Biology Honors Graduates - 2012

Biology Honors Program

Biology students must attain a 3.5 GPA to be considered for admission to the program, and must perform a minimum of two semesters of research, produce a formal thesis and offer a lecture to the campus and a private thesis defense to the faculty. We are pleased to announce three of our students graduated with Biology Honors this May; Janelle Gabriel, Steven Gangloff and Alicia Watson.

Janelle Gabriel, Avon Lake, Ohio, majored in Molecular Genetics with a minor in Chemistry. She performed an NSF REU in 2010 at Case Western University and an REU in 2011 at the Summer Scholars Pro-gram in Genetics at the University of Rochester. At Fredonia, she performed research under the mentorship of Dr. Scott Ferguson; her Honors thesis dissertation was entitled, “Experimental Determination of Internal Ribosome Entry Site (IRES) Presence within the gurken mRNA of Drosophila melanogaster”. Janelle was accepted into the Ph.D. program of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology with a university fellowship at Ohio State University; she begins her doctoral studies this fall.

Steven Gangloff, Amherst, NY, majored in Biology with a minor in Chemistry. With career aspirations in medicine, Steve completed internships and performed volunteer work at several regional hospitals . He received multiple academic awards and scholar-ships while at Fredonia, and won the SUNY Chancellors Award for Student Excellence in 2012. At Fredonia, he performed research under the mentorship of Dr. Scott Ferguson; his Honors thesis dissertation was entitled, “Real Time Visualization of Sqd-grk Interactions within Living Drosophila Oocytes using Trimolecular Fluorescence Complementation”. Steve is one of just 160 students out of 4,000 applicants accepted into the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Buffalo; he begins studies this fall to become a physician.

Alicia Watson, North Tonawanda, NY, majored in Molecular Genetics with a minor in Chemistry. She performed an REU during the summer of 2011 at the Molecular Biology Summer Research Program for Undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine Gene therapy Program. At Fredonia, she performed research under the mentorship of Dr. Scott Ferguson; her Honors thesis dissertation was entitled “Trimolecular Fluorescence Complementation Analysis of Sqd-grk Interactions in the Drosophila Oocyte”. Alicia was accepted to the Ph.D. program in the Interdisciplinary Biomedical Graduate Program at the University of Pittsburgh; she began her doctoral studies this summer.

The Biology Honors students research activities were funded in part by the Joseph C. and Jane E. (Schuster) Falcone
Biology Endowment for Scholarship and Research.