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EPA Grant Will Enhance Visitor Program at MDI Bio Lab
Teacher and Undergraduate Intern Will Improve Environmental Education
The Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory (MDIBL) has received a $21,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to enhance environmental education at the Myers Marine Aquarium, the Bio Lab’s popular public facility. The Aquarium houses a touch tank where visitors can see and handle marine invertebrates such as starfish and sea cucumbers from Frenchman’s Bay, as well as tanks holding sharks, shellfish, and eelgrass.
The EPA grant will fund two positions at the Bio Lab this summer. An experienced environmental education teacher and an undergraduate assistant will assess and revise the education program at the Myers Aquarium, developing new displays and strategies for educating school groups and the community about environmental health and stewardship. Read More...
Federal Grant Supports Summer Fellowships for Maine High School Students
Interns will conduct research in environmental health science
The Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory has received a five-year federal grant to fund summer research fellowships for local high school students. The $228,000 grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences will give Maine students the opportunity to conduct research projects in environmental health science alongside MDIBL scientists, including those who come from leading research institutions around the world to conduct marine biomedical research at MDIBL each summer.
The STEER (Short Term Educational Experience for Research) grant will allow MDIBL to offer its current high school program to more Maine students, especially those who represent the first generation in their family to attend college. The STEER fellowships will focus on “Pathways of Chemical Action in Human Disease” and draw on expertise in MDIBL’s Center for Comparative Toxicology and its Comparative Toxicogenomics Database. Read More...
MDIBL Announces Frenchman's Bay Ecology Seminar Series
Lecture series designed to discuss condition of Frenchman's Bay
The health of Frenchman and Eastern Bays, and the science behind it, is the focus of a new series of informal lectures for the public being launched next week at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory (MDIBL) in Salisbury Cove, where scientists have formed the Bay Ecology Committee to support the preservation and conservation of the local marine environment.
The first talk will be held in the Maren Auditorium at MDIBL at 4 pm on Thursday, October 25, when Drs. Jane Disney of the MDI Water Quality Coalition and George Kidder of MDIBL will discuss the ongoing eelgrass restoration project at Hadley Point. Led by the Bar Harbor Marine Resources Committee, the project is a community effort to restore eelgrass beds to an area where they were once abundant and provided sheltered habitat for fish and shellfish. Read More...
Wilde Cottage Burns
The Wilde Cottage at MDIBL burned down in the early morning of November 5. The seasonal cottage at the east end of Hamilton Pond was unoccupied at the time. The State Fire Marshal investigated the fire, but because of the extensive damage was unable to find a cause. Read More...
Federal Grant Will Speed Scientific Communication in
Maine Labs and Colleges
BAR HARBOR - Maine students and scientists are now closer to being able to send more scientific data faster and participate in new high speed regional and national cyber-networks, thanks to a $294,000 grant from the National Center for Research Resources, a component of the National Institutes of Health. Awarded to the Maine IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE), the funds will be used to connect member institutions through the high speed Research and Education Network currently under development at the University of Maine.
“This is wonderful news,” says Dr. Patricia Hand, Administrative Director of the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory and Principal Investigator of the Maine INBRE. “Essentially, it will connect Maine INBRE institutions to the ‘backbone’ of high-speed optical fiber that the Maine Research and Education Network is building. Our students and faculty will be able to share the huge volume of data that today’s research generates and have access to sophisticated equipment across the nation.” Read more...
MDIBL Receives $1 Million Challenge Gift
Challenge gift to increase Lab's endowment
July 27, 2007
SALISBURY COVE - Martha and Wistar Morris of Northeast Harbor and Villanova, Pennsylvania, have given the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory $1 million as a challenge grant to increase the Lab’s endowment. The gift, the second million-dollar donation to MDIBL in 2007, was announced at MDIBL’s Annual Meeting held in Salisbury Cove on July 26.
Wistar Morris, a trustee of MDIBL, explained that he and his wife made the challenge gift because “MDIBL’s recent growth has been exciting and productive. With this gift, Martha and I hope to bring recognition to how small our endowment actually is and to stimulate other such gifts, so that our output of quality research and education can continue to grow.” MDIBL focuses on biomedical research on marine species and offers research training and fellowships for high school, undergraduate, and graduate students. Read more...
Families learn that Science is FUN! at Family Science Night
Second Family Science Night scheduled for August 16
July 11, 2007
The Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory hosted Family Science Night on July 10, 2007. Children and families participated in a wide variety of activities, ranging from making ice cream and crafts to face painting and playing with hagfish slime. A second Family Science Night will be held on Thursday, August 9. For more information, please call 207-288-3147. Click here for pictures from the event!
Dr. Oliver Smithies To Visit MDIBL
Distinguished Scientist to be First Maren Visiting Professor
July 6, 2007
SALISBURY COVE – The prominent scientist Oliver Smithies, Ph.D., Excellence Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will be the first Maren Visiting Professor at MDIBL. He will give the Thomas H. Maren Memorial Lecture on Wednesday, July 11 at 8 p.m. in Maren Auditorium and spend July 11 and 12 meeting with students and investigators both formally and informally. Dr. Smithies is one of the originators of gene targeting, which allows the precise insertion of genes into mammalian cells and led to the creation of knockout mouse models of human disease.
