science  
Dan Siegal-Gaskins I am currently a Postodoctoral Fellow in the Mathematical Biosciences Institute and in the Grotewold Lab (within the Dept. of Plant Cellular and Molecular Biology) at the Ohio State University. My research interests are I think best described as Systems Biology. I essentially take a little bit of math and a little bit of biology and put it together to try to understand the 'laws' that govern living systems.

Arabidopsis trichomes This page is a constant work in progress; there's a lot of stuff that I hope to put up just as soon as I have the time to really commit to a comprehensive website update. To whet your appetite for things to come, that picture on the left is one my first attempts to image Arabidopsis thaliana leaf trichomes with an environmental scanning electron microscope.
In the meantime, feel free to check out some of my recent publications:

· Guet C., Bruneaux L., Min T.L., Siegal-Gaskins D., Figueroa I., Emonet T. and Cluzel P. 2008. Minimally invasive determination of mRNA concentration in single living bacteria, Nucleic Acids Res. 1-8. [HTML/PDF]

· Siegal-Gaskins, D., and Crosson, S. 2008. Tightly-regulated and heritable division control in single bacterial cells. Biophys. J. 95:2063-2072. [HTML/PDF]

· Purcell, E.B., Siegal-Gaskins, D., Rawling D.C., Fiebig, A., and Crosson, S.  2007.  A photosensory two-component system regulates bacterial cell attachment.  Proc. Natl. Acad Sci. USA 104:18241-18246. [HTML/PDF]

Order Of The Science Scouts Of Exemplary Repute And Above Average Physique
Grad School
Dan Siegal-Gaskins Despite all attempts by my 10th grade math teacher to discourage me from getting a university education, I received a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Chicago in August of 2008.  Take that, Mr. Carr!
Sean Crosson and his Caulobacter I conducted my Ph.D. research under the tutelage the illustrious Sean Crosson (Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) trying to unlock the mysteries of life on the scale of single Caulobacter crescentus cells. At left, a picture of Sean riding a Caulobacter (note: Caulobacter pictured is not actual size).  The title of my thesis: Populations to Single Cells: Insights from Microfluidic Growth Experiments.

It turns out that my academic genealogy is full of interesting people. Sean Crosson did his PhD work with Keith Moffat, who studied under Max Perutz (recipient of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Chemistry), who was advised by John Desmond Bernal, who came from the lab of Sir William Henry Bragg (recipient of the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics), who was groomed by Sir Joseph John "J.J." Thomson (recipient of the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physics), who was educated by John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh (recipient of the 1904 Nobel Prize in Physics), who was taught by Edward John Routh, who was mentored by William Hopkins, who was instructed by Adam Sedgwick, who was trained by Thomas Jones, who was tutored by John Cranke.

Dan Siegal-Gaskins and John Carlstrom I didn't always work on biological systems. For my first couple of years at Chicago, I worked under the supervision of the illustrious John Carlstrom (pictured at left), trying to unlock the mysteries of life on the scale of galaxy clusters. More specifically, I worked on the Characterization of MMIC 85-115 GHz HEMT Amplifiers for the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Array. You may also want to check out the SZA web page.
Undergrad = Skuletm

For those who don't know, Skuletm is the metric spelling of school, referring exclusively to Engineering at the University of Toronto. Contrary to what you may have heard, my undergraduate career was not all about free pizza. Most of the time I had to work my face off just to get by. Why, you ask? Because I had the sorta-unique pleasure of studying Engineering Science (also known as Eng Sci or NΨ) at the University of Toronto. More specifically, I was in the Physics Option, Photonics and Condensed Matter stream.  Engineering Physics gave me the opportunity to play with giant science toys that light up, go buzz, and are paid for by the government.

Isn't this exciting?!?  But wait!!  There's more!!  You can

· CLICK HERE to look at all the courses I've taken in the pursuit of my degree
· CLICK HERE to check out my second year design project
· CLICK HERE for my undergraduate thesis in PDF format

In addition to learning science from books and such, I was also doing science on and off as a member of the Observational Cosmology Lab at the University of Toronto, under the strict supervision of Barth Netterfield.  So, what is Observational Cosmology, you ask?  Essentially, we design and run experiments to look at, or "observe", cool things in the Universe, or "cosmos".  Hence, Observational Cosmology.  Neat, eh?  Our main objective was to investigate the incredibally funky Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The name of that project: BOOMERANG. Now I don't have too much in the way of photographs from those days, but I did make a little I'm-in-Texas-with-my-Boomerang diary back then, as well as a fledgling personal BOOMERANG picture gallery, both of which might be fun to look at.

There are currently lots of pages on the internet that talk about CMB physics in greater detail, so I won't try to bore you here with details that I don't fully understand.

Now life back then wasn't all science all the time. As an undergraduate in Skuletm, I tried (sometimes successfully, sometimes not) to have lots of fun. Not your regular kind of boring fun. The good kind.

First, there's everyone's favourite renegade musical terrorists, marching Gregorian chant society and white noise brigade: the Lady Godiva Memorial Band (also known as the LGMB or BNAD, pictured at right, and with more info here). The LGMB helped me survive plenty days and nights with a refreshing lecture crashing or football field dashing or alcohol stashing event.  At one time I held the position of Drumb Mayjur within the BNAD, but now I'm just a lowly multiple-X Drumb Mayjur, which is a pleasant way of saying that I'm nothing.

Then there's Skuletm Nite, the Engineering comedy musical revue.   Skuletm Nite is awesome.  Go see it.

And of course there's SUDS, the Engineering pub, an oasis in the desert of integrals and subroutines.  I was once the manager of this wonderful establishment, and now that I am no more, I am relegated to drinking Labatt 50 with my free beer tickets.

Wanna see something really cool? Check out the grad prank album in my picture gallery.

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