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From the Hot Seat by David Stern

April 2011 Volume 13, Issue 2 The Hub

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It’s that time of the year again…when the snow finally melts, and the Board of Directors assembles for its annual meeting at the Institute. This year’s events begin on May 9th with a dinner for the Research Oversight Committee (ROC), followed by various commit‐tee meetings on the 10th, and the actual Board meeting on the morning of the 11th. Our custodial staff helps make sure that BTI looks beautiful every day, but let’s pay particu‐lar attention to the conditions of the labs and hallways during the meetings! Our Board exercises three major responsibilities. These are hiring and evaluating the President, approving the annual budget and protecting the endowment, and approving the Strategic Plan. We report back to staff on the Board’s actions and feedback in the State of the Institute gathering that follows the Board meeting. While the Board’s various committees are meeting on the 10th – Finance, Investment, Audit – the Institute’s own committees that include Board members, also meet. These are the ROC as well as the External Relations and Development Committee (ERD). The ROC is charged with evaluating the research environment at BTI. This means the type and quality of infrastructure, how we facilitate research, and how careers progress and are supported at the Institute. The Postgraduate Society, for example, arose out of ROC conversations. This year, a number of BTI researchers will be meeting with the ROC and sharing their thoughts. I am always impressed by the depth of these conversations, and eager to learn what is working and what can be improved. The ERD discusses intellectual property, partnerships and other topics. Since we re‐cently capped the revisioning of our technology transfer program with the hiring of Karen Kindle, we will be briefing the ERD on our activities and plans in this area. As a small institute, BTI’s mission is enhanced by partnerships. Besides our strong relation‐ships with Cornell and the USDA, BTI has active partnerships with three Asian universi‐ties – Qingdao University in China (insect cell lines), NHCU in Taiwan (bioenergy) and Tsukuba University in Japan (tomato genomics). The many external research collabora‐tions of our faculty are also a form of partnership. Stimulating new partnerships – in‐cluding internal collaborations – is one goal of the Strategic Plan. From the point of view of the Senior Leadership Team, the Board meeting is an opportu‐nity to showcase all the progress BTI has made in the prior year towards fulfillment of the Strategic Plan. We partly do this through metrics. For example, our publications have increased about 50% in the past two years, which is a remarkable achievement. Behind that number is everything from infrastructure to creativity to maintenance of an optimal work environment. In other words, our success is nothing less than a team ef‐fort.

Power Shutdown 4/26/11 2

Management Team 2

Business Office News 3

BTI’s Perl Club 3

Bogorad Award 3

ASP Keen Award 4

Safety Committee 4

Payroll Changes 6/1/11 5

Welcome Patti FitzPatrick 5

Summer 2011 Interns 6

Press Releases 6

Grants and Awards 7

Ethidium Bromide 7

PGS Updates 8

Fun Committee 8

Emergency Generator 9

BTI’s Vision 2013 9

ERP’s 10

Martin Lab News 10

IP Office News 11

Photo Contest 12

Customized Safety Training 12

And more!

BTI Mission: To advance and communi-cate scientific knowledge in plant biology to improve agriculture, protect the en-vironment and enhance hu-man health.

In This Issue...


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Welcome New Hires!

February: Patti FitzPatrick, Controller Hui Jiang, Research Asst.,

Brutnell Linyong Mao, PostDoc, Fei March Hyong Woo Choi, PostDoc,

Klessig Fabiana Csukasi Cabrera,

PostDoc, Catala Shih‐Chi Hsu, PostDoc,

Stern Jianyong Li, PostDoc,

Kochian April Karen Kindle, Liaison, Tech‐

nology Marketing and Licensing

BTI will commence a search for a new Director of Development and External Relations in the near future. This position is responsible for the oversight the Annual Report, our quarterly newsletter "The Transcript," fundraising, the TC3 biology course and a myriad of other tasks and roles. The Senior Leadership Team will be searching broadly for an outstanding communicator with a passion for science and BTI's mission. As the process develops, the SLT will be calling on staff for their input and engagement.

