Professor Mary Wimmer was selected as a finalist for the Faculty Merit Foundation’s West Virginia Professor of the Year. Last fall nominations were made for this prestigious award and nominees were interviewed in January. On March 17, the five finalists were honored at a social gathering at the Governor’s mansion in Charleston and a banquet in the Cultural Center. Dr. Fred Butcher, Vice President of the Health Sciences Center, was in attendance to introduce Mary to the members of the Foundation, other finalists and their guests. Dr. Butcher recalled helping Mary move into her first apartment in Morgantown, when both were members of the Department of Biochemistry. He described her research and teaching career at WVU, emphasizing her teaching efforts, accolades and awards she has won for her teaching. From the time Mary entered the Biochemistry Department as an Assistant Professor, she has been recognized by both students and faculty as an excellent teacher. Dr. Butcher also described Mary’s passion for the environment and the work she has done to preserve the environment in West Virginia. Fellow WVU faculty member Ruth Kershner, Associate Professor of Community Medicine, won the award and the $10,000 cash prize.

Dr. Heimo Riedel was awarded a one year, $100,000 research grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The project will explore novel strategies to target the Human Papilloma Virus genome for destruction in infected human cells, which is viewed as a potentially important new therapeutic strategy to combat cervical cancer. This research represents a new avenue of investigation for Dr. Riedel, who is an expert in signaling via tyrosine kinases and adaptor proteins in signal transduction pathways that are relevant to diabetes and cancer. These research interests were developed while Heimo was a graduate student at the European Molecular Biology Laboratories and the University of Heidelberg, and further honed as a postdoc at the EMBL and Genentech. Dr. Riedel is a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and member of the Mary Babb Randolph Cancer Center. He joined the faculty at West Virginia University as Professor of Biochemistry in 2003.

Sushant Bhatnagar graduated December 2008 with a Ph D from the Biochemistry Dept. He worked with Brad Hillgartner. Sushant’s poster “Fibroblast Growth Factor-19: A novel factor that inhibits hepatic fatty acid synthesis” received first place at a recent FASEB meeting. Several newspapers published articles on Sushant and Brad’s research – one article is on the last page of this newsletter. Sushant has also received multiple awards at WVU regarding his research accomplishments, most recently First Place in the Van Liere Convocation. After graduating in December, Sushant began postdoctoral studies with Alan Attie at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is studying the molecular genetics of Type 2 Diabetes. Congratulations Sushant and best wishes in your postdoctoral work and in your career!!  Brad (left with Sushant) has maintained an active lab, studying the regulation of gene expression. His current research is directed to characterizing the signaling pathways mediating the actions of insulin and glucagon on the activity of SREBP-1, a key factor controlling the transcription of genes in the triacylglycerol synthesis pathway. His long term goal is to identify new targets that can be pharmacologically manipulated to treat/prevent obesity and obesity- associated diseases.