UMD News Releases

Featured Speaker is
Well-Known Hibernation Researcher
Professor Matthew Andrews

UMD graduate student commencement ceremonies are set for Thursday, May 15 at 7 p.m. in the UMD Romano Gym. Advanced degrees will be awarded to 185 students at the event. Total number of graduate degrees awarded this year is 257.

UMD Professor Matthew Andrews will deliver the featured commencement address.

Dr. Andrews is a Professor and Head of the Department of Biology at the University of Minnesota Duluth, and is the Founding Director of Graduate Studies of the Integrated Biosciences graduate program.

In 2000 Dr. Andrews began his faculty position at UMD, which included a joint appointment in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine Duluth. His research on genes that control hibernation in mammals has resulted in funding from the U.S. Army Research Office (ARO), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). His work has prompted the Department of Defense to request his help organizing conferences and workshops on hibernation as it applies to human stasis including a DARPA workshop in 2000 on "Engineering Hypometabolic States in Humans: Applications of Lessons Derived from Natural Hibernation".

Professor Andrews has been active in the field of hibernation since 1995 and has used his background in molecular biology and protein-DNA interactions to identify genes that regulate mammalian hibernation. Since 2005 he has been involved in translational biomedical research applying the molecular biology of hibernation to the development of novel resuscitation fluids and a patented therapy for hemorrhagic shock.

He received his B.S. in Zoology from the University of Michigan in 1979, M.S. in Biology from Central Michigan University in 1981, and Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the Wayne State University School of Medicine in 1984. From 1984 to 1987 Dr. Andrews was a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Donald D. Brown in the Department of Embryology at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. His service as a faculty member began as an Assistant and later Associate Professor of Genetics at North Carolina State University where he served from 1987 until coming to UMD in 2000.