Development and External Relations – Search for New Director

February Marianne Jaubert, Post Doc,

Moffett Lab March Lorraine Johnson, Director of

Development and Exter‐nal Relations

Departing Employees Career Development:

A Career Development Plan will be included in the annual evaluation process.

Postdoc Teaching: Post docs have asked for teaching experience opportunities on a consistent basis (7 post‐docs interested at last recruitment event). MT discussed pay for teaching, continuation of the program and other opportunities on campus.

Benefit Overview: An overview of our existing BTI benefits was presented to MT. The Benefits Plan Commit‐tee reviewed all benefits and associated costs so there would be a comprehensive under‐standing of the benefits provided to staff. This information was presented to MT for infor‐mational purposes.

Employee Appreciation Day Recap: About 80 people attended. People not only attended, they stayed! Feedback was very posi‐tive.

For the full text of Management Team Meeting Minutes, you may access http://webportal.bti.cornell and click on the Meeting Minutes Link. (NOTE: You must be on the BTI internal network, or be using BTI’s VPN client on your computer. See IT Support for details.)

Management Team Meeting Bullets March 15, 2011

INTEGRITY

adherence to moral and ethical principles

Power Shutdown: Tuesday, April 26 (1am6pm)

Required preventive maintenance on our building transformer will take place on Tues‐day, April 26 between 1am and 6am. This electrical outage will be performed during non‐peak hours to have as little impact as possible on staff. NOTE: This is non‐emergency power. The mechanical shop will work with staff to identify critical systems so that research is not impacted.


NEWS FROM THE BUSINESS OFFICE

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BTI’s Perl Club s

Employee Anniversaries

April: Martins Adio 3 yrs Kevin Ahern 11 yrs Klaus Apel 3 yrs Gary Blissard 21 yrs Jane Calder 3 yrs Carmen Catala 3 yrs Sophia Darling 1 yr Greg Inzinna 4 yrs Tiffany Kamery 1 yr Chanhong Kim 3 yrs Jonathan Leto 1 yr Eric Liu 4 yrs Lisa Meihls 1 yr Mamta Srivastava 3 yrs May: Aureliano Bombarely Gomez 3 yrs Patrick Boyle 1 yrs Robert Buels 3 yrs Donna Claes 12 yrs Thomas Fisher‐York 3 yrs Joseph Gosselin 3 yrs Jeff Heichel 7 yrs Mingyun Huang 2 yrs Pinghua Li 3 yrs Zi Li 1 yr Naama Menda 3 yrs Mathew Milner 1 yr Lukas Mueller 3 yrs Anuradha Pujar 3 yrs Ying Rong 1 yr Dustin Scheve 7 yrs

Have you visited the Business Office lately? If you have, then you are already aware that we have made some changes. Staff has moved around a bit and we are adjusting to our new surroundings. We are doing our best to make sure you can locate the staff member you are looking for and have placed new signs on our doors and cubicles identifying our work space. The welcome mat is out so please drop in!

2010 Financial Review ‐ The Business Office just finished the 2010 financial review with our auditors from Loeb and Troper. It all went very smoothly and that is mostly due to our great staff. Thank you to all of you who assisted in this process. Without your help it would have been a much more laborious undertaking!

Travel forms and policies – These forms and policies, which are currently available on the intranet, are being reviewed for changes. Soon we will be rolling out new forms and ad‐justments to the policy so keep an eye out for our announcement.

Self Service area – To better serve the BTI community, the Business Office now has a self service area. Here you can find travel, payroll, petty cash and a multitude of other forms all in one place for your convenience. Most, if not all of these forms, are available on the intranet but we wanted to make them available to you in the office as well. We hope you will stop in and take advantage of this service.

Lawrence Bogorad Molecular Plant Biology Award

The Lawrence Bogorad Molecular Plant Biology Award was established to honor and cele‐brate scientist and long‐time BTI Board member Lawrence Bogorad. The award is given annually to an outstanding BTI postdoctoral fellow with nominations being solicited from the BTI faculty in December. Selection for the award is based on publications, other re‐search accomplishments, presentations, honors, and awards. The award is intended to rec‐ognize research excellence in postdoctoral scientists at the BTI and carries a modest cash prize.

