Summer 2012 • Volume 8 • No. 1 Nature’s Mysteries Reflections Reflecting ASU’s ranking as 21st in the world in the biological sciences, School of Life Sciences has forged impactful and far- reaching programs of research, education and outreach. We slip into the laboratory of ASU Professor Bert Jacobs to understand how AIDS-HIV vaccines are developed, then shift to Tanzania to see how science training can change treatment and prevention of disease in rural Africa. We drop in on SOLS alumni Rick Overson, Max Nickerson, Damien Salamone and Christian Lawrence. With Overson, we trek to the Panamanian tropical forest, along with biology doctoral student Clint Penick. Together with budding designers and architects with ASU’s Design School’s traveling studio and the Smithsonian, they develop new eyes for nature and bio- inspired innovation. We trace 40 years of hellbender studies in the Ozarks, which mark the career of Max Nickerson, whose path started with his establishment of the first reptile exhibit in The Phoenix Zoo; and cast our eyes toward Children’s Hospital in Boston and Christian Lawrence, whose research has changed how genetics studies can be done – with zebrafish. But don’t think that our ASU faculty and students aren’t change- makers in our own neighborhoods! Come to South Phoenix and visit the home of Associate Professor Juliet Stromberg and Research Faculty member Matthew Chew, who together have transformed a dilapidated rural sanitarium into a vibrant garden home that argues the concept of native versus invasive species. We also peek in on local hummingbirds, Chiricahua leopard frogs and jackrabbits, with new understanding about the role of behavior, disease and human activity in shaping the environment around us. Finally, it’s time for me to also announce my own change, as I move from School of Life Sciences to become the Director of Academic Communication in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at ASU. I have loved every moment that I’ve had with School of Life Sciences undergrads, grads, post-docs, faculty, staff and alumni. The new managing editor, Sandy Leander, brings experience and excitement about our diverse research and student body, education and outreach programs and collaborations, and will expand the tools for our graduate student writers to become better storytellers, community leaders and science educators. On the cover: Digitally stylized image of above photograph depicting a formidable group in the 1950s participating in one of the last rabbit drives in Arizona. Photo: courtesy Listen in, Read more or View at: of Casa Grande Valley Historical Society sols.asu.edu/publications/mag_vol8_01.php 02 13 22 contents sols publication staff Design Studio: Panama, 02 managing editor: margaret coulombe Grab a Biologist, 06 assistant editor: karla moeller Fish for a Cure, 08 art direction and design: jacob sahertian The Variable Vaccine for HIV, 10 editorial board: charles kazilek Belonging, 13 copy editor: sandy leander, patricia sahertian On Foot and On Wing, 17 photography: charles kazilek, jacob mayfield, The Last of the Hellbenders, 20 jacob sahertian and tom story Disappearing Rabbits, 22 funding: school of life sciences, Frog Tale, 25 arizona state university Awards and Honors, 26 (additional credits noted in articles) contact us! We are particularly interested in reconnecting To learn about the many ways you can contribute with Alumni and Emeriti. If you have information to School of Life Sciences and ASU please visit the to include in this magazine, please contact us. ASU Foundation web site: SOLS 2012 Manuscripts should be less than 1000 secure.asufoundation.org/giving words, photos should be high resolution, We reserve the right to edit all submissions. and submissions should include all pertinent © 2012 ASU School of Life Sciences. contact information. Send to Managing Editor, | V Sandy Leander • [email protected] School of Life Sciences is an academic unit OLUME SOLS Magazine, P.O. Box 874501 of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Tempe, Arizona, 85287-4501 Arizona State University. 8 N O sols.asu.edu/publications/magazines.php sols.asu.edu . 1 3351/0812/2.5m 1 Design Studio: BY CLINT PENICK Panama . 