SunnyLand News

On October 14, 2005, Dr. Irwin "Ernie" A. Rose, winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and a former undergraduate at WSU, gave a lecture in Sunny's class on Proteins and Enzymes. He discussed with the students his work on ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation and other work on mechanistic enzymology. After his lecture, Dr. Rose visited the SunnyLand laboratory and talked with the group members. Later that day, he received the Regents' Distinguished Alumnus Award.

On May 2005, Sunny was nominated by his colleagues and department chair, and selected by the Dean to receive the Young Faculty Performance Award in the College of Sciences. After all of the awards won by the students in SunnyLand, Sunny finally received one himself for the wonderful work done by all SunnyLand members. In keeping with lab tradition, Sunny bought ice cream during group happy hour.
[Award Certificate] [Full Coverage PDF]

Our group attended the 2005 Volcano Conference on Chemical Biology held at Pack Forest near Mountain Rainier. Kathy, Tiao and Shuge presented two posters, and Josh gave an oral presentation. The group also visited Kathy’s parents and brother on their way home.

Josh Alfaro received awarded a three-year $88,331 Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on his work on protein post-translational modifications.

Our laboratory received a five-year $1,337,000 R01 grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on our study on the LuxS enzyme.

Erin Karschner recieved first-place prize from the University of Maryland at the Sevent Annual Undergraduate Research Conference.
[Full Coverage PDF]

Laura Gillies' first-place award certificate.
[Full Coverage PDF]

Lisa Cannon and five other students have won Undergraduate Scholar Awards for 2003 from the Faculty Association for Scholarship and Research (FASR) and the WSU chapter of Sigma Xi. Lisa Cannon is the winner of Sigma Xi's first place award of $400
[View Link] [Award Certificate] [Full Coverage PDF]

Lisa Cannon and Sunny Zhou appear on the cover of Spectrum, the College of Sciences magazine.
Lisa Cannon has been named the second Outstanding Undergraduate Research Scholar for 2002/03 by the College of Sciences.
[Research Link] [Honors Link] [Spectrum Cover] [Full Coverage PDF]

Lisa Cannon's thesis received the honor of "Pass with Distinction" from the Honors College. Her thesis is titled "Stereospecific Colorimetric Assay for (S,S)-Adenosylmethionine Quantification Based on Thiopurine Methyltransferase-Catalyzed Thiol Methylation."
[View Link] [Full Coverage PDF]

Undergraduate senior Lisa Cannon has won three distinguished awards.  She was granted a summer internship in Peru.  Her research has the potential to become a medical breakthrough.
[Full Coverage PDF]