The BTI scientist recipient for 2010 is Pinghua Li from Tom Brutnell's lab. Pinghua has been instrumental in the establishment and execution of the transcriptomics work in the Brutnell lab. This work has been central to several recent publications, including the maize leaf transcriptome study (Li et al. (2010) Nature Genetics 42:1060). Pinghua has also pro‐vided transcriptomic data for refinement of the maize genome annotation, and worked on specialized annotation of the Brachypodium genome sequence. Throughout, Pinghua has been an energetic and dedicated lab citizen, colleague and mentor.

MUTUAL RESPECT

having esteem for or a sense of the worth or

excellence of each other

BTI researchers interested in expanding their knowledge in bioinformatics meet every week in the BTI Perl Club to discuss Perl, R, databases, and other topics. Participants can bring up problems, and approaches and solutions are discussed in the group. The Perl Club is held every Tuesday at 2pm, and is open to everyone in the Cornell community. Contact Lukas Mueller ([email protected]) for more information, or just drop by!

Dan Klessig: APS 2011 Noel T. Keen Awardee


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BTI Trivia

Dan Klessig is the recipient of the 2001 Noel T. Keen Award for Research Excellence in Mo‐lecular Plant Pathology from the American Phytopathological Society. Nominees have made outstanding contributions and demonstrated sustained excellence and leadership in research that significantly advanced the understanding of molecular aspects of host‐pathogen interactions, plant pathogens or plant associated microbes or molecular biology of disease development or defense mechanisms. The award will be presented at the APS annual meeting in August, 2011. Congratulations Dan! (Note: This is the second year that a BTI scientist has received the Noel T. Keen Award. Greg Martin was the 2010 awardee.)

The safety of all staff is of utmost importance. Every employee is responsible for under‐standing BTI’s Safety Policy. The policy and more safety information can be found at http://www.bti.cornell.edu/Safety. Safety Committee Meeting Bullets: 4/12/2011

Safety Glasses and Lab Coats: The Safety Committee will be testing and then offering new safety glasses in a wider variety of sizes and styles. The Committee is also investigat‐ing the purchase of new lab coats that may be assigned to individuals.

Laboratory Safety Inspections: In preparation for our next Laboratory Inspection, a meeting will be scheduled with all Lab Safety Representatives in May. This meeting will help ensure that labs are aware of the common safety concerns and violations. A lab in‐spection will be scheduled for this summer.

Cornell Ergonomics (Musculoskeletal Injury Prevention Program): The Safety Committee would like to bring in the MIPP representative to speak about proper ergonomics in the office and lab. More info is available at http://hr.cornell.edu/benefits/medical_leaves/mipp.html

Educational Outreach: Since January 2010, nearly 200 teachers, students and volunteers have partici‐pated in BTI plant science education activities across New York State.

Board and Committee Meet‐ings Scheduled for May 10th and 11th Members of BTI’s Board will be visiting BTI. Please take care to tidy up your area and the hallway outside your lab. Note: The second floor kitchen area will not be avail‐able during this time. Please plan accordingly.

Safety Committee Updates

Many members of the BTI community have asked how they can help tsunami and earthquake efforts in Japan. There is a strong community of support right here in Ithaca and JUSA (Japan US Association at Cornell) has many events scheduled throughout the semester. For more information on how you can help please see the JUSA web site at http://rso.cornell.edu/jusa/earthquake/.The coordination team working on the cam‐pus/city‐wide fundraising and community support effort has chosen the Japanese Red Cross Society (http://www.jrc.or.jp/english/index.html) as their primary recipient for donation. Since the method of donation is limited with JRCS, the group is also recom‐mending the American Red Cross to individual donors as an alternative.

