DR. WHEELER AMONG MEDICAL COLLEGE INAUGURAL 100 FACULTY

Dr. Wheeler, of the Department of Animal Sciences, is among the 100 prominent researchers, administrators, and medical professionals named to the faculty of the new Carle Illinois College of Medicine, the world’s first engineering-based college of medicine.

The medical college is a partnership between the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Carle Health System, based in Urbana. The college will welcome its first class of 32 students in 2018.

View the full list of inaugural faculty at the medical college: go.illinois.edu/First100MedFaculty.

Holstein X Gyr F1 Hefiers

Friday, June 15th, 2018 marked the next step in producing more milk for people in developing tropical countries. Fifty-four Holstein X Gyr F1 heifers arrived at Chessie Creek Farm in South Carolina. The animals are part of the Chessie Creek Farm-University of Illinois Project for the Genetic Improvement of Livestock led by Dr. Matt Wheeler and his colleagues. These animals will provide the genetics for the next generation of embryo donors for this project. Early in the fall some of these animals will calve and the dams will provide the first production data that will ultimately enable the selection of superior genetics to disperse to developing countries. The partnership with Chessie Creek Farm has enabled the fast pace of progress toward the goal of disseminating tropical-adapted dairy genetics worldwide. The University of Illinois wishes to thank the owner and all the staff of Chessie Creek Farm for their support and diligent work on this project.

Matthew B. Wheeler

GLIM Imaging for Thick Embryos

Gradient Light Interference Microscopy (GLIM) was judged one of the ten best microscopy innovations in the 2018 Microscopy Today Innovation Award competition. Dr. Marcello Rubessa and Dr. Matthew B. Wheeler and their Beckmann Institute collaborators, Dr. Gabriel Popescu, Dr. Tan Nguyen and Ph.D. student Mikhail Kandel will receive this prestigious award at the Microscopy & Microanalysis 2018 meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, on August 5, 2018.

GLIM extracts extract three-dimensional information from both thin and thick unlabeled specimens. GLIM can potentially become a valuable tool for in vitro fertilization, where contrast agents and fluorophores may impact the viability of the embryo. Since GLIM is implemented as an add-on module to an existing inverted microscope, we anticipate that it will be adopted rapidly by the biological community.

Matthew B. Wheeler