UC Boulder is a leading US research campus with more than 90 research centers, institutes and laboratories focusing on fields ranging from astrobiology to pharmaceutical biotechnology. This year UC Colorado boasts a new HHMI investigator - Gia Voeltz.
Voeltz, a cellular cartographer, has been looking looking more closely at the ER and is finding its is more like a lacey, vibrating coral, spread out across the cell membrane with organelles clinging to it “like ornaments on a tree.” than separate organelles as once thought.
“Instead of having isolated organelles in the cell, you have them all tethered to and communicating through the ER,” she explains. “Everyone thought they knew what the ER did, but it turns out it does a lot more than we thought.”
For her out of the box thinking, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) this week named her as one of its newest investigators, granting her an $8 million, seven year grant.
Other Boulder Stats:
2,000+ undergraduates directly involved in research
#1 public university recipient of NASA research
650 faculty and students involved in interdisciplinary bioscience research
Top 3% worldwide for scholarly research citations
Boulder News Articles:
A revolutionary research and teaching facility opening at the University of Colorado Boulder will facilitate work on a wide swath of pressing societal challenges ranging from biomedical issues like cancer, heart disease and tissue engineering to the development of new biofuels.
Graduate programs at the University of Colorado Boulder continue to earn national prominence based on the latest annual rankings from U.S. News & World Report. CU-Boulder schools and programs garnered 25 mentions in the 2012 edition of Best Graduate Schools, including five ranked in the top 10 of their fields.