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There are usually about 75 students working toward doctoral degrees and 10 students pursuing master's degrees in the MCB program. The strengths of the program are the breadth of its faculty's research interests, the interdisciplinary nature of its training, and the close mentoring and individual attention MCB students receive. Tom Maresca, Associate Professor of Biology, is the program's Director; Scott Garman, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, is the program's Associate Director.

Financial Support

PhD graduate students are provided the following support—a yearly stipend (for 2024/25, approximately $34,000) with additional benefits of health insurance, dental insurance and tuition and curriculum fee waivers. The value of stipend, benefits and waivers totals more than $46K. The stipends may be from a research assistantship, a teaching assistantship or fellowships. First semester PhD students undertake 3 rotations and are supported in the Fall with College fellowships. All PhD students are required to serve as teaching assistants in an instructive capacity for at least two semesters during their study. Doctoral degree students who remain in good standing will be supported for up to five years.

Master's student support is by arrangement between the student and their advisor for both the traditional MS degree and the 5th year MS degree, and prospective students must clarify this directly with their proposed advisor. Traditional MS students who remain in good standing are generally supported by their advisor for two years. The 5th year MS program is limited to undergraduates from the Five Colleges: Amherst, Hampshire, Mt. Holyoke, Smith, UMass Amherst.  

Where do MCB students come from?

The MCB graduate program recruits students from various universities in the United States and abroad. Students entering the program within the past three years received their undergraduate degrees from institutions in the following U.S. states:

  • California—University of Southern California, California Polytechnic State University
  • Pennsylvania—Pennsylvannia State University, Dickinson College, Marywood University
  • Minnesota—Hamline University
  • Washington—University of Washington
  • New York—State University of New York at Albany 
  • New Hampshire—University of New Hampshire
  • Vermont—Saint Michael’s College, University of Vermont
  • Massachusetts—UMass Amherst, Mount Holyoke College, Clark University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

And from the following foreign institutions:

  • McGill University, Montreal, Canada 
  • University of Kashmir, India
  • Fudan University, Shanghai, China
  • National Taiwan University, Taiwan
  • Korea University, South Korea
  • Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Argentina
  • Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey

What do MCB students accomplish during their graduate training?

The following is a selected list of student publications dated 2016-2024, of which majority are first author publications.

Sawyer, T. K., Aral, E., Staros, J. V., Bobst, C. E., & Garman, S. C. (2022). Human Saposin B Ligand Binding and Presentation to α-Galactosidase A. bioRxiv.

Joshi, K. K., Battle, C. M., & Chien, P. (2018). Polar localization hub protein PopZ restrains adaptor-dependent ClpXP proteolysis in Caulobacter crescentus. Journal of bacteriology200(20), 10-1128.

Mahmoud, S. A., Aldikacti, B., & Chien, P. (2022). ATP hydrolysis tunes specificity of a AAA+ protease. Cell reports40(12).

Tashjian, T. F., Zeinert, R. D., Eyles, S. J., & Chien, P. (2023). Proteomic survey of the DNA damage response in Caulobacter crescentus. Journal of Bacteriology205(10), e00206-23.

Bittner, K. R., Jiménez, J. M., & Peyton, S. R. (2020). Vascularized biomaterials to study cancer metastasis. Advanced healthcare materials9(8), 1901459.

Adams, B. M., Canniff, N. P., Guay, K. P., Larsen, I. S. B., & Hebert, D. N. (2020). Quantitative glycoproteomics reveals cellular substrate selectivity of the ER protein quality control sensors UGGT1 and UGGT2. Elife9, e63997.

Guay, K. P., Ke, H., Canniff, N. P., George, G. T., Eyles, S. J., Mariappan, M., ... & Hebert, D. N. (2023). ER chaperones use a protein folding and quality control glyco-code. Molecular Cell83(24), 4524-4537.

Park, Y., Cheong, E., Kwak, J. G., Carpenter, R., Shim, J. H., & Lee, J. (2021). Trabecular bone organoid model for studying the regulation of localized bone remodeling. Science Advances7(4), eabd6495.

