Today, Trista was recognized with another prestigious award from the Center for African Studies for her work on the azole’s project looking for new antibiotic scaffolds!
Category Archives: News
Trista wins a SoSE URSS Poster Award
Congratulations are in order for Trista as her poster presentation at last weeks Duquesne URSS as selected as one the top 10 in the School of Science Engineering! That is two years in a row (Ryan in ’25) that a Heisler lab member has been selected!
Trista Successfully Defended her Senior Honors Thesis!
Today, after much work, a lot of successes and many failed experiments, Trista successfully defended her Senior Honors Thesis in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry! In her time in lab, she has been awarded numerous scholarships, awards, and is a co-author on one manuscript that was recently published. The thesis defense is a testament to the hard work and dedication that Trista has shown over the last 2.5 years and the lab could not be happier for her and all her successes!
Dissertation Outline DEFENDED by Elias
As a part of the development of graduate students into scientist, each student is required to put together an initial draft of what they imagine their thesis might look like 3-4 years from now. Today, Elias successfully defended his plans for identifying potential scaffold to control the ever growing number of antibiotic-resistance pathogens as well as identifying the target and mechanism of an effector protein that Dr. Heisler has been interested in since 2017.
Morgan Successfully Defends her Dissertation Outline
As a part of the development of graduate students into scientist, each student is required to put together an initial draft of what they imagine their thesis might look like 3-4 years from now. Today, Morgan successfully demonstrated how she plans to tackle an ongoing problem in Listeria biology for explaining how our cells sometimes cannot protect themselves from a Listeria infection, and how the bacteria uses its virulence factors to successfully do this.
Congrats Morgan!
Trista presents that the Gulf Coast Undergraduate Research Symposium at Rice University!
As part of Trista’s Goldwater Scholarship, Trista had the opportunity to present the work she has been doing in the lab over the past 14 months in an oral presentation. Additionally, she was awarded full financial support to travel to, attend, and network at the conference with other Goldwater fellows and scientists from the greater southeast Texas area.
Feedback from those at her presentation were “extremely positive, and your average ranking was “excellent”… for your overall impression (good logical flow with all the expected sections of the talk being present) and your introduction.” Her use of Ryan Gugliotti’s introduction slides also impressed many of the reviewers.
Fully Funded Travel Award for Trista to Attend the GCURS!
Trista, as a Goldwater Fellow, we selected to attend the Gulf Coast Undergraduate Research Symposium (GCRUS) at Rice University this fall. On top of being selected, she was awarded a Travel Award that provides full financial support to attend. Huge CONGRATS to Trista!
Bittersweet End to the Summer!
All of undergraduates presented posters today at the Annual Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium highlighting the work our URP, REU, and NURE students conducted over the summer! It was a great time for reflecting on the summer and to celebrate all of the student’s hard work!
Megan completes here summer at PSU
Megan got selected for a Food and Drug Administration funded summer research opportunity in the Food Science Department at Pennsylvania State University! Not only did she do a lot exciting research with Dr. Dudley’s group, she also have the opportunity to tour the FDA headquarters and see how they conduct their important research activities.
PLU Symposium – WINNER!
Today, Morgan and Elias presented the research they have been working on for the last year at the annual graduate research symposium! Morgan won the award for Rookie of The Year for the department!
Finally Flowing!
Huge thank you to Lauren O’Donnell (Duquesne, Pharmacy) for letting us use her flow cytometer! Back to doing cell work with infections and fluorescently labeled bacteria!
Ryan’s Poster Presentation was selected as a Top 10 best SoSE Posters at URSS!
Duquesne’s Undergraduate Research and Scholarship Symposium
Trista was awarded a Barry Goldwater Scholarship!
From Goldwater:
GOLDWATER SCHOLARSHIP AWARDS
As the result of an ongoing partnership with UWorld and the Department of Defense National Defense Education Programs (NDEP), Dr. John Yopp, Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation, announced that the Trustees of the Goldwater Board will be able to award 441 Goldwater scholarships to college students from across the United States for the 2025-2026 academic year. When these new awards are combined with the second year of support to 64 sophomores who received Goldwater scholarships in 2024, the total number will again be among the largest number of scholars ever supported in a single year. With the 2025 awards, the Goldwater Foundation has awarded 11,162 scholarships since 1989, the first year the scholarship was bestowed.
