September

Nealen Receives Auditory Neuroscience Research Funding

The grant from the ϳԹ Lions Hearing Research Foundation will support research investigating cranial vocal feedback to the human cochlea, in support of human speech development in the hearing impaired.

April

Collaboration Fuels Better, Faster COVID-19 Test

Biology chair Narayanaswamy Bharathan is leading the collaboration between IUP, IRMC, and Takara Bio USA to develop faster COVID-19 tests for rural communities.

March

Disease Vector Ecology Lab Launches Tick-borne Disease Dashboard for Indiana County

Public Health major Nicholas Seidel, interning with biology professor Tom Simmons’ Disease Vector Ecology Laboratory, has created a dashboard to visualize blacklegged tick seasonality, infection prevalence of pathogens in the blacklegged ticks, and case counts and incidence rates of Lyme disease in Indiana County.

February

Biology Students and Faculty Publish “Consumer Reports-style” Study to Optimize Tick Collection

Biology majors Emily Welch (MS’19), Anna Manges (BS’20), and Nathan Peters (BS ’19) and professors Joe Duchamp and Tom Simmons determined the best fabric for construction of drags used to collect blacklegged ticks which vector the pathogens causing Lyme disease, anaplasmosis, babesiosis, Borrelia miyamotoi disease, ehrlichiosis, and Powassan virus disease.

January

Surprising Clue in the Puzzling Evolution of Mammalian Middle Ear

Biology professor Shundong Bi and John Wible, curator of mammals at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, describe a new fossil specimen of a haramiyidan from China’s Middle Jurassic epoch that represents an evolutionary “stepping stone” between Mesozoic fossils and living mammals.

First Non-avialan Dinosaur Found on Embryo-Bearing Nest

Shundong Bi, Department of Biology, and collaborators have discovered a dinosaur preserved sitting atop a nest of its own eggs that include fossilized babies inside.