UMN Chemistry Biology Interface Training Grant
The mission of the CBITG at the University of Minnesota is to provide rigorous and interdisciplinary training to a diverse and inclusive community of biomedical scientists. The CBITG provides trainees with the skills necessary to cross traditional boundaries, think critically, and understand and conduct scientific research at the interface of chemistry and biology. Trainees will progress in their development as professional scientists in the areas of career awareness, knowledge of chemical biology, professional scientist development, rigor and reproducibility, ethical conduct of research, and appreciation of the contributions of scientists from all backgrounds.
Predoctoral trainees for this training grant program are selected from a pool of graduate students who have been recruited by the Chemistry; Biochemistry, Molecular Biology & Biophysics (BMBB); and Medicinal Chemistry Departments. The program allows excellent students to grow into accomplished professionals both in their primary area of interest (e.g., synthetic/mechanistic organic and inorganic chemistry, molecular biology, mechanistic enzymology, medicinal chemistry) and in a complementary field by cross-discipline research interactions and experiences.
Recent News and Upcoming Events
The program for our next CBITG Symposium is shaping up! Mark you calendars for Friday, October 4, 2024!
Kudos to trainee Melanie Nevins for being selected as one of this year's Innovation Fellows sponsored by the Earl Bakken Medical Devices Center in the Institute for Engineering in Medicine. Melanie is being advised by Prof. Valerie Pierre. Melanie is a part of an impressive group of go-getters, including people with clinical and technical backgrounds. The Innovation Fellows Program concentrates on developing medical devices for a broad variety of clinical areas. The goal is to train the next leaders in medtech by fostering leadership and teaching risk management for medical devices. Innovation Fellows learn a disciplined medical technology product development process which includes FDA requirements, reimbursement, intellectual property and business strategies in addition to creativity techniques and prototyping. To find out more go to this LINK.
Professional Development: Biotechne Visit
This July, our CBITG trainees visited Bio-Techne's global headquarters in Minneapolis. We had a very informative day receiving lab tours, one-on-one resume feedback, and interviews tips. The trainees also got to network and highlight UMN's cutting edge chemical biology research at a flashtalk event. It was a wonderful opportunity to hear about the different career opportunities at a leading biotech right in our backyard, as well as reconnect with former trainees!
Recent Publications
The total number of publications for all trainees in CBITG since 2019 is 49 including 20 first or co-first author papers. This averages to 9.8 publications per year or 0.41 publication/trainee/year (Table 1). These interpretations are challenging due to the small cohort and short time period, as many of our trainees publish a large body of work near or after graduation. Of our 6 trainees receiving their PhD, 29 papers have been published with 12 first author publications. Of our 8 current trainees, five have already co-authored a paper including one trainee who has co-authored a first author paper.
To more broadly evaluate our publication outcomes and demonstrate the highly collaborative nature of our training grant, we provide an additional analysis which includes 34 trainees from 2013-2024. From this cohort, they have published 122 papers involving either a CBITG trainee (72 publications) or co-authored papers with at least two CBITG trainers (62 publications with many being cross-departmental). This latter statistic further supports the highly collaborative atmosphere amongst the chemical biology faculty providing valuable exposure to cross-disciplinary research and fostering a productive relationship between labs for co-mentoring trainees. In addition, 34 of the 122 papers include first author manuscripts from CBITG trainees.
HUHgle: An Interactive Substrate Design Tool for Covalent Protein-ssDNA Labeling Using HUH-Tags
Smiley, A.T., Babilonia-Díaz, N.S., Hughes, A.J., Lemmex, A.C.D., Anderson, M.J.M., Tompkins, K.J., and Gordon, W.R. ACS Synthetic Biology 2024
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