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Michtom School of Computer Science

Senior honors thesis.

The senior thesis is a rewarding and demanding undertaking which requires a student to study independently and in great depth. Students use their knowledge from previous study in the field to inform their research and they may choose to do this for several reasons.

First, it is an opportunity for a student to pursue a specialized area of interest that may eventually contribute to the field of knowledge. Second, it teaches critical analysis and research skills while allowing the student to establish a close working relationship with a faculty mentor. Third, the final body of work can help strengthen a student's resume for a future job or for graduate school. And finally, the distinction of Honors, High Honors, or Highest Honors will only be awarded to those majors enrolled in the thesis program in Computer Science.

The Frequently Asked Questions page provides full information about the requirements and process of doing a senior thesis in computer science.

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Guide for Senior Thesis Writers

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General Reference

• Birds of the World This link opens in a new window A powerful research database that brings together deep, scholarly content from four celebrated works of ornithology (Birds of North America, The Handbook of the Birds of the World, Neotropical Birds, and Bird Families of the World) with millions of bird observations from eBird and multimedia from the Macaulay Library into a single platform where biologists and birders can explore comprehensive life history information on birds.
• Science In Context (Gale) This link opens in a new window Contextual information on hundreds of today's most significant science topics. Authoritative reference content with full-text magazines, academic journals, news articles, experiments, images, videos, audio files and links to vetted websites organized into user-friendly categories.

Guide to Biology Research

This research guide highlights the best places to look for Biology articles, books, and more. The guide also includes find tips for searching the literature more effectively and ways to get help with research, writing, and citations.

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Writing a senior thesis or doing senior research? Check out the library's Guide for Undergraduate Thesis Writers . The guide describes how to:

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• Last Updated: Oct 18, 2023 9:37 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.brandeis.edu/Biology

Science at Brandeis

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53rd Rosenstiel Award awarded to Wolfgang Baumeister

The 53rd Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in Basic Medical Research has been awarded to Wolfgang Baumeister for his pioneering work in the Development of cryo-electron tomography and for his insights into the structures and functions of the protein quality control machinery.

Dr. Baumeister’s visionary drive to find a way to study molecular machines in their native contexts has made it possible to study cells in a close-to-living state in three dimensions with resolution approaching the sub-nanometer range. This is a revolutionary advance that will allow us to understand the cellular milieu in a way never before possible. In particular, his lab has explored in near-atomic detail the proteasome complex that is responsible for the targeted degradation of proteins, and has led the way to the study of other macromolecular assemblies and their arrangement within the cell.

Professor Baumeister is Director Emeritus and Scientific Member of the Max-Planck Institute in Martinsreid, Germany . His laboratory has been at the forefront of the identification and structural analysis of the molecular machinery involved in both the proper folding and the degradation of proteins. Insights from his laboratory about a novel structural motif in some proteases has led to the development of inhibitors that block the proliferation of several cancers. More recently, his ability to locate precisely individual protein structures has made it possible to begin the description of the “molecular sociology” of proteins in specific subcellular environments such as neurons. Professor Baumeister is a Member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, a Foreign Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Foreign Member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He is a recipient of many awards, including the Alexander Hollander Award in Biophysics and the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine. He is a member of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Steering Committee and Editor-in-Chief of Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications.

Dr. Baumeister will present his Rosenstiel Award lecture at Brandeis on April 18, 2024.

The Rosenstiel Award has had a distinguished record of identifying and honoring pioneering scientists who subsequently have been honored with the Lasker and Nobel Prizes. In 2022, the Rosenstiel Award was presented to Christine Holt and Erin Schuman. In 2021, Robert Singer was honored for his studies of the ways messenger RNAs are transcribed and transported to specific locations in the cytoplasm of cells, often far from the nucleus. In 2020, the Rosenstiel Award was the first of now many prizes conferred on Katalin Karikó and Drew Weismann for their pioneering work in the development of RNA vaccines. Karikó and Weismann received the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. In 2019, David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian were honored for their identification and characterization of ion channels that enable the perception of touch, temperature and pain. Julius and Patapoutian were the 2021 Nobel laureates in Physiology and Medicine. In 2018, Stephen C. Harrison was honored for his elucidation of protein structures using x-ray crystallography. In 2017, Titia de Lange was named for her pioneering work on how cells preserve the integrity of their chromosomes. In 2016, Susan Lindquist was cited for her work on the association of protein aggregation and neurological disease. In 2015, Yoshinori Ohsumi was the recipient, for his description of protein degradation through the process of autophagy. Ohsumi was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2016. Forty of 95 Rosenstiel Award winners have subsequently been awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology or in Chemistry.