Sharma, A., Kwak, J. G., Kolewe, K. W., Schiffman, J. D., Forbes, N. S., & Lee, J. (2020). In vitro reconstitution of an intestinal mucus layer shows that cations and pH control the pore structure that regulates its permeability and barrier function. ACS applied bio materials3(5), 2897-2909.

Jeon, T., Luther, D. C., Goswami, R., Bell, C., Nagaraj, H., Cicek, Y. A., ... & Rotello, V. M. (2023). Engineered Polymer–SiRNA Polyplexes Provide Effective Treatment of Lung Inflammation. ACS nano17(5), 4315-4326.

Macveigh-Fierro, D., Cicerchia, A., Cadorette, A., Sharma, V., & Muller, M. (2022). The m6A reader YTHDC2 is essential for escape from KSHV SOX-induced RNA decay. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences119(8), e2116662119.

McSweeney, D., Gabriel, R., Jin, K., Pang, Z. P., Aronow, B., & Pak, C. (2022). CASK loss of function differentially regulates neuronal maturation and synaptic function in human induced cortical excitatory neurons. Iscience25(10).

Özden, C., Sloutsky, R., Mitsugi, T., Santos, N., Agnello, E., Gaubitz, C., ... & Stratton, M. M. (2022). CaMKII binds both substrates and activators at the active site. Cell reports40(2).

Sloutsky, R., Dziedzic, N., Dunn, M. J., Bates, R. M., Torres-Ocampo, A. P., Boopathy, S., ... & Stratton, M. M. (2020). Heterogeneity in human hippocampal CaMKII transcripts reveals allosteric hub-dependent regulation. Science signaling13(641), eaaz0240.

Tran, T., Karunanayake Mudiyanselage, A. P., Eyles, S. J., & Thompson, L. K. (2023). Bacterial chemoreceptor signaling complexes control kinase activity by stabilizing the catalytic domain of CheA. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences120(32), e2218467120.

Wells, A. C., Hioki, K. A., Angelou, C. C., Lynch, A. C., Liang, X., Ryan, D. J., ... & Pobezinsky, L. A. (2023). Let-7 enhances murine anti-tumor CD8 T cell responses by promoting memory and antagonizing terminal differentiation. Nature Communications14(1), 5585.

Hioki, K. A., Ryan, D. J., Thesmar, I., Lynch, A. C., Pobezinsky, L. A., & Pobezinskaya, E. L. (2023). The mosquito effect: regulatory and effector T cells acquire cytoplasmic material from tumor cells through intercellular transfer. Frontiers in Immunology14, 1272918.

Nayyab, S., Gervasi, M. G., Tourzani, D. A., Caraballo, D. A., Jha, K. N., Teves, M. E., ... & Salicioni, A. M. (2021). TSSK3, a novel target for male contraception, is required for spermiogenesis. Molecular reproduction and development88(11), 718-730.

Akizawa, H., Lopes, E. M., & Fissore, R. A. (2023). Zn2+ is essential for Ca2+ oscillations in mouse eggs. ELife12, RP88082.

Rickelton, K., Zintel, T. M., Pizzollo, J., Miller, E., Ely, J. J., Raghanti, M. A., ... & Babbitt, C. C. (2024). Tempo and mode of gene expression evolution in the brain across primates. Elife13, e70276.

Where do MCB students go for postdoctoral training or after degree completion?

Our graduates have gone on to postdoctoral research positions at academic research institutions or in the biotechnology industry in the U.S. and abroad. Some of our graduates have taken positions at the following institutions (see Our Graduates page for specific information):

  • Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
  • University of North Carolina
  • Duke University
  • Dana-Faber Cancer Institute
  • Harvard
  • MIT
  • National Cancer Institute
  • Stanford
  • Yale
  • Burroughs-Wellcome
  • Johnson & Johnson
  • Eli Lilly