Curriculum Vitae: Andre R. O. Cavalcanti

Andre Ricardo de Oliveira Cavalcanti

Assistant Professor - Biology Department - Pomona College

acavalca@princeton.edu

Princeton University , Princeton,USA – Dept. of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, 2002–2004.
Post Doctoral Fellow – Prof. Laura Landweber’s Laboratory – Gene rearrangements in ciliates, and annotation of the Oxytricha trifallax genome

University of Chicago , Chicago, USA – Dept. of Ecology and Evolution, 2000–2001.
Visiting Student – Prof. Wen-Hsiung Li’s Laboratory – Patterns of gene duplications in eukaryotes, and duplications affect genome evolution

Universidade Federal de Pernambuco , Recife, Brazil – Dept. of Fundamental Chemistry , 1996–2002.
Ph.D. in Chemistry – Advisor: Prof. Ricardo Ferreira – Dissertation: “On the Evolution of Aminoacyl-tRNA Synthetases and Patterns of Gene Duplication in Eukaryotes”
M.A. in Chemistry – Advisor: Prof. Ricardo Ferreira – Thesis: “On the Origin and Evolution of the Aminoacyl-tRNA Synthetases”

Universidade Federal de Pernambuco , Recife, Brazil – Dept. of Chemical Engineering , 1991–1996.
B.A. in Chemical Engineering – Advisor: Prof. Alexandra Amorim Salgueiro – Senior thesis: "Study of cellulolytic enzymes production by Penicillum citrinum in rice straw in different granulometries" (Laboratory of Environmental Microbiology)

Escola Tecnica Federal de Pernambuco , Recife, Brazil, 1991 – 1993.
Associate Degree in Electronics – Telecommunications

Universidade Federal de Pernambuco – Dept. of Fundamental Chemistry , 1994–1996.
Undergraduate research – Theoretical Chemistry Group – Origin and evolution of the genetic code

Universidade Federal de Pernambuco – Dept. of Chemical Engineering, 1996.
Undergraduate research – Laboratory of Process Control and Simulation – Computer simulation of chaotic biological growth processes using neural networks

Altronic (industrial controllers company) – Dept. of Engineering Research & Development, 1995.
Student Intern – Implementation of total quality program, cataloguing and redesign of products

Universidade Federal de Pernambuco – Dept. of Chemical Engineering, 1993.
Undergraduate research – Laboratory of Industrial Chromatography – Development of an adsorption measuring instrument used for specific surface area and pore distribution measurement

Universidade Federal de Pernambuco – Dept. of Chemical Engineering, 1991.
Undergraduate research – Laboratory of Industrial Microbiology – Biological monitoring of water

• Origin of Life, Origin of the Genetic Code and Translation Apparatus
• Evolution of Eukaryotic Genomes by Gene Duplications
• Evolution of Trans-splicing
• Evolution of Ciliate Genome Organization and Scrambled Genes

Pomona College - Department of Biology, 2005-Present.
Assitant Professor - Courses taught:

• BIOL173 - Genomics and Bioinformatics with Laboratory - Fall 2005, 2006, 2007
• BIOl040 - Introductory Genetics with Laboratory - Spring 2006, 2007
• BIOL189 - Computer Programming for Biologists - Fall 2006
• ID1 - Freshman Seminar: Why We Get Sick: The Evolution of Health and Disease - Fall 2007

Universidade Federal de Pernambuco - Department of Fundamental Chemistry, 1999-2000.
Adjunct Professor - Lectured and administered all course grades in the following laboratory courses:

• Introduction to Experimental Chemistry (60 hours)
• Experimental General Chemistry (30 hours)
• Experimental Inorganic Chemistry (30 hours)
• Experimental Physical-Chemistry (30 hours)

• Bioinformatics
• Molecular Evolution
• Perl Programming for Biologists
• Evolutionary Medicine

• Peter Elingboe - Pomona College - Department of Mathematics. Spring 2006.
  Thesis Title: A Study of the Biological Consequences of the “Chaos Game Representation” of DNA Sequences.


• Shiri Azenkot – Pomona College – Department of Computer Science. Fall 2005.
  Thesis Title: Multiple Sequence Alignment by Genetic Algorithm. (Co-advised with Prof. Jim Marshall – Pomona College).


• Stephen Ou – Pomona College – Program in Molecular Biology. Spring 2006.
  Thesis Title: Toxicology Study: Determining the Effects of BHT and BHA in Saccharomyces cerevisiae via Microarrays. (Co-advised with Profs. Tina Negritto and Cynthia Selassie - Pomona College).


• Michelle Kaye - Pomona College - Program in Molecular Biology. Spring 2007.
  Thesis Title: Investigating Nested Genes in the Caenorhabditis elegans Genome.


• Alejandra McCord - Pomona College - Program in Neuroscience. Spring 2007.
  Thesis Title: Candidate Genes for Axon Guidance in the Drosophila melanogaster ventral nerve cord. (Co-advised with Prof. Karl Johnson - Pomona College).
  


