At the biology department’s May 2 Undergraduate Research Celebration, Inna Grishkan ’08 (right) won the Grant W. Balkema Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher for her laboratory investigation of basic mechanisms for transmitting epigenetic information—information that controls gene expression. Selected by a panel of seven faculty members, Grishkan’s project, entitled “Nucleosome Assembly in Human Cell Lines Expressing Inducible FLAG-Tagged Histones,” was among the four oral and 25 poster presentations that took place at Higgins Hall, highlighting the research of some 37 undergraduate biology majors. “She’s been an intellectual colleague and has made a significant contribution to the work in our laboratory,” said biology professor Anthony Annunziato of Grishkan, who immigrated to the U.S. from Russia at age 15 and will enter a combined Ph.D. and MD program at Johns Hopkins University next year. Above, Grishkan holds her award and talks with Annunziato and Marilee Ogren, part-time faculty member in the biology and psychology departments and widow of Grant Balkema, a Boston College biology professor who died in 2004 at age 53 and was, according to Annunziato, “passionate about having undergraduates work in the lab.”