We are thrilled to share that the College of CMNS recently received a $505K grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) to build students’ persistence and success in STEM. The initiative is being led by Kaci Thompson and Gili Marbach-Ad from the College of CMNS and Marco Molinaro from the UMD Teaching and Learning Transformation Center.
Mohammad Mian is a 2nd-year graduate student working towards a doctoral degree in the lab of Dr. Gilad Ofek. Read Mohammad’s account of his tumultuous early years in Pakistan and discovering his love of biology as a high school dropout in a Seattle community college!
Rachel Sanford joined the CBMG department this fall as our new Media Lab Manager. Rachel is a graduate of UMD and worked previously with the Entomology Department. Read more about Rachel here!
Norma Andrews is a Professor and former Chair of the CBMG department. Read about her
experiences as an immigrant from Brazil entering academia in the United States!
Dr. David Mosser is a Professor in the CBMG department and Director of the Maryland
Pathogen Research institute. Read about his non-traditional path from high school biology
teacher and football coach to academia!
Identical twin brothers Asan Turdiev and Husan Turdiev joined the CBMG department in 2017 as research technicians in Dr. Vince Lee’s lab. They are currently both working toward doctoral degrees in the labs of Dr. Eric Haag (Asan) and Dr. Caren Chang (Husan). Read about their experiences as recent immigrants to the United States below!
Dr. Ken Frauwirth joined the CBMG department as an assistant professor in 2003 before transitioning to a professional track position in 2012. He has been a Senior Lecturer, teaching a wide range of courses, since 2017. Read about his scientific interests and inspirations below!
Dr. Lanny Ling joined the CBMG department as an Assistant Professor in 2018 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2019. Read about his academic journey from China to Maryland (by way of Ohio and Texas) below!
Dr. Najib El-Sayed is a Professor in the CBMG department with a joint appointment in the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. He also directs the Integrated Life Sciences honors program and the BBI-Advanced Genomic Technologies Core at UMD. Read about his experiences studying in war-torn Lebanon before coming to the United States to pursue a scientific career!
Dr. Swarna Mohan has been a lecturer at UMD since 2019, and she joined the CBMG department in 2022. Read about her previous teaching journey and her introduction to the department here!