Author Archives: Danielle Whittaker

BEACON Researchers at Work: Evolving Virtual Creatures

Posted on September 23, 2013 by Danielle Whittaker

This week’s BEACON Researchers at Work post is by University of Texas graduate student Dan Lessin and Nicole Lessin. As an undergraduate in the 1990s, I was studying studio art, animation, and computer graphics at Harvard when I first came … Continue reading →

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BEACON's Kalyanmoy Deb receives honorary doctorate

Posted on September 18, 2013 by Danielle Whittaker

Kalyanmoy Deb, a BEACON Researcher and the Koenig Endowed Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Michigan State University, received an Honorary Doctoral Degree from the Faculty of Information Technology at the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland on August 24, … Continue reading →

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BEACON Researchers at Work: Survival of the Rarest

Posted on September 16, 2013 by Danielle Whittaker

This week’s BEACON Researchers at Work blog post is by MSU postdoc Noah Ribeck. We are all taught the basic tenet of evolution by natural selection: occasionally an individual is born with a mutation that improves its chances of having … Continue reading →

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The sweet smell of (reproductive) success

Posted on September 10, 2013 by Danielle Whittaker

BEACON Managing Director Danielle Whittaker has published a new study demonstrating that birds may use scent to determine the quality of potential mates. From the MSU press release: For most animals, scent is the instant messenger of choice for quickly … Continue reading →

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BEACON Researchers at Work: Carving your academic niche via interdisciplinary research

Posted on September 9, 2013 by Danielle Whittaker

This week’s BEACON Researchers at Work blog post is by MSU graduate student Amy Lark. What’s the best way to fit a square peg into a round hole? We can muscle that peg via brute force into a space that … Continue reading →

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What's in a (mutation's) name?

Posted on September 5, 2013 by Danielle Whittaker

Cross-posted from UT postdoc Art Covert’s blog, Covert Science(ish) Names are generally very arbitrary things. In the words of The Bard: “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” This may be true for roses, but for mutations, … Continue reading →

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BEACON Researchers at Work: Effective Science Outreach

Posted on September 2, 2013 by Danielle Whittaker

This week’s BEACON Researchers at Work post is by University of Texas at Austin graduate student Eben Gering. What if, after years of work in the field or laboratory, every scientist had a chance to invite the public to dinner, … Continue reading →

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BEACON Congress 2013: A social media summary

Posted on August 28, 2013 by Danielle Whittaker

[View the story “BEACON 2013 Congress” on Storify]

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Scientific Tweetability

Posted on August 26, 2013 by Danielle Whittaker

Here at BEACON, we recently held our annual Congress, a conference where members from all five of our institutions come together to present research, network with each other, and brainstorm new ideas. One of the highlights of this year’s Congress … Continue reading →

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Meet BEACON's 2013 Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow, Annat Haber

Posted on August 19, 2013 by Danielle Whittaker

Annat grew up in Israel, where she got both her B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees. Her interest in vertebrate paleontology and macroevolution propelled her to move to the US for her PhD, which she received from the University of Chicago in … Continue reading →

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