A full list of awardees can be found on the Rosenstiel Award website .

2022 Rosenstiel Award Recipients Receive 2023 Brain Prize

Christine Holt , Professor emerita of Developmental Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge and Erin Schuman , Professor of Neurobiology at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research have been named the 2023 Brain Prize Winners. Both Holt and Schuman received the Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in Basic Medical Research award in 2022. Michael Greenberg from the Harvard Medical School also received Brain Prize. The Brain Prize is an international scientific award that honors scientists for their outstanding contribution to neuroscience.

The Lunkbeck Foundation noted that the 2023 recipients of the Brain Prize have “made ground-breaking discoveries by showing how the synthesis of new proteins is triggered in different parts of the neuron, thereby guiding brain development and plasticity in ways that impact our behaviour for a lifetime.”

The following is the program and speakers for the Brain Prize Webinar Series that will be held from October 25, 2023 through March 27, 2024. The series is online and free to attend.

Leslie Griffith , Nancy Lurie Marks Professor of Neuroscience and the Director of the Volen National Center for Complex Systems will be participating in this series on December 7, 2023.

Two faculty members receive the 2023 Landis Award for Outstanding Mentorship

Gina Turrigiano , the Joseph Levitan Professor of Vision Science, and Eve Marder , University Professor and the Victor and Gwendolyn Beinfield Professor of Biology, have received the  2023 Landis Award for Outstanding Mentorship .

Awardees are nominated by either current or former trainees who have been mentored by the faculty member. This nomination is then followed up with additional letters of support.

The award is given by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) to members who have shown dedication to superior mentorship and training in neuroscience research. In 2023, two of the eight recipients are Brandeis faculty. This reflects the level of commitment that Brandeis faculty have to student mentoring.

Awardees receive $100,000, as a supplement to an existing NINDS grant, in order to support their efforts to foster the career advancement of additional trainees.

Congratulations to Eve and Gina.

Eve Marder receives 2023 Pearl Meister Greengard Prize

Eve Marder, University Professor and the Victor and Gwendolyn Beinfield Professor of Biology, has received the 2023 Pearl Meister Greengard Prize . This award recognizes outstanding women scientists.  The award was presented by Ellen V. Futter, president emerita of the American Museum of Natural History, in a ceremony at the Rockefeller University on September 20.

Marder shares the award with Lily Jan, the Jack and DeLoris Lange Professor of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco.

Marder has also received the  Kavli Prize in Neuroscience  and the  Gruber Prize in Neuroscience .

Learn more: Brandeis Stories

2 PhD alums receive 2023 Hanna Gray Fellowships

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute HHMI has announced the 2023 recipients of the Hanna Gray Fellowships . Of the 25 early career scientists, two who received this award are Brandeis PhD alumni.

The Hanna H. Gray Fellows Program provides each fellow with up to $1.5 million for as long as 8 years of financial support as they continue in their postdoctoral training and transition through to their early career faculty positions.

Raul Arturo Ramos-Garcia is currently a postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley working in the lab of Ellen Lumpkin . Raul Ramos-Garcia received a PhD in Neuroscience in 2022. Raul was mentored by Gina Turrigiano while at Brandeis.

Linnea Herzog Lemma is a postdoc at Princeton University and is mentored by Ned Wingreen . Linnea received a PhD in Neuroscience from Brandeis in 2020. While at Brandeis, Linnea’s mentors were Don Katz and Shantanu Jadhav .

Brandeis alumna elected Vice President of the International Union of Crystallography

Alumna Graciela Diaz de Delgado (Ph. D., Chemistry, 1988) was elected Vice President of the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) in August 2023.  Graciela is currently Professor of Chemistry at the Universidad de los Andes in Merida, Venezuela, and is only the second person from Latin America to be elected to this position in the IUCr’s 75+ years of existence.  At Brandeis she completed her Ph. D. work in Professor Bruce Foxman’s group , where she worked on the solid-state reactions of crystalline metal complexes of trans -2-butenoate, a productive theme which continued in Bruce’s research group until his retirement. Graciela also serves the IUCr as the Chief Editor for Acta Crystallographica Section E .  Formally admitted to the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) on 7 April 1947, the IUCr remains committed to its goals of promoting international cooperation in crystallography and advancing the science, promoting international publication of crystallographic research, facilitating standardization of methods, units, nomenclatures and symbols, and forming a focus for the relations of crystallography to other sciences.  Graciela and her husband Miguel are both Professors of Crystallography at the Universidad de los Andes and have maintained highly active research programs there since 1989.  Graciela and Miguel’s son, Daniel, is currently a Ph.D. student in the Brandeis University Music Department.

