Faculty Accomplishments

• Michael  Ostrowski
  Molecular Genetics Professor Michael Ostrowski is the program director of a new five-year, $8.6 million National Cancer Institute grant, which began September 2004.  He is one of three Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers who will study the role of non-cancer tumor cells that have direct contact with cancer cells in helping the disease progress.
  
  Ostrowski is also a co-principal investigator on the grant, along with his colleagues, Charis Eng, the Dorothy E. Klotz Chair of Cancer Research and the director of the clinical cancer group; and Gustavo Leone, an assistant professor in molecular virology and molecular genetics.
  
  The researchers will focus on the tumor microenvironment in breast cancer progression, although the study's findings might apply to any cancer of epithelial tissue, including prostate, lung, colon and liver.

• Richard  Sayre
  Ohio State University will lead an interdisciplinary team of scientists in a multi-million dollar project to help improve one of the most important food crops in Africa, cassava.
  
  The researchers will work on developing new types of cassava plants that have increased levels of zinc, iron, protein and vitamins A and E, and that can also withstand post-harvest deterioration.
  
  Leading the $7.5 million, 11-institution cassava project is Richard Sayre, a professor of plant cellular and molecular biology at Ohio State, and a member of the Ohio State Biochemistry Program.
  
  The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation selected the BioCassava Plus project
  as a recipient of one of the foundation's Grand Challenges in Global Health programs.  Created two years ago, the goal of the $450 million program is to fund innovative solutions to global health problems.  The grant runs for five years. 
  
  For more information go to:  http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/cassgrnt

• Zucai Suo
  Zucai Suo from the Biochemistry Department received $700,000 from the National Science Foundation's Faculty Early Career Development Awards program.  The highly competitive CAREER awards are given only to the nation's most promising young scholars who are believed likely to make important contributions to teaching and research in their fields.  The CAREER award will fund Suo's work on "Kinetic, Dynamic, and Structure-Function Relationship Studies of a Y-Family Polymerase."  This project looks at the way a group of enzymes called the Y-family polymerases "pave over" or fix damaged spots in a DNA sequence, allowing DNA production to continue.  Understanding this process may eventually lead to a better understanding of the causes of cancer formation.

• Dongping Zhong
  Dongping Zhong, assistant professor of physics, was selected as one of 16 young scientists to receive a Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering, the first Ohio State faculty to do so. In 1988, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation established the Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering to allow the nation's most promising professors to pursue science and engineering research early in their careers with few funding restrictions and limited paperwork requirements. Every year, the foundation invites the presidents of 50 universities to nominate two professors each from their institutions. Nominations are reviewed by an advisory panel of distinguished scientists and engineers. The 2005 Fellows will receive individual awards of $625,000, payable over five consecutive years.