“The Department of Defense’s continued partnership with the Goldwater Foundation ensures we are supporting the development of scientific talent essential to maintaining our Nation’s competitive advantage,” said Dr. Jagadeesh Pamulapati, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Science and Technology Foundations, who oversees the NDEP program.
“We are proud to remain the Goldwater Foundation’s sole private sector partner for the second year and support undergraduates interested in pursuing medical research careers,” said Chandra S. Pemmasani, M.D., founder and CEO of UWorld. “It is inspiring to see how the foundation continues to motivate students to grow in their education and pursue their professional goals.
From an estimated pool of over 5,000 college sophomores and juniors, 1,350 science, engineering, and mathematics students were nominated by 445 academic institutions to compete for the 2025 Goldwater scholarships. Of the students who reported, 203 of the Scholars are men, 222 are women, and virtually all intend to obtain a Ph.D. as their highest degree objective. Fifty Scholars intend to pursue research careers in mathematics and computer science, 240 in the sciences, 88 in medicine, and 63 in engineering and materials research.
Goldwater Scholars have gone on to win an impressive array of prestigious awards, becoming National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellows, NSF Graduate Research Fellows, Hertz Fellows, DOE Computational Science Graduate Fellows, Astronaut Scholars, Churchill Scholars, Marshall Scholars, and Rhodes Scholars.
The Goldwater Foundation is a federally endowed agency established by Public Law 99-661 on November 14, 1986. The Scholarship Program honoring Senator Barry Goldwater was designed to identify, encourage, and financially support outstanding undergraduates interested in pursuing research careers in the sciences, engineering, and mathematics. The Goldwater Scholarship is the preeminent undergraduate award of its type in these fields.
Trista was named a John V. Crable Mentor!
“The Crable Award is one of the highest honors that the Department bestows upon a student in any given cohort. The award is designed to facilitate your growth as an independent and critical thinker in the chemical enterprise, specifically to make meaningful research contributions in your selected field of study. The prestigious Crable Award includes an academic scholarship for the 2024/2025 academic year, and fellowship support for the 2025 summer research experience with the required meal plan… The Crable Award carries significant responsibility as a student at Duquesne University. Such an exclusive award requires a full commitment to your academic studies and research efforts. You will be expected to act with the highest standards of ethics, professional behavior, and display extraordinary leadership in the Department.”
Congrats Trista!
Dr. Heisler Presents at BPS2025!
Today, Dr. Heisler presented at BPS2025, the annual meeting for the Biophysical Society, in Los Angeles, California. The talk focused on the lab’s collaboration with Dr. Mihailescu’s lab focused on the role of host-viral interactions in the SARS-CoV-2 genome. More information can be found here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bpj.2024.11.181
Heisler Lab at CERM 2024!
Today Megan, Trista, and Elizabeth (Cascio Lab) represented the Heisler lab at the American Chemical Society Central Regional Meeting 2024 in Greentree, PA. Trista and Elizabeth were both recognized for their presentations with Top Poster Award!
Additionally, work from Zoe (Summer student; Bryn Mawr) was presented as part of Sophia Hershey’s poster (Mihailescu Lab). Caleb Frye (Mihailescu lab) also gave a talk about our collaborative findings on the SARS-CoV-2 viral genome 3′-untranslated region.
SoSE Fall Festival!
Today, the School of Science and Engineering (SoSE) welcomed our new students and welcomed back current students with a celebration of what the department has done and what we will strive to continue to do our students each semester!
Welcome to the lab Elias and Morgan!
Today, the lab added 2 new prospective graduate students in Elias and Morgan.
Elias comes to us from Grove City College where he studied biochemistry and was a First Team All-PAC swimmer. He will explore the crossover between organic and inorganic chemistry and biochemistry to address the need for novel antibiotics.
Morgan is a graduate of Bucknell University, where she focused on cell biology and biochemistry. She will utilize this background to better understand how Listeria is able to continue to be a worldwide foodborne pathogen with recent outbreaks in the United States and Canada!
WELCOME to the team!
URP Symposium
The summer research season has come to a bittersweet ending. As the last activity of the summer, the undergraduates presented all of their hard work at the Regional Undergraduate Research Symposium here at Duquesne University. 
