Dean Castillo
Playing to the ethic of pursuing pure science, new faculty member Dean Castillo is driven by research questions not necessarily the research organism. While working on his bachelor’s and even before that while growing up in rural northern California, he worked with “tons of different organisms,” he says, including fungi. So it wasn’t difficult for him as a geneticist to move from his earlier subjects such as tomatoes and nematodes at Indiana University, where he earned his PhD, to fruit flies (Drosophilia) during his postdoc at Cornell and now at the University of Utah.
The question for Castillo was the same: how do natural and sexual selection shape mating interactions and behaviors, species interactions, and ultimately speciation?
The focus of Castillo, a recent faculty arrival at the School of Biological Sciences, remains evolutionary interactions between organisms, whether in “fruit” or the flies that feed on the yeast of that fruit. Genes determine behavior, and in the case of the fruit fly the female can mate with more than one male and store different sperm in different organ “storage areas” before determining which sperm will be used. How does that anatomically happen and what genes are motivating the female to determine which sperm is used?
Drosophilia - Fruit Flies
“Why does one female mate but another doesn’t?” he further asks. Once his lab determines how and where sperm from two different males is being stored in one female they will pursue other areas of inquiry: finding the genes that control female choice in the brain and, instead of pollen competition from his tomato days, it’s now sperm competition.
The equipment Castillo uses for his research includes one centimeter-high glass “condos” for the tiny flies with removable “gates.” From cotton-topped vials where the flies live on a bed of molasses and yeast, the researcher inserts a female in one side of a bifurcated chamber and a male in the other. Once the researcher lifts the gate between the sides, they can observe the eternal mating behavior of the two sexes on the micro level.
Behavior is only part of the Castillo lab’s integrative approach which combines these condo experiments with population and molecular genetics to understand the genetic basis of sexual behaviors. The approach is also designed to explore the reduction or cessation of reproduction between members of different species. (Think of crossing a horse and a donkey to produce a mule, which is sterile). Comparative genomics can help track this “reproductive isolation,” as it is termed, across the tree of life.
Drosophilia - Fruit Flies
“By studying the mechanistic and genetic links between sexual selection and reproductive isolation we can determine the influence of these forces on generating biodiversity,” says Castillo, sitting in the adjacent office to his lab on the fourth floor of the Aline W. Skaggs biology building. The almost feral view out his windows eastward to the Wasatch is a reminder of one of the big attractions to taking a position at the University of Utah: its stunning setting and, perhaps more importantly, its accessibility to wild nature. In fact, the flies that Castillo studies are easily found in the area, including in American Fork Canyon and Zions National Park. His wife Deidra, who with Dean also earned her PhD from Indiana University at Bloomington, begins her research soon in the Vickers lab one floor down. It turns out that there is overlap between her research in plant-insect interactions and Vickers’ research in moth olfaction and neuroethology.
Managing courtship condos to get at basic biology questions like how genes control behavior can seem random, even mercurial. This is especially true when compared to the careful planning required to procure one’s own family when both parents are academics. (The Castillos have three children, including a one-year-old.) It turns out that their first child was born during qualifying exams. Later, number two entered the scene while they were both defending their theses, the third during their postdocs prior to their move to Utah.
Dean Castillo with a few thousand research subjects.
For the time being, the five Castillos will be staying put except, perhaps, for combining science with mountain and high-desert camping trips looking for fruit flies.
Henry Eyring
When the University of Deseret was founded in 1850 in the Territory of Utah, it was primarily a training school for teachers. The newly formed university taught only a handful of topics, including algebra, astronomy, botany, chemistry, geometry, and zoology. Indeed, mathematics and physical sciences were well represented from the earliest days of the university.
By the 1920s, only six organized schools existed at the U: Arts and Sciences, Business, Education, Engineering and Mines, Law, and a two-year Medical School.
James M. Sugihara, PhD 1947
Between 1948 and 1958, through two reorganizations, the School of Arts and Sciences expanded to become the College of Letters and Science. However, the composition was enormous, including departments of air science, anthropology, botany, chemistry, English, experimental biology, genetics and cytology, history, journalism, languages, mathematics, military science and tactics, naval science and tactics, philosophy, physics, political science, psychology, sociology, speech and theater arts, and zoology.
By the late 1960s, Pete D. Gardner, a prominent organic chemist at the U, had convinced the central administration that mathematics and physical sciences would be most effective if separated from the large, amorphous College of Letters and Science.
Therefore, on July 1, 1970, the College of Letters and Science was replaced by three new colleges: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Science, and the College of Science.
The disciplines of biology, chemistry, mathematics, and physics and astronomy were ideally consolidated in one cohesive academic unit. Gardner was appointed as the first dean of the College and served from 1970 to 1973.
