing steps for assembly of 60S ribosomal subunits.\u201d<\/a> published in Nucleic Acids Research.<\/li>\n<li>Jason Talkish defended his thesis. Congratulations Dr. Talkish!<\/li>\n<li>Michael Gamalinda received de Vries Fellowship for the most impactful publications in the Department of Biological Sciences this year. Check out the related news article:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cmu.edu\/bio\/news\/2013\/de-vries-stupakoff-fellowships.html\">http:\/\/www.cmu.edu\/bio\/news\/2013\/de-vries-stupakoff-fellowships.html<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Michael Gamalinda had his paper entitled <a href=\"\/\/\/Users\/matthew\/Documents\/Box%20Sync\/Publications\/bitbucket\/woolford-lab-static-site\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/23268442\">\u201cYeast polypeptide exit tunnel ribosomal proteins L17, L35 and L37 are necessary to recruit late-assembling factors required for 27SB pre-rRNA processing.\u201d<\/a>published in Nucleic Acids Research.<\/li>\n<li>Michael Gamalinda received Dr. Margaret Carver Biological Sciences Graduate Student Travel Award.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>2012<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Jelena Jakovljevic had her paper entitled <a href=\"\/\/\/Users\/matthew\/Documents\/Box%20Sync\/Publications\/bitbucket\/woolford-lab-static-site\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/22893726\">\u201cRibosomal proteins L7 and L8 function in concert with six A\u2083 assembly factors to propagate assembly of domains I and II of 25S rRNA in yeast 60S ribosomal subunits.\u201d<\/a> published in RNA.<\/li>\n<li>Jason Talkish had his paper entitled<a href=\"\/\/\/Users\/matthew\/Documents\/Box%20Sync\/Publications\/bitbucket\/woolford-lab-static-site\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/22735702\"> \u201cHierarchical recruitment into nascent ribosomes of assembly factors required for 27SB pre-rRNA processing in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.\u201d<\/a> published in Nucleic Acids Research.<\/li>\n<li>Karen Kormuth was awarded a scholarship from American Association of University Women, Pittsburgh Branch.<\/li>\n<li>The Woolford Lab attended the 9th International Conference on Ribosome Synthesis in Banff, Canada. Jason Talkish was presented the Nomura Poster Award for his poster presentation entitled \u201cThe DEAD-box protein Drs1 physically interacts with the Nop7 sub complex and is required for early steps of 27S pre-rRNA Processing.\u201d Check out the related news article:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cmu.edu\/bio\/news\/2013\/travel-awards.html\">http:\/\/www.cmu.edu\/bio\/news\/2013\/travel-awards.html<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>2011<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The Woolford Lab attended the Rustbelt RNA Meeting in Dayton, OH. Michael Gamalinda received the Outstanding Oral Presentation award for his talk entitled \u201cThe Yeast 60S Subunit is Structured by Ribosomal Proteins in a Stepwise Fashion.\u201d Check out the related news article:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cmu.edu\/bio\/news\/2011\/gamalinda.html\">http:\/\/www.cmu.edu\/bio\/news\/2011\/gamalinda.html<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Jason Talkish was named a CMU Presidential Fellow in the Life Sciences, supported by the Richard King Mellon Foundation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2025 Two of our undergraduates graduated and moved on to the next stage in their careers: Ethan joined the NIH as a post-bac, and Grace went to the Reilly lab at the Yale Medical School as a Postgraduate Associate. Congrats Ethan and Grace! Steffi gave a talk at the 2nd annual Pittsburgh Condensate Symposium on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-11","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/labs.bio.cmu.edu\/woolford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/labs.bio.cmu.edu\/woolford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/labs.bio.cmu.edu\/woolford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labs.bio.cmu.edu\/woolford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labs.bio.cmu.edu\/woolford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/labs.bio.cmu.edu\/woolford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":405,"href":"https:\/\/labs.bio.cmu.edu\/woolford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11\/revisions\/405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/labs.bio.cmu.edu\/woolford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}