May 2022, Jenna R. Rock received the John E. Dlugos, Jr. Memorial Award of Excellence to the Outstanding Senior major in Biology.
April 2022, M. Luke Weinstein was awarded a University of Dayton Graduate School Summer Fellowship Award for the proposal titled, “Using in silico and in vivo approaches to expand the understanding of the cis-regulatory elements responsible for a fruit fly trait.”
April 2021, Jenna Rock was awarded an Honors Thesis Research Proposal and Grant Request titled “Resolving the gene regulatory network for a fruit fly pigmentation trait whose modification underlies climate-driven phenotypic variation.”
April 2021, Katherine Kohnen was awarded an Honors Thesis Research Proposal and Grant Request titled “Resolving the mechanistic basis and evolutionary history for a pleiotropic genetic switch regulating the expression of a fruit fly gene.”
May 2020, Chad M. Jaenke received the John E. Dlugos, Jr. Memorial Award of Excellence to the Outstanding Senior major in Biology.
May 2020, Jesse T. Hughes, PhD student, was awarded the John J. Comer Graduate Research Award of Excellence to the Biology Graduate Student who best demonstrates research excellence in Biomedical Science. Awarded by the UD Biology Department.
May 2020, Michael L. Weinstein, PhD student was awarded the Graduate Teaching Award of Excellence to a Teaching Assistant for Outstanding Teaching of Advanced Biology Laboratory Classes, Awarded by the UD Biology Department.
April 2020, Rachel Johnson was awarded an Honors Thesis Research Proposal and Grant Request titled “Visualizing the gene expression patterns of transcription factor genes in order to understand how an animal trait develops.”
February 2020, Jenna Rock was awarded membership into the Berry Summer Thesis Institute at the University of Dayton. This invitation includes two summer sessions of research, leadership, and service activities on campus.
February 2020, Katherine Kohnen was awarded membership into the Berry Summer Thesis Institute at the University of Dayton. This invitation includes two summer sessions of research, leadership, and service activities on campus.
June 2019, Chad M. Jaenke was awarded the Robert J. Kearns Summer Research Scholarship for proposal titled “Finding the switches that activate animal genes through a combined in silico and in vivo approach.”
April 2019, Chad M. Jaenke was awarded an Honors Thesis Research Proposal and Grant Request titled “Finding the switches that activate animal genes through a combined in silico and in vivo approach.”
April 2019, M. Luke Weinstein was awarded a University of Dayton Graduate School Summer Fellowship Award for the proposal titled, “Revealing the molecular mechanisms by which certain mutations alter a cis-regulatory element’s function.”
April 2018, Abigail M. Groszkiewicz was awarded an Honors Thesis Research Proposal and Grant Request titled “Using RNA-interference to Identify the Genetic Toolkit for a Fruit Fly Morphological Trait.”
April 2018, Emily Wey will was admitted in the Postbaccalaureate Program at the NIH which will provide her with a full-time biomedical research experience during the next year.
February 2018, Chad Jaenke was awarded membership into the Berry Summer Thesis Institute at the University of Dayton. This invitation includes two summer sessions of research, leadership, and service activities on campus.
April 2017, Honors Thesis Research Proposal and Grant Request titled “Resolving the Molecular Mechanisms by Which DNA Mutations Alter the Function of a Cis-Regulatory Element” Awarded to Emily E. Wey.
March 2017, Jesse Hughes was awarded a 3 year National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program Fellowship for his proposal titled “The Gene Regulatory Network Basis for the Convergent Origin of an Animal Trait”. This award has a value of over $100,000.
May 2016, Jesse Hughes received the John E. Dlugos, Jr. Memorial Award of Excellence to the Outstanding Senior major in Biology.
May 2016, Maxwell Roeske received the John J. Comer Biomedical Undergraduate Research Award to the Undergraduate Student Who Best Demonstrated Research Excellence in Biomedical Sciences as Biology major.
May 2016, Claire Konys received the Learn, Lead and Serve Undergraduate Award of Excellence to the Biology Undergraduate Student who completed an Outstanding Experiential Learning Project, which Included both Leadership and Service.
April 2016, Honors Thesis Research Proposal and Grant Request titled “CRISPR CREam for Fruit Flies: Developing a Genome-editing Approach to Study the cis-Regulatory Elements That Control the Activities of Genes.” Awarded to Alexandra M. Hallagan.
February 2016, Emily Wey was awarded membership into the Berry Summer Thesis Institute at the University of Dayton. This invitation includes two summer sessions of research, leadership, and service activities on campus.
January 2016, Eric Camino has accepted an offer to be a post-doctoral research assistant in the lab of Dr. Mark Rebeiz upon completing his PhD thesis. The Rebeiz lab is located at the University of Pittsburgh.
June 2015, Jesse Hughes was awarded a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) award from the National Science Foundation.
May 2015, Eric Camino received the John J. Comer Graduate Research Award of Excellence to the Biology Graduate Student who best demonstrates research excellence in Biomedical Science.
May 2015, Mary List received the John E. Dlugos, Jr. Memorial Award of Excellence to the Outstanding Senior major in Biology.
April 2015, Honors Thesis Research Proposal and Grant Request titled “The role of Polycomb and Trithorax genes in the development and evolution of an animal trait.” Awarded to Claire K. Konys.