Continued Support of Japan’s tsunami relief efforts

BTI Board


Payroll Changes—June 1, 2011

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Of our recent faculty inter‐viewees, we elected to pur‐sue Adrienne Roeder for a BTI faculty position. She was also the first choice of a Cornell search committee operating in parallel. Adri‐enne has chosen to pursue the Cornell position, given its better scientific fit for her particular interests. Thanks to all of you for par‐ticipating in the search process, which we are likely to renew in the fall.

Faculty Search to be Renewed

Fall 2011 Plan ahead NOW for the upcoming changes in the BTI payroll schedule. Beginning June 1, 2011, BTI will change its payroll schedule. **Employees will be paid bi‐weekly (every other Friday) **Employees will be paid in arrears (paid for hours after they are worked)

Pay Dates: May 31: regular salary for time worked May 16th – 31st June 17: hours worked June 1st ‐ 10th only ** this check will be significantly less than a normal 1/2 month paycheck ** July 1: hours worked June 11th – 24th July 15: hours worked June 25th through July 8th What will my paycheck look like? Below are three examples of paychecks. Contact Human Resources for a personalized breakdown. You may also calculate your take‐home pay in HROnline, using the “Calculator” option.

BTI Core Values

Integrity

Mutual Respect Excellence

Collaboration Innovation

Patti FitzPatrick joined the BTI family on February 21, 2011 as our Controller. Patti brings to BTI a wealth of expertise and knowledge. She has experience with grants, budgeting, financial and cash flow analysis. We are delighted to have Patti here and welcome her ideas and expertise as we continue to modernize and revitalize the Business Administra‐tive Area. For those of you who have not had the pleasure of meeting Patti yet, please stop by her office. She resides in the office between Sophia and Jane in the Business Office.

Welcome Patti FitzPatrick

Pay Date Work Dates Paid

$35,000 Annual Salary

$50,000 An‐nual Salary

$65,000 An‐nual Salary

May 13 May 1‐15 $1,458.34 $2,083.34 $2,708.34

May 31 May 16‐31 $1,458.34 $2,083.34 $2,708.34

June 17 June 1‐10 $1,077.12 $1,538.56 $2,000.00

July 1 June 11‐24 $1,346.16 $1,923.08 $2,500.00

July 15 June 25‐July 8 $1,346.16 $1,923.08 $2,500.00

July 29 July 9‐July 22 $1,346.16 $1,923.08 $2,500.00

August 12

July 23‐August 5

$1,346.16 $1,923.08 $2,500.00

Annual Total

X26 paychecks $35,000.16 $50,000.08 $65,000

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Get Ready for the Summer 2011 Interns Tiffany Fleming and Min KyungKim


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Preventive Maintenance: the making of a well‐oiled machine. A primary re‐sponsibility of the me‐chanical shop crew is to perform routine and pre‐ventive maintenance on our building systems. Their ministrations keep the building in top‐notch con‐dition, aid in the preven‐tion of expensive repairs, and help ensure a comfort‐able and safe work envi‐ronment for all.

So far, we have had a busy year with recruitment for our summer internship program. Tiffany began the 2011 recruitment efforts at Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) National Conference in Anaheim CA. where she had a chance to meet hundreds of students and faculty and talk about BTI, our research and education opportunities. In addition to the face‐to‐face contact, Min Kyung Kim and Tiffany sent over 700 recruitment letters and posters to faculty members around the country. We also made many online postings about our program. As a result, over 400 students registered to apply for an internship position.

In February a review committee met and reviewed 116 undergraduate applications: only 18 were accepted, producing an acceptance rate of about 15.5%. Many of our interns heard about the program from their professors or advisors and from the NSF website. Past interns recommended our program to their friends, too. We are happy to announce the 2011 PGRP interns: Deanna Arsala California State University, Fresno Stephen Bolus Clemson University David Campos Texas Tech University Jasmine Cancino Ohlone Community College Lauren Carley Reed College Andrew Gipson Kenyon College Yadanar Htike City College of San Francisco Laura Levin University of Florida Mary Lewis North Carolina State University Sarah Lim Smith College Nicholas McGinty Baldwin‐Wallace College Kayleigh O’Keeffe Amherst College Audrey Ragsac University of California, Berkeley Paige Spence University of South Florida Ashlyn Wedde University of Florida Brensha Williams Fayetteville State University Grace Yu Fullerton College Cristina Zambrana University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez We have a very diverse group of interns this summer, coming from schools around the country. 78% of our summer interns are women, 22% of them are men. 50% of our interns are from small colleges. Average GPA was 3.52.