Brandeis alum wins 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Drew Weissman ’81, GSAS MA’81, P’15, H’23 has won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.  While at Brandies, Weissman studied  biochemistry  and enzymology. Weissman and fellow collaborator and Nobel recipient, Katalin Karikó , H’23, received the Nobel for their research into messenger RNA. Their research led to the development of the COVID vaccinations.

In February 2021, Weissman and Karikó received the  50th Annual Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award in Basic Medical Research  in February 2021.

Biocatalysis enables access to anticancer peroxides

The Ting research group in the Department of Chemistry report the chemoenzymatic synthesis of the natural product 13-oxoverruculogen, an anticancer peroxide. Organic peroxides have a rich history in medicine as compounds such as artemisinin have saved millions of lives across the globe as a revolutionary antimalarial agent. Structurally related to that of artemisinin, verruculogens are peroxide natural products that contain a highly unusual eight-membered endoperoxide. Methods to prepare medium-sized endoperoxides are limited preventing the discovery of new medicinal peroxide analogs. The Ting group applies biocatalysis utilizing the enzyme, FtmOx1, to form the eight-membered endoperoxide ring of 13-oxoverruculogen in the penultimate step of their synthesis obviating the need for multistep modification of a sensitive peroxide. Moreover, the enzymatic reaction utilized a substrate analog that is different than the natural substrate in verruculogen biosynthesis. This work will allow for the preparation of unnatural endoperoxide analogs as potential compounds for the treatment of human diseases.

The Ting research group is comprised of a highly interdisciplinary team of chemistry and biochemistry students.

Authors on this project include Dr. Jun Yang (CHEM), Brandon Singh (BCBP), Gabriel Cohen (CHEM), and Prof. Chi Pan Ting (CHEM). Yang, J. † ; Singh, B. † ; Cohen, G.; Ting, C. P. “Chemoenzymatic Synthesis of 13-Oxoverruculogen” J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2023, 145, 35, 19189–19194. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.3c07078

Math Hires 1st Berger-Leighton Professor of Mathematics

This new tenure-track faculty position is the result of the generous gift by Bonnie Berger  ’83, a former Brandeis trustee and the  Simons Professor of Mathematics at MIT , and her husband, Dr. Tom Leighton , Professor of Applied Mathematics at MIT and CEO and cofounder of Akamai Technologies. Brandeis Mathematics Chair Olivier Bernardi had this to say about the hire: “Dr. Álvarez-Gavela is a superb scholar, and an individual who embodies all the qualities that Brandeis ought to represent. Dr. Álvarez-Gavela is already collaborating with Brandeis Professor Kiyoshi Igusa on an ambitious research project aimed at importing sophisticated algebraic results (first developed by Prof. Igusa and his collaborators), to bear fruition in the context of symplectic geometry. The Math Department was unanimously enthusiastic about Dr. Álvarez-Gavela and excited to see him come and develop at Brandeis, and contribute to the renewal of the Department.”

Piasta Receives the Louis Dembitz Brandeis Prize for Excellence in Teaching

Liz Hedstrom , Professor of Biology and Chemistry and Biology Department Chair, said “Kene is a remarkable educator and an exceptionally worthy recipient of the LDB Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Kene has a gift for making dry subjects like statistics engaging without losing rigor and he somehow manages to create personal interactions in the largest introductory courses.  We are very lucky to have him at Brandeis.”

Piasta received his PhD in Biochemistry from Brandeis University in 2011.

Congratulations, Kene!

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Linguistics and Computational Linguistics

The Undergraduate Program in Linguistics involves coursework from the core subfields of linguistics, supplemented with additional linguistics electives or courses from related disciplines. A full list of the computational linguistics courses offered this year can be found on the Computational Linguistics Master's Program course page . 

For information on all undergraduate linguistics courses, including the full description and frequency of offering for each course, as well as elective courses in related disciplines that are cross-listed in Linguistics, please see the Brandeis University Bulletin Linguistics section, under "Courses of Instruction."

Please visit the University Registrar's Schedule of Classes for information on course meeting times and locations for the current semester.

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