Honoring students and faculty
The Graduate School awarded 380 PhD degrees this academic year: 222 at Commencement on May 20 and 158 earlier in the academic year. At the spring graduation, 118 MPhil, 190 MA, and 100 MS degrees were granted, joining the 261 MPhil, 97 MA, and 101 MS degrees given in December and February. At Commencement Convocation, more than 50 students were recognized for their outstanding academic accomplishments, research, and service to Yale and the community. Public service awards went to Jennifer Gaddis (F&ES), for her efforts to improve the quality of the meals served in New Haven Public Schools; Lauren Tilton (American studies), for codirecting the Photogrammar Project, an interactive map and platform that makes accessible over 170,000 photographs of the Great Depression and World War II; and Thalyana Smith-Vikos (MCDB), for her commitment to the New Haven Science Fair.
Three extraordinary faculty members received the Graduate School’s Mentor Award for superb teaching and advising: Evan Morris, associate professor of diagnostic radiology and psychiatry and biomedical engineering; Kathryn Lofton, the Sarai Ribicoff Associate Professor of Religious Studies and American Studies; and Elisabeth Wood, professor of political science and of international and area studies.
Tracing the genetics of autism
Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a report stating that one child in 88 has autism or a related condition. Graduate student Stephan Sanders (genetics), a pediatrician, is studying genetic mutations associated with autism for his dissertation. His work, recently published in Nature, found strong evidence that autism is a genetic disorder, “based on studies of identical twins and recurrence rates in siblings,” he says. Some very rare mutations that are present in a child with autism but not in either parent were observed roughly three times more often in individuals with autism than in their unaffected siblings. So far, his team has identified three autism genes, and he estimates that they are on track to identify 37 more by the end of 2014. He and his colleagues were able to determine that about 1,000 genes in total play a role in autism.
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