We will provide a nationally competitive salary, generous start-up and renovation funds, and spacious laboratory facilities including dedicated animal housing if needed. S/he is expected to establish an internationally recognized personal research program, as well as stimulate programmatic initiatives. For more information, to express interest, or to make a nomination, contact Dr. Rob Denell, Fiedler Search Committee Chair, Division of Biology, 116 Ackert Hall, Kansas State University, Manhattan KS 66506-4901 or rdenell@ksu.edu. KSU is an Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer, and actively seeks diversity among its employees.
The Kansas State University Division of Biology is the premier academic research unit in the institution. The Division currently has forty-two tenure track faculty lines, plus twenty-three additional research and instructional faculty members. Two tenure track positions are in recruitment over the next year. The Division provides fundamental instruction, and conducts research, across the diversity of biological sciences disciplines. Expertise of faculty members ranges from molecular and cellular biology through ecology and evolutionary biology. In addition to service courses crucial for many campus-wide programs, the Division is home to more than seven hundred undergraduate biology majors in three degree programs. Our graduate program of more than seventy students includes the M.S. in biology and Ph.D. degrees in biology and microbiology. The Division is recognized for the quality of teaching and research by virtually all measures of excellence. Biology faculty members have received the most prestigious teaching awards (Stamey Awards, Commerce Bank Awards, Presidential Awards, Distinguished Teaching Scholar Awards), and our undergraduates have been the recipients of forty-three premier national scholarships, including twenty-three Goldwater Awards. Biology faculty have received the Distinguished Graduate Faculty Award for research achievement, the Higuchi Dolph Simons Award for Biomedical Research Excellence from the University of Kansas, and a variety of other national recognitions, Currently, nine faculty members have been named University Distinguished Professors, the most prestigious honor the university bestows. Our faculty members publish more than one hundred twenty five research papers per year (over the past 5 years), currently serve on more than twenty scientific journal editorial boards, and have brought ca. $50M in extramural funding to K-State over the past 5 years ($10M per year average). Our Ph.D. and postdoctoral associates move on to prestigious postdoctoral and academic opportunities.
This endowed professorship will be funded in part through the Terry C. Johnson Center for Basic Cancer Research (hereafter Johnson Cancer Research Center or JCRC). The JCRC was created in 1980. Its mission is to support basic
and pre-translational research, undergraduate and graduate training, and outreach. The center has eighty affiliated scientists, with appointments in home departments in the Colleges of Arts & Sciences, Veterinary Medicine, Human Ecology, Agriculture, and Engineering. These scientists have research programs in diverse areas, including the development of cancer diagnostic and treatment approaches, environmental influences on cancer incidence, demographics, and cancer-relevant aspects of MCD Biology. In the area of research, the center supports these programs through awards for equipment, seed grants, travel, and undergraduate and graduate student stipends.
The Division of Biology serves as the home for several core facilities that are likely to provide services important to the new faculty member to be recruited. The K-State Microscope Facility offers access and support with regard to an FEI CM100 transmission electron microscope, a Zeiss Axioplan 2 instrument for high quality fluorescence microscopy, and a Zeiss LSM 5 Pascal laser scanning confocal microscope. Tissue/sample preparation facilities, darkroom suites, and image processing and analysis facilities are also present. The Microscope Facility is funded by the Division of Biology and by user fees. Elsewhere on campus, the COBRE in Epithelial Function (described below) provides a Confocal Microfluorometry and Microscopy Core facility, and a scanning electron microscope is also available.
Biology also houses the KSU Bioinformatics Center, which was established in 2001 under the direction of Dr. Susan Brown. The primary goal of the center is to provide state-of-the-art bioinformatics support to biological researchers at K-State. It also serves as an active site for bioinformatics research and development in the State of Kansas. The Bioinformatics Center is funded by the National Institutes of Health through the Kansas IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (K-INBRE).
The Kansas Lipidomics Research Center, also based in Biology, was established with funding from Kansas National Science Foundation EPSCoR and Kansas Technology Enterprise Corporation. It is directed by Dr. Ruth Welti. The Lipidomics Research Center is a part of the K-State Functional Genomics Consortium. Other components of this program include the Biotechnology Proteomics Facility, the Biomolecular Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Facility, and the Glycomics Facility. Also available on campus are the Biotechnology Core Lab, the Molecular Biology and Biochemistry Support Facility, and the DNA Sequencing Facility.
Affiliates of the JCRC and other members of the Division of Biology engage in a variety of state, national and international research collaborations. At the programmatic level, K-State faculty participate in several federally-funded programs aimed at enhancing the success of Kansas investigators with respect to national research funding. Each involves and encourages interactions of investigators at multiple regents’ institutions. Four of these programs are supported by the National Institutes of Health Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) program. Based at K-State is the Center for Epithelial Function in Health and Disease, while the University of Kansas hosts the Center for Cancer Experimental Therapeutics. COBRE programs with other research emphases are administered on the University of Kansas and University of Kansas Medical Center campuses. A similar program mentioned above, K-INBRE, is also based at the medical center. All of these programs offer core facilities available to all state researchers, as well as pilot and equipment grants. These programs will facilitate interactions of the new faculty member with other researchers in the state.
A number of affiliates of the JCRC have individual collaborations with scientists at many international locations. At the administrative level, the JCRC has formal relationships with the University of Kansas Cancer Center (hereafter KUCC). Firstly, K-State and the JCRC are participants in the Midwest Cancer Alliance (MCA) Partners Advisory Board. The overarching goal of the MCA is to strengthen the link from the KUCC’s research laboratories to community-based oncologists across the Heartland by pushing new discoveries out to partner sites through clinical trials. In addition to hospital partners, the Advisory Board includes two research units, the JCRC and Stowers Institute, which further advance that objective. However, the main focus of this advisory board is to aid in efforts of the KUCC to achieve designation as a National Cancer Institute Comprehensive Cancer Center. An application is pending. In addition, the JCRC and KUCC have a formal agreement designed to mutually benefit their research programs through improving communication and interaction, and encouraging collaboration.
Kansas State University is located in Manhattan, Kansas, and has about 24,000 undergraduate and 2,500 graduate students. KSU attracts outstanding undergraduate students. It is the only public university over the past 15 years to rank among the top 10 of all U.S. schools for all five of the following major scholarship programs: Rhodes, Marshall, Truman, Goldwater, and Udall. In fiscal year 2011, the University’s overall research funding base exceeded $220 million. The University is part of the Big Twelve Athletic Conference.
Manhattan has a population of about 45,000, and is located in the rolling Flint Hills (http://www.kgs.ukans.edu/Extension/flinthills/flinthills.html) of northeast Kansas at the juncture of the Big Blue and Kansas Rivers. Local recreational activities include large lakes and Konza Prairie, the nation’s largest tract of untilled tall grass prairie and the focus of many KSU ecological research projects (http://www.naturalkansas.org/konza.htm). An active agenda of cultural events is offered by the University and community organizations. Shopping facilities include a large mall, and Manhattan is about two hours from the greater Kansas City area. |