Our interns have different academic backgrounds and research experiences. Some of them have followed a traditional education path, and some have not. Some have more prior research experiences than others. Despite their differences, our interns all share a strong background in biological sciences. They all are motivated students who are inter‐ested in plant sciences. We hope to provide them with great research experiences this summer.

P M . . .

EXCELLENCE

the quality of excelling; possessing good qualities

in high degree


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Grants Awarded

The IT Staff provide support for all BTI public printers. Jeff makes sure that a good supply of paper and toner cartridges are on hand.

If a TONER IS LOW message appears on the display, you can continue to print. The low toner alert provides a very early warning and of‐ten the machine can print another 1000 prints before being completely out.

If you are comfortable re‐placing toners, please be sure to follow the instruc‐tions provided on the toner itself. Used toners can be left by the printer or brought to the Resource Center (room 200) for recy‐cling.

Public Printers

Tom Brutnell/Joyce Van Eck Genome‐wide impact of mPing transposition on rice phenotypic diversity NSF/UC Riverside $1,365,393.00 5 Years 3/1/2011 Greg Martin, Sorina Popescu, Zhangjun Fei GEPR: Leveraging genomics resources and wild species of tomato to identify new sources of disease resistance NSF with Cornell University (Alan Collmer, PI) $2,158,558 4 years 3/1/2011 Greg Martin Manipulation of host immunity by a bacterial E3 ubiquitin ligase HHS $921,900 4 years 3/1/2011 Georg Jander, with Tiffany Fleming REU site: Plant genome research NSF $402,219.00 3 years 2/15/2011

Tom Brutnell with Tiffany Fleming Community Biomass Feedstock Germination Studies Outreach Model for Student‐Driven Research in High School Classrooms DOT/CORNELL – NE SUN INITIATIVE $24,000.00 2 Years Tom Brutnell with Tiffany Fleming Northeast bioenergy and bioproducts educa‐tional program: Providing faculty with training, tools, and in‐classroom support USDA NIFA/Cornell $456,077.00 5 Years 3/1/2011

COLLABORATION

the act of working with one another; cooperating

New G

rants

Ethidium Bromide Gel Waste Removal

The process for disposing of ethidium bromide gels is being simplified with a new bulk dis‐posal process. Institute‐wide cost savings are anticipated as well. If you currently dispose of gels through BTI’s hazardous waste program, please note the following details on the new disposal process. Those using bleach decontamination methods may continue to do so.

During the week of April 11th, Lab Services will provide 8L collection buckets to each lab – clearly marked for ethidium bromide gel collection. When you are ready to dispose of your agarose gels, simply put them is this bucket, which has a tight‐fitting lid.

Once the bucket is full, you can call or email Kaitlin Pidgeon ([email protected]) to sched‐ule a pick‐up. Contents will be placed in a larger drum and records will be maintained for amount of waste contributed by each lab. Your lab will be billed for your percentage of the filled drum, which may occur only every 6 months or less often, depending on usage. There is no extra charge for the pick‐up service. (NOTE: Collection buckets are intended for ethidium bromide gels only.)


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PGS Updates

The BTI Post Graduate Society (PGS) includes all grad students and postdocs of BTI. Re‐search assistants are also welcome to join the group and participate in all activities. The PGS committee organizes lectures and talks of all kinds for the PGS throughout the year. We meet once a month: next meeting is on April 25th at 9:30 am in room 215. Want to join? Just show up or contact Sarit Weissmann ([email protected]) Upcoming events: PGS Journal Club ‐ Andre Valasquez, from the Martin lab, will give the next Journal Club. Please join us on Thursday, May 12th at 4:00 pm in the Atrium. The article will be announced at a later date. Snacks will be provided. PGS Professional Development Series ‐ David Stern will give a professional develop‐ment lunch talk about "interpreting and writing references" on April 28th at 12 pm in room 215. Lunch will be provided.