Having focused for many years on developing animal models of human genetic diseases, Smithies’ laboratory presently concentrates on understanding the genetics of complex diseases with multigenetic and environmental components. He has utilized the techniques of his laboratory to study cystic fibrosis, essential hypertension, and pre-eclampsia. Read more...
Christie's Gala Event in New York a Great Success
Over $300,000 raised to support Lab programs
Beauty and generosity were much in evidence as MDIBL’s friends and supporters filled a gallery lined with Old Masters paintings at Christie’s in New York and raised an astonishing $312,000 for the Lab. Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, New York Governor Eliot Sptizer, and U.S. Congressman Michael Michaud from Maine’s Second District were among those honoring the work of the Lab and enjoying the opportunity to meet with friends and scientists in a stunning setting.
Cheryl MacLachlan, Vice President of U.S. Trust, which sponsored the event, drew the connection between art and science for the 185 people in attendance at Rockefeller Center on the evening of April 13. “Beauty,” she said, “is capable of lifting the human spirit. When the human spirit is lifted, there is hope and possibility. And in an environment where people believe things are possible, scientists will be supported - and then great science can happen.” Read More...
Pictures from the event
MDIBL Students Awarded Goldwater Scholarships
April 11, 2007
SALISBURY COVE - The Goldwater Scholarship is the most prestigious undergraduate award of its kind in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences, and engineering, and this year, all three of the recipients from Maine have been, or will soon be, summer fellows at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory (MDIBL). In addition, two MDIBL undergraduate research fellows from outside Maine were awarded a scholarship and an honorable mention.
Goldwater Scholars Lindsey Hendricks, a sophomore at Goucher College from Seal Harbor, Benjamin Burpee, a sophomore at the University of Maine from Bucksport, and Alexandra Denby, a junior at Cornell from New Jersey, worked alongside senior scientists and conducted their own research at MDIBL in 2006, as did Patrice Baumhardt of Illinois, who received an honorable mention.
Chelsi Snow, a junior at the University of Maine from West Enfield, also received a Goldwater Scholarship and will participate in the MDIBL program this coming summer. She and Burpee are participants in the INBRE program, a network of nine Maine institutions led by MDIBL and funded by the National Center for Research Resources at the National Institutes of Health to strengthen biomedical research capacity in Maine.
“It is wonderful to see so many of our outstanding students recognized in this way. Their success underscores the importance of the kind of mentoring and hands-on research experience that young scientists receive at MDIBL,” says Patricia Hand, Administrative Director of the Lab.
Scholarship recipients are selected on the basis of their academic research and career objectives. Virtually all intend to receive a Ph.D. Colleges and universities across the nation are invited to submit a limited number of candidates for the award. From the resulting pool of 1,081 applicants, 323 winners are ultimately selected.
Benjamin Burpee credits his experience at MDIBL with giving him the background and self-assurance to successfully apply for the Goldwater Scholarship. “What made my experience unique was the relationships I formed with my Principal Investigators [senior scientists]. Working at the Lab instilled confidence in myself and my potential. This played a huge part in applying for this scholarship.”
Download this release (pdf)
MDIBL Receives $1 Million Private Gift
Kathryn W. Davis gift to support year-round research program
March 28, 2007
SALISBURY COVE – Kathryn W. Davis, long-time summer resident of Mount Desert Island, has given the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory $1 million, the largest private gift in the Lab’s history. Mrs. Davis celebrated her 100th birthday on February 25, 2007 and said she was making several personally meaningful gifts to commemorate the event.
Terence Boylan, Chairman of MDIBL’s Board of Trustees, said, “This is a magnificent act of generosity and we are grateful to Kathryn Davis for honoring MDIBL in this way. Her gift will allow us to greatly enhance and expand our year-round program and fully integrate it with our traditional seasonal program.
Of her gift to MDIBL, Mrs. Davis says, “I am proud to support the sciences in such a special place as Mount Desert Island, my summer Shangri-La. I am pleased that the Lab has such year-round meaning to the area, and that during the summer the Lab is a magnetic force attracting eminent scientists from so many places to share ideas and then take those ideas back to their own centers of scientific inquiry and learning. Finally, I am pleased that the Lab involves some of the Davis United World College Scholars supported by my son Shelby at the College of the Atlantic." Read More...
New Grant for MDIBL Makes It Easier To Be Green
Lab Receives $55,000 grant from the Kresge Foundation
December 7, 2006
SALISBURY COVE – The Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory has received a $55,000 grant from the Kresge Foundation’s Green Building Initiative to help MDIBL plan environmentally friendly features for its new laboratory building. The Lab will soon begin construction on a 15,000 square foot building providing year-round laboratory space for six research groups, a teaching lab, and a library.
A “green” or “environmentally sustainable” building is designed, constructed, and operated to use as few non-renewable resources as possible and to respect its physical environment. According to the Kresge Foundation, based in Michigan, planning grants are made to “encourage new models” for building green, “both in terms of the kind of organizations that seriously consider building green and the projects which will advance our knowledge of sustainable design.” Read More...
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