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October is here, with a traditional Southern California post-summer heatwave. CSUN Biologists spent the week taking—and grading—midterms, launching freshly funded projects, and, in the weekly colloquium seminar, welcoming a new faculty member.
The Biology Colloquium Seminar Series continues Friday with a talk by Chanhee Kim, the newest member of the Biology faculty. Dr. Kim will tell us about his work on cellular responses to environmental toxins, in a talk titled “Understanding the toxicity mechanisms of ‘forever chemicals’ using a functional toxicogenomics approach.” Colloquium seminars are held Fridays this semester at 2:30 pm in Chaparral Hall 5122; after his talk, Dr. Kim will join a meet-the-speaker gathering with students in Chaparral Hall 5201.
Greens—in—space!
Profiles in Indiawest and the LA Daily News report on recent NASA grants to Biology Professor Chhandak Basu’s lab. The two projects will study the growth of leafy greens in the microgravity conditions aboard a spacecraft, and the adaptations that let salt-tolerant bacteria cope with habitats that would stymie other microbes—like the extreme environments on other planets or moons across the Solar System.