To Elaine and Joan for being there to take on the extra workload—so that my quick vacation was not doomed upon my return. From Jeff Heichel To Doug Carruthers and the entire Stockroom Crew for always being willing to help and go the extra mile! To all those who add paper to public printers and change toner when needed. To everyone who uses the poster printer and turns it off after use. To the Mechanical Shop Crew for their ingenuity and skill in extending the life of so many pieces of lab equip‐ment.

Kudos . . . .

The Fun Committee would like to thank everyone who participated in the February Chili Cook‐Off. In case you missed out ‐ Jay Miller won the Best Overall Chili, Ruth White won the Spiciest Chili and, Florence Breuillin and Alexa Schmidt won the Most Original Chili.

Join us for these upcoming events Candy Count: Take a guess!! How many pieces of candy are in the Candy Jar?? Check it out in the resource center. The closest guess wins the jar of candy! Email Tiffany K (tlk48) with your guess by April 20th.

Earth Day: The committee wanted to do something “hands on” for Earth Day this year so, thanks to Meghan Den Bakker we will help clean up a garden at the Enfield Elementary School. We are still assessing the needs for this garden clean‐up, so please stay tuned…

Pot Luck Lunch—May 5th: To celebrate Cinco de Mayo, we will have a pot luck lunch on May 5th. Although this is a celebration of Cinco de Mayo, your dish to pass does not have to be Mexican. Please sign up on the mail room door with your name and the dish you will be bringing, if you would like to participate.

Fun Committee Updates

Three BTI’ers (that we know of) participated in the 30th annual Skunk Cabbage Classic run on April 10th: Sophia Darling, Lesley Middleton and Lisa Meihls. Kudos to them for training and running through the “skunk cabbage patch”. More than 400 runners made the 10K run while close to 500 completed the half‐marathon.

The run is named for the Skunk Cabbage plant species — and its unmistakably strong smell. Check out the Cornell Plantations’ website to find out where you can experience the aroma yourself. http://www.cornellplantations.org/

BTI Runners in the 30th Annual Skunk Cabbage Classic


Emergency Generator Upgrade Underway — Watch for more info.

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Fire and evacuation drills will take place during April. These drills are required by the State of New York and the fire code is very specific regarding tim‐ing and number of drills required every year. Please remember that whenever the fire alarms are triggered you must immediately evacuate the building. There are signs on each floor with the most direct emergency egress route marked. In the event of an emergency please use the stairwells and not the elevator.

Fire Drills Significant planning has been in the works to install a new generator in the mechanical room at BTI. This generator will provide much needed emergency power to many critical systems at BTI. Behind the scenes work has been done to ensure a smooth transition.

We’re now waiting for a few backordered parts with a planned transition date of early June. What does this mean to you? Emergency power will not be available during the transi‐tion, which may last several hours. If you do not use emergency power you will not be impacted. If you do have equipment that runs on emergency power a plan, facilitated by Don Slocum, will be developed to move your equipment to an alternate electrical source. As the transition date approaches be on the lookout for more information. Check in with Don Slocum ([email protected]) with your questions / concerns.

Through the use of meters on various building systems we are able to more closely monitor the utilities used to keep the facilities running. Knowing how much energy we use in a particular area or on a particular system can help us identify and plan upgrade projects that will result in energy and cost savings. In honor of Earth Day (4/22), we will be installing additional meters on some building systems. Our goal is to better understand how we consume energy so we can find ways reduce our impact on the environment. Metering will be added during the April 26th shutdown and will allow us to meter electric usage in the main BTI building as well as to identify more detailed usage for growth chambers and greenhouses.

