Recent NIH rankings place Emory 17th nationally in the amount of institutional Training Grant dollars. We are proud that 116 of our students are supported on individual awards or institutional National Research Service Awards. A list of the more predominant fellowships and awards that our students have received is listed in the Fellowships and Awards section.

Emory University has been selected as one of America's 25 New Elite 'Ivies" by Newsweek.

In a 2009 Forbes survey Atlanta was listed as the 6th Best City for Singles (and Atlanta was listed as having the lowest cost of living among the cities listed in the survey).

Emory University is one of eleven colleges that received Green Ratings of 99 (a perfect score) in the Princeton Review's "The Best 368 Colleges" Honor Roll list.

Seven research areas in the Graduate Division were ranked in the Top Ten based on Faculty Scholarly Productivity by the Chronicle of Higher Education. These research areas include ecology, evolutionary biology, immunology, microbiology, molecular pharmacology, nutrition scineces, and pharmacology.

Emory University received the 2008 Presidential Award for General Community Service, the highest federal recognition given to colleges and universities for their committment to community service, service-learning, and civic engagement. Emory was the only private institution among the 2008 winners (Press Release).

COBBS (Career Opportunities in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences) is a program that helps inform students about different career paths outside of academia.  A group of Division students and administrators form the Career Development Committee.  In the monthly seminar series, guest speakers discuss their own careers and provide insight and advice.  The goal of the COBBS program is to graduate students who are well-rounded and competitive candidates in a wide variety of fields. (Emory Report Article)

Awards:

The Seventh Annual Graduate Division Student Research Symposium, which is organized and sponsored by the Division Students Advisory Council (DSAC), was held October 8, 2009. The following students received awards. For Oral Presentation: Lynn Huynh (1st), Kathryn Knoop (2nd), Rebecca Sanders (3rd). For Poster Presentation: Stefanie Hinkle (1st), Monica Hall and Amelia Hofstetter (2nd), Christina Gavegnano, Michael Gehring, and William Weldon (3rd). Congratuations to these students and to all who participated.

Beth Kochin received a Fannie and John Hertz Foundation Fellowship. Beth was one of 16 graduate students who were awarded the fellowship out of a pool of almost 600 applicants. (Emory Report Article)

Sarah Brosnan (alumni) was the recipient of the Baylor Alumni Association's 2009 Herbert H. Reynolds Outstanding Young Alumni Award. (Article)

Alexandra Mercante was awarded a Carl Storm Underrepresented Minority fellowship to support her participation in the 2009 Multi-Drug Efflux Systems Gordon Research Conference.

Alicia Lyle received a Merit Award for Young Investigators at the 2008 Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology Conference.

Beth Imhoff-Kunsch received the award for Best Student Poster at the Nutritional Immunology RIS, Experimental Biology meeting that was held in San Diego in 2008.

Smita Iyer received the Strategic Training in Allergy Research Award from the American Academy of Allergy in 2008.

Nathan Schultheiss received the award for Best Poster at the 2008 Southeast Nerve Net (SENN) meeting.

Li-Ting Chien received the Paul F. Cranefield Award for best paper submitted to the Journal of General Physiology by a first-author graduate student.

Andrea Conlisk-Sharma (alumni) received the J. Virgil Peavy Memorial Award in both 2005 and 2006. The award is presented by the Society for Neuroscience.

Dana Crawford (alumni) was selected as one of "Tomorrow's PIs" by Genome Technology. She was one of 31 young scientist named as up-and-coming principal investigators.

A sample of first author student publications:

Lan*, F, RE Collins*, R de Cegli, R Alpatov, JR Horton, X Shi, O Gozani, X Cheng and Y Shi (*These authors contributed equally). 2007. Recognition of unmethylated histone H3 lysine 4 links BHC80 to LSD1-mediated gene repression. Nature 448(7154): 718-722.

Yang, SH, PH Cheng, H Banta, K Piotrowska-Nitsche, JJ Yang, EC Cheng, B Snyder, K Larkin, J Liu, J Orkin, ZH Fang, Y Smith, J Bachevalier, SM Zola, SH Li, XJ Li and AW Chan.  2008.  Towards a transgenic model of Huntington's disease in a non-human primate. Nature 453(7197): 921-4.   

Barber, DL, EJ Wherry, D Masopust, B Zhu, JP Allison, AH Sharpe, GJ Freeman and R Ahmed.  2006.  Restoring function in exhausted CD8 T cells during chronic viral infection. Nature 439(7077): 682-7. 