1 O 8 N OLUME | V SOLS 2012 2 Boat rides to Barro Colorado Island in Panama start just after sunrise. On this day, 14 Arizona State University students are slouched inside the bow of the Jacana trying to get an extra 15 minutes of sleep before they dock. Their guide, Wendy, is donned in tall rubber boots and navy blue jungle pants tucked into her socks. Two iridescent parrot feathers dangle from each of her ears. The group is part of a unique learning experiment and this boat ride – weaving in and out of oil tankers and cargo ships in the Panama Canal – offers more than tropical vistas: it is a vehicle to new avenues of creative thinking. These graduate students are pursuing degrees in design, architecture, and biology, and taking part in an unusual classroom collaboration between ASU’s School of Life Sciences and ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. For example, their first day of classes started with an unusual checklist – bug repellent, binoculars, knee-high rubber boots, a roll of duct tape – none of the standard supplies for a design studio (except maybe the duct tape). Armed with these new tools, the students would take their first steps on a two-week tropical biology sojourn in Panama under the guidance of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI). Their aim? To produce a final product in design or architecture with one common goal: to look at the forms, functions, and systems of the natural world to find a biologically inspired innovation. SOLS 2012 | V OLUME 8 N O . 1 Photo: Elizabeth Cash 3 Left: Design and architecture students get an aerial view of the rainforest from a canopy tower outside of Gamboa, Panama. Photo: courtesy of Michelle Fehler Right: SOLS graduate Rick Overson poses with a three-toed sloth that was brought down from the canopy by scientists at STRI who came to share about their research. Photo: Elizabeth Cash The process of taking ideas from nature and applying them to human design is known as biomimicry. At ASU, scientists already have been applying concepts of biomimicry to improve photovoltaic cells using concepts from photosynthesis and also to investigate the chemical makeup of spider silk to create stronger, light-weight materials. Incorporating biomimicry into a university curriculum offers a challenging learning and social experience; one that both students and instructors discovered to be change-making. Instructors for the 2011 “biomimicry traveling studio” were the class’ resident biologist Rick Overson, a School of Life Sciences alumnus; Philip White, an associate professor of industrial design at ASU’s Design School; and Adelheid Fischer, the manager of ASU’s InnovationSpace program. It was Fischer who first considered incorporating biology students into the The bat-inspired umbrella mimics the InnovationSpace design program at the university. geometry of bat wings to strengthen With grants from the National Collegiate Inventors the umbrella against strong winds. and Innovators Alliance and ASU’s Pathways to While traditional umbrellas often invert during windstorms, the curved tines of Entrepreneurship program, InnovationSpace launched the bat-inspired umbrella are designed an initiative to incorporate biomimicry as a fundamental to offset the forces of strong gusts part of its sustainable innovation curriculum. Funds so that the umbrella stays functional. supported a public lecture by Janine Benyus, author Design: Clint Penick of “Biomimicry: Innovation inspired by nature,” as well as the hiring of then-doctoral student in biology Nate Morehouse (now an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh). The collaboration was so . 1 fruitful that Fischer next recruited life sciences doctoral O student Adrian Smith to replace Morehouse after he 8 N graduated, and it was Smith who ultimately led Fischer to Overson. OLUME | V Overson had traveled to Panama the previous year with Smith as part of an ASU-Smithsonian partnership forged by Robert Page, Vice Provost and Dean of the College SOLS 2012 of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Known in Arizona for his 4 abilities as a naturalist, Overson had the blonde hair and the appeared to be an impenetrable, green wall began to open all-American features of a nature documentary television up. Ultimately, it was Wendy who was ready for a snooze on host. On the last night of their Panamanian tropical biology the boat back to Gamboa’s shores. field course, Overson donned a headlamp and waded waist- deep into a pond to try to catch a wild caiman. Caiman are Once back in Arizona, the students had a great deal to members of the alligator family and they can grow over process. “When you watch the students start a project like a meter in length. Though Overson wasn’t able to catch a this,” said Fischer, “there is that moment you hope for – a caiman that night, when Smith repeated the story to Fischer, synapse.” Their projects began, ranging from thermal she said, “That’s it. He’s our guy.” imaging hardware inspired by pit vipers, to collapsible buildings based on the spring mechanism of grasshopper Overson’s enthusiasm for nature rubbed off on all the legs, roofs that mimicked self-cleaning leaves, and more. students. Soon, it was not surprising to have everyone drop to their knees to get a closer look at the structure of Such projects have high potential but also high risk. A sign a plant’s roots, a new type of fungi or a poison dart frog. of their future success, however, may have been presaged Students followed his “hands-on” lead by picking up on their last night in Panama.