Saving Energy Through Additional Metering

The Boyce Thompson Institute will be known worldwide for research excellence in the field of molecular and chemical plant biology. To accomplish this BTI will: •Ensure organizational integration and alignment around a common mission and a

common set of goals (KRA1) •Promote and advocate for BTI in New York, the U.S. and internationally (KRAs 1 and 2) •Attract and retain outstanding researchers, Board Members, and support staff (KRA 2) •Be a partner of choice with academia (e.g., Cornell), corporate entities and other re‐

search institutes (KRA 2) •Formalize and implement a comprehensive intellectual property strategy (KRA 2) •Stabilize long‐term funding streams through diversification of funding sources (KRAs 2

and 4) •Strive for operational efficiencies and effectiveness (KRAs 3 and 4) To view the Strategic Plan go to: http://bti.cornell.edu/pdfs/BTIStrategicPlan.pdf (you must be on the BTI network to access this site)

BTI’s Vision for 2013 (from the Strategic Plan)


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Enterprise Resource Planning

What is an ERP? An integrated information system that serves all departments within an enterprise. Evolving out of the manufacturing industry, ERP implies the use of packaged software rather than proprietary software written by or for one customer. ERP modules may be able to interface with an organization's own software with varying degrees of effort. An ERP system can include software for manufacturing, order entry, accounts receivable and payable, general ledger, purchasing, warehousing, transportation and human re‐sources. The major ERP vendors are SAP, Oracle, SSA Global and Microsoft. Does BTI Use an ERP? The Business Services department does use Microsoft Business Solutions‐ Navision to handle the accounting and finance needs. The current version of Navision is several years out of date, which poses significant infrastructure and accounting challenges. To provide a more integrated approach the IT and Business Services departments are working together to identify a solution that will bring a more comprehensive and cur‐rent suite of services to BTI.

Leaving BTI?

Jesse Munkvold accepted the position of Trait Bioinformatician in the Applied Systems Biology group at Keygene Inc., Rockville, MD. He will be working on integrating diverse omics data and applying novel computational methods for trait gene selection. Jesse and Kathy plan on leaving BTI at the end of June. Patrick Boyle, a post doc in the Martin Lab, was recently awarded an Human Frontiers Science Program (HFSP) Long‐term fellowship for a research project titled “Pathogen effectors encoding photocrosslinking amino acids: a tool for host target identification”. He follows in the footsteps of his fellow lab member Johannes Mathieu who claimed the same prize the previous year. Chang Sik Oh recently departed BTI to become Assistant Professor, Department of Hor‐ticultural Biotechnology, at Kyung Hee University in Korea. He is busy juggling dual roles: as researcher (fruit tree pathology ‐‐ mechanisms of disease resistance in fruit trees and pathogenesis of pathogens in fruit trees) and faculty member, teaching a "General Plant Pathology" course this semester.

News from the Martin Lab

Plan ahead! Your Cornell net id and Cornell email address will be deactivated within a month of your last day of employment. Be sure to have an alternate email account established and make sure your con‐tacts have that informa‐tion.

INNOVATION

ahead of the times; being or producing

something like nothing done or experienced or

created before

Have you noticed the many new faces around BTI of late? A number of visiting scholars have joined BTI labs for the coming months. Please give them a pleasant welcome and a helping hand.

Visiting Scholars


News from the Intellectual Property Office

As the search process un‐folds for BTI’s new Director of Development and Exter‐nal Relations, please con‐tact Joan Curtiss ([email protected]) with information regarding press releases and updating news features and content for the web site.

This includes info. on new grants as well as news from all areas of BTI, including greenhouses, IT, media services, business services, etc.

Press Releases & Web Site Updates Several changes have occurred in the IP office over the past few months. Donna Claes

has joined the office and is dedicating half her time to technology transfer related du‐ties. She will also continue working with David Stern and BTI’s board of directors and resides in the presidential suite on the second floor, above the atrium.

