2005-06 Terman Fellows

Dominique Bergmann, an assistant professor of Biological Sciences, joined the faculty on January 1, 2005 after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Carnegie Institution, Dept. of Plant Biology. Bergmann earned her bachelor’s degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology from UC Berkeley in 1993, and a doctorate from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2000. Bergmann is a developmental biologist interested in understanding how asymmetric cell division, cell-cell communication and inputs from the environment work together to establish cell fates and to organize tissues. Focusing on the specification of stomatal cells in the developing epidermis (skin) of the leaf, she developed novel genetic and genomic approaches to identify developmental “switch” genes. Bergmann's lab is currently studying the role of MAP kinase signaling in stomatal fate and is creating the tools to identify the global network of genes required for plant epidermal development. 

Simon Brendle, an assistant professor of Mathematics, joined the faculty on September 1, 2005 after being on the faculty at Princeton. Brendle obtained his undergraduate and doctorate degrees at the University of Tübingen in 2001. He held postdoctoral fellowship in Germany and at MIT. Brendle arrived at Princeton in 2002 and became an Assistant Professor in 2003. Brendle's best known work lies in differential geometry, the study of curved spaces, and more specifically in the theory of geometric flows. This area studies spaces by making their metrics "flow" to certain stationary forms, e.g deforming arbitrary surfaces into surfaces of constant curvature, such as spheres. Brendle has made several breakthroughs in this area. Brendle is also interested in problems of mathematical finance, and is making important contributions to this area.

Jennifer Kohler, an assistant professor of Chemistry , joined the faculty on January 1, 2005 after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley. Kohler earned a bachelor's degree summa cum laude in Chemistry from Bryn Mawr in 1994 and a doctorate from Yale University in 2000. Kohler's research is in the domain of chemical biology. More specifically, her research group is interested in glycobiology and in particular cell surface carbohydrates, which administer exchange of information between the cell and its environment. Kohler has developed an original and general strategy for regulating cell surface glycosylation (a key step in the synthesis of membrane and secretory proteins) by small molecule control of enzyme localization. Kohler's research will develop new tools to address unanswered questions in glycobiology and is particularly focused on general strategies to assess the role of glycosylation in protein-protein interactions. She will also conduct experiments to provide a better, more molecular picture of the events that conspire to yield protein glycosylation in the secretory pathway of eukaryotic cells.

Kang Shen, an assistant professor of Biological Sciences , joined the faculty on September 1, 2003 after completing a Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco. Shen did his undergraduate work in China and received his M.D. from the Tongji Medical University in Wuhan in 1994 and a doctorate in Cell Biology from Duke University in 1999. Shen is a developmental neurobiologist. He studies how nerve cells form specific synaptic connections with other nerve cells, joining together to make neural circuit. His research group is systematically studying the molecular mechanisms of target selection during synapse formation. Shen has recently received the following awards: 2005 Keck Distinguished Young Scholars in Medical Research; 2005 Searle Scholar; Basil O'Connor Starter Scholar Award from March of Dimes Birth Defect Foundation