Kelly, SM, SA Pabit, CM Kitchen, P Guo, KA Marfatia, TJ Murphy, AH Corbett and KM Berland.  2007.  Recognition of polyadenosine RNA by zinc finger proteins.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104(30): 12306-11. 

Bettini, ML and GJ Kersh.  2007.  MAP kinase phosphatase activity sets the threshold for thymocyte positive selection. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104(41): 16257-62. 

Rommelfanger, KS, GL Edwards, KG Freeman, LC Liles, GW Miller and D Weinshenker.  2007.  Norepinephrine loss produces more profound motor deficits than MPTP treatment in mice. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104(34): 13804-9. 

Other students and alumni have received national press for their publications:

Alumni Valerie Horsley was interviewed in the Journal of Cell Biology (February 23, 2009 edition).

Reyes-Turcu FE, Horton JR, Mullally JE, Heroux A, Cheng X, Wilkinson KD. The ubiquitin binding domain ZnF UBP recognizes the C-Terminal diglycine motif of unanchored ubiquitin. Cell. 2006 March 24;124 (6):1197-1208. (Emory Press Release)

Barber DL, Wherry EJ, Masopust D, Zhu B, Allison JP, Sharpe AH, Freeman GJ, and Ahmed R. Restoring function in exhausted CD8T cells during chronic viral infection. Nature. 2006 Feb 9;439 (7077):682-7. This paper was named as one of the "All-Time Top 10" most interesting articles by The Faculty of 1000 Biology (F1000). It was listed as #5 on this list and #1 on the "All-Time Top 10 in Immunology" category.

Genereux DP, Miner BE, Bergstrom CT and Laird CD. A population-epigenetic model to infer site-specific methylation rates from double-stranded DNA methylation patterns. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005 Apr 19;102(16):5802-7.  The paper was described in the University of Washington "University Week" newspaper and was recommended in Faculty of 1000, which identifies and publicizes highly influential papers in science.

Hammock EA and Young LJ. Microsatellite instability generates diversity in brain and sociobehavioral traits. Science. 2005 Jun 10;308(5728):1630-4. The research was described in the NY Times and discussed on National Public Radio.

Reeves PM, Bommarius B, Lebeis S, McNulty S, Christensen J, Swimm A, Chahroudi A, Chavan R, Feinberg MB, Veach D, Bornmann W, Sherman M, and Kalman D. Disabling poxvirus pathogenesis by inhibition of Abl-family tyrosine kinases. Nature Medicine. 2005; 11, 731-739. The research was also described in an NIH press release, Reuters and the Washington Post.

Silk JB, Brosnan SF, Vonk J, Henrich J, Povinelli DJ, Richardson AS, Lambeth SP, Mascaro J, Schapiro SJ. Chimpanzees are indifferent to the welfare of unrelated group members. Nature. 2005 October 27;437 (7063):1357-9. Sarah Brosnan is an alumni and this is her second publication in Nature. Her first article was a first author publication during her graduate training: Brosnan SF and FBM de Waal. Monkeys reject unequal pay. Nature. 2003 September 18;425, 297-299. She was also interviewed by National Public Radio about the research.

Lim MM, Wang Z, Olazabal DE, Ren X, Terwilliger EF, and Young LJ.  Enhanced partner preference in promiscuous species by manipulating the expression of a single gene, Nature. 2004 June 17;429 (6993):754-7.  The research was named one of the Top 100 Stories for 2004 in science by Discover Magazine.

Will Clower (alumni) has published two books on healthy eating: "The Fat Fallacy" and "The French Don't Diet". He recently addressed an audience at Emory University on his mediterranean approach to wellness (view telecast).

The Division strives to provide a well rounded education for our students:

• In addition to writing articles for major journals, students have opportunities to enhance their scientific writing skills by becoming involved with Hybrid Vigor, which is published by a group of students who are involved in every aspect of the magazine’s publication (article writing, illustrating, design layout). 


• Students may also participate in programs that provide them with teaching experiences (ORDER and PRISM).


• Our students actively participate in the Black Graduate Student Association and the newly formed local student chapter of SACNAS (Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science).


• The FACES Program (Facilitating Academic Careers in Engineering and Science) provides additional opportunities for minority students who are interested in entering the professoriate.  They also invite all students to attend their seminars, which will include such topics as How to Secure a Good Post-Doc, Grant Writing, Course Development, Negotiation for Your First Job, and Safely Maneuvering the Politics of Academia, and the program also publishes a newsletter.