Karen Kindle joined us on April 1st as our new Principal Liaison for Technology Market‐ing and Licensing. Karen will work half‐time to help us with technology transfer matters and will specifically be working to build collaborations with commercial partners in the AgBiotech community. She has extensive experience in both academic and commercial settings and comes to us from her most recent post as the Platform Lead for High Throughput Protein Optimization at Monsanto Company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Many of you may also be familiar with Karen from her work as a member of the BTI’s board of directors and you may even remember her long‐term collaboration with David Stern in the early days of his Chlamydomonas work. Karen can be found in room 229. Please make sure to stop in and welcome Karen to the Institute.

In other technology transfer news, BTI has been awarded two new U.S. patents. A pat‐ent for the programmed cell death protein AvrPtoB has come from work in Greg Mar‐tin’s lab. The second patent award is for a plant optimized gene construct for a Norwalk Vaccine. Past BTI researchers Charlie Arntzen and Hugh Mason, who are now at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, are continuing to develop this vaccine with NIH funds. We are hoping to link this work with other IP developed at ASU and to find a commercial partner.

The Institute recently filed a new patent application on a novel insect cell line from Man‐duca Sexta, an insect that Gary Blissard’s lab works with. This cell line looks promising for use in recombinant protein expression using the baculovirus system. Since we are working on a project to more aggressively market BTI’s insect cell line and baculovirus IP, this will give us another technology to add to the portfolio that has already been de‐veloped.

In the first quarter of 2011 the Institute also granted an additional license for its pat‐ented High Five™ cell line to a company in Minnesota. This brings the number of li‐censes granted for this patent to nineteen. We hope to see this new license generate substantial revenue for the Institute over the next few years.

Hub Editor: Elaine Van Etten Please provide your ….information ….comments ….suggestions ….corrections to: [email protected]

The Great Candy Count

Don’t forget to submit your guess! A jar of candy can be found in the window at the top of the stairs coming up from the lobby. Guess how many pieces of candy it holds by April 20th. Send an email to Tiffany Kamery at [email protected] with the subject line of “Candy Count”.

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BTI Web Committee Wants YOUR Photos

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Do you have images that speak volumes about your research? Are they beautiful and captivating? If you answered yes to these questions, then this is your chance to cash in on your talent with a camera! *Please note that any images submitted may be used on our web site, in publications such as the Transcript and Hub, and may be framed and hung throughout the building. If your image is copyrighted or will be used in a future publication please do not submit. 1st Prize: $25.00 2nd Prize: $15.00 3rd Prize: $10.00 Submit photos to Camilo Rosero ([email protected]) by Friday, April 22, 2011. Web Committee members will judge entries and announce winners in early May. (Eric Richards, Camilo Rosero, Lukas Mueller, Tiffany Fleming, Kelli Monce, and Joan Curtiss)

Photo requirements: Must be original images that you have taken Must include a brief description of each image Include your netid in the image name (i.e. jcc25_brachy.jpg) Please make sure that all images are no larger than 3MB Do not submit any copyrighted images or images that have been or will be submitted

for publication

Fish “Fry”

If you are new to a lab, are now working with different substances than when you be‐gan work, or are interested in taking additional training, please check out the Environ‐mental Health and Safety customized training plan. Go to: http://www.ehs.cornell.edu/. Click on Training and then the Training Tool For Determining Safety Training Requirements. Check the types of work areas that apply to you and answer the questions. You will be provided with a customized training plan which will be emailed to you. Supervisors may also create plans for their employees.

Safety Training: Create a Training Plan

Stop by the Resource Cen‐ter and take a look at the new babies — two batches of cichlid fry are swimming in the tank. Moms are standing guard over their small fry.

IT Training Offered at CIT

Check out the latest offer‐ings at the CIT Course Catalog website: http://cornell.veplan.net/Education/catalog.aspx Many classes are free of charge, some have nomi‐nal fees and others held over a series of days are more costly.

INNOVATION

ahead of the times; being or producing

something like nothing done or experienced or

created before

the hub - btiscience.orgbtiscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/hub_april_2011.pdf · power...

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