Yonathan Ararso, a biology major in the class of 2013, was recently awarded the Samuel S. Jones Phi Beta Kappa Award for original research at Hampden-Sydney’s 2013 Commencement Ceremony.  The award, in the form of a gold medallion and a $4,000.00 cash prize, is one of the most prestigious and lucrative awards given at college and university graduations across the country.  Yonathan received the award for his Senior Honors Project in Biology entitled “An shRNA-mediate RNA Silencing Approach to Understand the Role of Melanoma-derived Factors in the Suppression of Dendritic Cell Maturation and Activation.”  He conducted his project under the mentorship of Dr. Kristian M. Hargadon ’01, Elliott Assistant Professor of Biology.  Yonathan plans to pursue graduate education and will be applying to M.D./Ph.D. programs in the fall.

Yonathan receiving the Jones Prize from Provost and Dean of the Faculty Dennis Stevens

We wish our graduates the best of luck as they finish their Hampden-Sydney careers!

Yonathan Ararso

Seth Ayres

Burke Best

John Bishop

Joe Chambers

Nick DeProspero

Kevin Gutermuth

Brent Hyler

Chris Kampfmueller

Greg Knabel

Patrick Kuhns

Kris Miller

Jacob Oliver

John Michael Sparagna

Tyler White

The 2013 Biology graduates as depicted on cake

Each April the biology department recognizes some of its most outstanding students as a part of the College’s Final Convocation exercises.  This year’s James R.T. Hewett Award for service and leadership to the department was given to Yonathan Ararso.  Yonathan conducted departmental honors research on tumor immunology and was instrumental in helping to launch both the department’s Colloqiuim student seminar series and the Hampden-Sydney Journal of the Sciences.

Dr. Kristian Hargadon presents the Hewett award to Yonathan Ararso ’13

The department’s H.B. Overcash award, given to the department’s top pre-medical student in the junior class, was given to James Hughes ’14.

Dr. Hargadon and James Hughes ’14

Also at the ceremony, Dr. Mike Wolyniak received the College’s John Peter Mettauer Award for Excellence in Research in recognition of his work with the Undergraduate Phenotyping of Arabidopsis Knockouts (UNPAK) and Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Science Education Alliance-Phages Hunters Advancing Genomics and Evolutionary Science (SEA-PHAGES) projects.

The Biology Department was recently honored to welcome Dr. Lucia Barker from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) to campus for a site visit as part of Hampden-Sydney’s participation in the Science Education Alliance-Phage Hunters Advancing Genomics and Evolutionary Science (SEA-PHAGES) project.  The visit gave Dr. Barker the opportunity to observe how the SEA-PHAGES project, in which ~80 schools nationwide isolate and characterize novel bacteriophage from the environment as part of ongoing research on bactteriophage diversity, has been implemented over the past two years at Hampden-Sydney.

Dr. Barker with SEA-PHAGES students James Hughes ’14, Branch Vincent ’16, Kris Miller ’13, and Francis Polakiewicz ’14

Myshake Abdi ’16 shows Dr. Barker his semester work on phage biology as part of the SEA-PHAGES project.

While at Hampden-Sydney, Dr. Barker also met with members of the Biology Department as well as President Chris Howard and Provost Dennis Stevens about strategies for further optimizing science education and research opportunity at Hampden-Sydney and how the HHMI could assist in this goal.

President Howard with Dr. Barker from HHMI