April 2015, Honors Thesis Research Proposal and Grant Request titled “Tracing the Role of bab Gene Duplication and Divergence Events in the Evolution of a Fruit Fly Pigmentation Trait.” Awarded to Maxwell J. Roeske.
April 2015, PhD Student Sumant Grover won a UD Graduate School Dean’s Summer Fellowship Award for the proposal titled, “The origin of a new trait by the co-option of an ancestral cis-regulatory element.”
April 2015, PhD Student Eric Camino won a UD Graduate School Dean’s Summer Fellowship Award for the proposal titled, “Combining Large- and Small-Scale Approaches to Unlock the Mechanisms of Gene Expression Regulation.”
April 17th 2015, Maxwell Roeske and Claire Konys were named co-recipient of the Daniel P. Arnold Memorial Scholarship. This award is for “a senior-year scholarship for one University Honors Program student from the College of Arts and Sciences who exemplifies Danny Arnold’s qualities of character” (https://www.udayton.edu/honors/thesis/arnold_fund.php).
February 2015, Alexandra Hallagan and Jessica Grilliot were awarded membership into the Berry Summer Thesis Institute at the University of Dayton. These invitations includes two summer sessions of research, leadership, and service activities on campus.
July 2014, Mary List was named a finalist for best undergraduate poster at the 2014 meeting for the Society for Developmental Biology.
May 2014, Eric Camino received the John J. Comer Graduate Teaching Award for excellence in teaching of an upper-level Biology lab.
April 2014, Sumant Grover, Eric Camino, and Will Rogers each were awarded a Graduate Student Summer Fellowships from the University of Dayton Graduate School for their submitted research grant proposals.
April 2014, Mary List received an Honors Thesis Research Grant to support her undergraduate thesis project titled “Seeing gene expression in space, time, and color: evaluating new fluorescent proteins for the study of gene regulation in fruit flies”.
February 2014, Maxwell Roeske and Claire Konys were awarded membership into the Berry Summer Thesis Institute at the University of Dayton. These invitations includes two summer sessions of research, leadership, and service activities on campus.
June 2013, Samantha Stringer was awarded a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) award from the National Science Foundation.
May 2013, Joseph Salomone received the John E. Dlugos, Jr. Memorial Award of Excellence to the Outstanding Senior major in Biology.
April 2013, Kaitlyn Francis, Jordan Vellky, and Samantha Stringer each received an Honors Thesis Research Grant to support their undergraduate thesis projects.
March 23rd 2013, Joseph Salomone was recognized with the “Joseph E. Scherger, MD, MPH Leadership in Medicine Award” to a Graduating Premedical Student who has Demonstrated Leadership toward Improving the Health of the Public through better Health Care.
August 8th 2012, John Butts successfully defended his Masters Degree thesis titled “Tracking the sequences of regulatory linkages and their evolution within a fruit fly gene regulatory network”. John enters history as both the first student to complete the 5 year B.S./M.S. degree in Biology at the University of Dayton and the first graduate student to complete a thesis with Tom Williams as the mentor.
July 19th-22nd 2012, Joe Salomone’s poster titled “Identifying cis-regulatory element changes that underlie gene expression and phenotypic evolution between species” was awarded 2nd place among undergraduate students at the 71st annual meeting for the Society for Developmental Biology, in Montreal, CA.
July 22nd 2012, Research of William Rogers, Joe Salomone, and David Tacy titled “The mutations, molecular mechanisms, and constraints directing the evolution of a Drosophila cis-regulatory element” was selected for a presentation in the Genomes and Evolution concurrent session at the 71st annual meeting for the Society for Developmental Biology, in Montreal, CA.
May 2012, William Rogers received the John J. Comer Graduate Research Award of Excellence to the Biology Graduate Student who best demonstrates research excellence in Biomedical Science.
May 2012, David Tacy received the John E. Dlugos, Jr. Memorial Award of Excellence to the Outstanding Senior major in Biology.
April 2012, Joseph Salomone received the Lancaster-McDougall Award for a research proposal titled “Resurrecting Dead Enhancers to Trace the Mutational Basis of New Gene Activities“. The Lancaster McDougall Undergraduate Summer Research Award program recognizes and supports the summer research efforts of undergraduate students who demonstrate extraordinary skill and creativity in research and scholarship .
April 2012, Kaitlyn Francis was awarded membership into the inaugural class for the Berry Summer Thesis Institute at the University of Dayton. This is a 10-week on-campus program that provides the students with intensive disciplinary research and scholarship opportunities, academic Honors credit, professional development workshops, and public presentation forums.
March 2012, Jennifer Parks, Biology Teacher at West Carrollton High School, received a Research Experience for Teachers (RET) award from the National Science Foundation for summer research support in the Williams Lab.
April 2011, David Tacy received the Lancaster-McDougall Award for a research proposal titled “Visualizing Evolution through Differences in Gene Expression”
April 2011, David Tacy received Honors Thesis Research Grant for a research proposal titled “Visualizing Evolution through Differences in Gene Expression”
April 2011, Joseph Salomone was awarded the Szabo Scholarship to sponsor his undergraduate research efforts.
April 2010, William Rogers received the John J. Comer Graduate Teaching Award for excellence in teaching of an upper-level Biology lab.
The Tom Williams Lab at the University of Dayton 