The College of Science utilized seven buildings in 1970, including Chemistry (the north wing was finished in 1968), South Biology (completed in 1969), North Biology (the James Talmage Building), Life Sciences (built in 1920 and former home the of School of Medicine), the John Widtsoe Building (housed both the chemistry and the physics departments), the James Fletcher Building and South Physics. The total faculty consisted of about 80 tenured or tenure-track professors across all four departments.
Today the College of Science is one of the largest colleges within the University of Utah, offering undergraduate and graduate degrees in biology, chemistry, mathematics, and physics and astronomy, plus specialized degrees such as a doctorate in chemical physics.
The College supports nearly 2,000 undergraduate science majors and 475 graduate students and employs 143 full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty. The College also employs hundreds of adjunct and auxiliary faculty, postdoctoral fellows, research assistants, lab technicians, and support staff.
Last year, the College received about $36 million in external research funding, which is nearly seven percent of the University’s total external research revenue.
“The exceptional caliber of the College’s faculty has been a driving force behind the University’s ascension as a world-class research university,” says Peter Trapa.
The College has constructed new educational and research facilities in recent years, including the Thatcher Building for Biological and Biophysical Chemistry and the Crocker Science Center on Presidents Circle. The two buildings combined serve thousands of students each year with professional academic advising, expanded classrooms, and cutting-edge labs and instrumentation.
This year, a new project–the Stewart Building for Applied Sciences – was approved by the Utah legislature to renovate the historic William Stewart building and construct a 100,000 square-foot addition to house the Department of Physics & Astronomy and the Department of Atmospheric Sciences.
The proposed Applied Sciences Center will be 140,729 square-feet in size, consisting of 40,729 square feet of renovated space and 100,000 square feet of new construction. Undergraduate teaching labs, research labs, and classrooms will comprise 90% of the footprint and faculty offices will use 10% of the space. The new facility will support more than 40 faculty members, 200 undergraduate majors, 115 graduate students, and nearly 5,000 students taking STEM courses each year at the U.
Lydia Fries
The College of Science is pleased to announce that Lydia Fries has been awarded a Goldwater Scholarship for 2020-21.
As a junior in chemistry, Lydia intends to obtain a Ph.D. in either organic chemistry or electrochemistry. She has done research in both Matt Sigman’s and Shelley Minteer’s groups, and Lydia is an author on two papers with both professors. She has worked on a variety of projects involving electrochemistry, palladium catalysis, and computationally focused projects. As an undergraduate she enrolls in many graduate-level courses and is a Teaching Assistant for Organic Spectroscopy I. Lydia was accepted to REU programs this summer, but has committed to an internship at Genentech and hopes that the current pandemic will have subsided by the time her internship is to begin mid-May.
With encouragement from high school teachers, Lydia followed her passion and her strong aptitude for STEM subjects, and ignored the warnings from her broader community that she shouldn’t pursue such an expensive and “useless” degree. She followed her heart and her brain to the University of Utah where she landed in the ACCESS program and was immediately surrounded by many intelligent and motivated women.
In addition to her studies, Lydia enjoys rock climbing and spending time outdoors, and is currently staying at safe at home in St. George.
As the result of a partnership with the Department of Defense National Defense Education Programs (NDEP), Mrs. Peggy Goldwater Clay, Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation, announced that the Trustees of the Goldwater Board have increased the number of Goldwater scholarships it has awarded for the 2020-2021 academic year to 396 college students from across the United States. “As it is vitally important that the Nation ensures that it has the scientific talent it needs to maintain its global competitiveness and security, we saw partnering with the Goldwater Foundation as a way to help ensure the U.S. is developing this talent,” said Dr. Jagadeesh Pamulapati, Director of the NDEP program, as he explained the partnership. With the 2020 awards, this brings the number of scholarships awarded since 1989 by the Goldwater Foundation to 9047 and a scholarship total to over $71M.
From an estimated pool of over 5,000 college sophomores and juniors, 1343 natural science, engineering and mathematics students were nominated by 461 academic institutions to compete for the 2020 Goldwater scholarships. Of students who reported, 191 of the Scholars are men, 203 are women, and virtually all intend to obtain a Ph.D. as their highest degree objective. Fifty Scholars are mathematics and computer science majors, 287 are majoring in the natural sciences, and 59 are majoring in engineering. Many of the Scholars have published their research in leading journals and have presented their work at professional society conferences.
Goldwater Scholars have impressive academic and research credentials that have garnered the attention of prestigious post-graduate fellowship programs. Goldwater Scholars have been awarded 93 Rhodes Scholarships, 146 Marshall Scholarships, 170 Churchill Scholarships, 109 Hertz Fellowships, and numerous other distinguished awards like the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships.
The Goldwater Foundation is a federally endowed agency established by Public Law 99-661 on November 14, 1986. The Scholarship Program honoring Senator Barry Goldwater was designed to foster and encourage outstanding students to pursue research careers in the fields of the natural sciences, engineering, and mathematics. The Goldwater Scholarship is the preeminent undergraduate award of its type in these fields.