• Karen Ring - Pomona College - Program in Molecular Biology. Spring 2007.
  Thesis Title: Investigating the Evolution of Stop Codon Resssignment in the Ciliates Tetrahymena thermophila and Paramecium tetraurelia.
  


• David Dorsey - Pomona Collge - Program in Molecular Biology. Spring 2007.
  Thesis Title: Toxicity Study of Phenolic Antioxidants in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. (Co-advised with Profs. Tina Negritto and Cynthia Selassie - Pomona College).


• Matthew Goldman – Pomona College – Program in Molecular Biology. Spring 2008.
  Thesis Title: DNA Damage, Apoptosis, and Toxicogenomics in the Study of Butylated Hydroxyanisole and Butylated Hydroxytoluene in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. (Co-advised with Profs. Tina Negritto and Cynthia Selassie - Pomona College).

• Merck/AAAS Undergraduate Science Research Program, “Merck at Pomona: Understanding Ligand-Biomacromolecule Interactions at the Biophysical and Molecular Levels”, 2007-2009. $60,000 (one of eight participants)
  
• CAPES (Brazilian government agency) international fellowship to visit Dr. Wen-Hsiung Li Laboratory in the University of Chicago, 2000-2001.
  
• CNPq (Brazilian government agency) doctorate fellowship, 1998-2002.
  
• CNPq (Brazilian government agency) master fellowship, 1996-1998.
  
• CNPq (Brazilian government agency) undergraduate research fellowships, 1994-1996.
  
• Prize Prof. Luiz Freire for Young Scientists for best undergraduate presentation in the sciences area in the III Conic (undergraduate research congress of the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco), 1995.
  

• Cavalcanti ARO “Evolution of alternative genetic codes in ciliates” Seminar Presented at the Keck Graduate Institute’s Biology on the edge seminar series, April 2008.
• Cavalcanti ARO, Stover NA, Landweber LF “On the paucity of duplicated genes in Caenorhabditis elegans operons” Poster presented at the Annual Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution (SMBE) Meeting, Halifax, Canada, 2007.
• Cavalcanti ARO “Evolution of the Genetic Code and Translation Apparatus” Seminar presented at the HHMI Summer Seminar Series at Pomona College, Claremont, CA, USA, 2007.
• Cavalcanti ARO “Ciliate codon reassignment and problems of alignment methods with scrambled genes” Seminar presented in the Melon 8 Simple Eukaryotes Workshop at Pomona College, Claremont, CA, USA, 2005.
• Cavalcanti ARO “How operons affect genome evolution in Caenorhabditis elegans” Invited seminar presented at Haverford College, Haverford, PA, 2005.
• Cavalcanti ARO, Landweber LF “Life without non-coding DNA: Analysis of a pilot genome project of Oxytricha trifallax's somatic nucleus”. Poster presented at Genomes and Evolution 2004 (SMBE meeting), State College, PA, USA, 2004.
• Cavalcanti ARO “Observations about the Oxytricha pilot genome” Invited seminar presented at the Genome Sequencing Center - Washington University in St. Louis, Saint Louis, MO, 2004.
• Cavalcanti ARO, Doak T, Landweber LF “Subtelomeric regions of "nanochromosomes" in the spirotrichous ciliate Oxytricha trifallax”. Poster presented at the FASEB Summer Research Conference on Ciliate Biology, Saxtons River, VT, USA, 2003.
• Cavalcanti ARO, Landweber LF “Life without non-coding DNA: Analysis of a pilot genome project of Oxytricha trifallax's somatic nucleus”. Poster presented at the IX Congress of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology, Leeds, England, 2003.
• Cavalcanti ARO, Landweber LF “Understanding Scrambled Genes in Ciliates - Reverse Engineering a Biological Computer” Poster presented at the 10th International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology, Edmonton, Canada, 2002.
• Cavalcanti ARO, Leite ES, Neto BB, Ferreira RC. “On the classes of aminoacyl-trna synthetases and the amino acids”. Poster presented at the 10th ISSOL (Inter national Society for the Study of the Origins of Life) Meeting and 13th International Conference on the Origin of Life, Oaxaca, Mexico, 2002.
• Cavalcanti ARO, Li WH “Block Duplications in Yeast and Worm.” Seminar presented at the 2001 Annual Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution (SMBE) Meeting, Athens, USA, 2001.
• Cavalcanti ARO, Ferreira RF “Vestiges of Early Molecular Processes Leading to the Emergence of the Genetic Code.” Seminar presented at the XVII Annual Meeting on Micromolecular Evolution, Systematics and Ecology, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1997.
• Cavalcanti ARO, Souza Jr MB “Biological Processes Modeled by Neural Networks.” Poster and paper presented at the the XI SINAFERM (Nacional Symposia on Fermentation), Sao Carlos, Brazil, 1996.
• Cavalcanti ARO, Ferreira RF “Sobre a Distribuição Estatística de Resíduos de Amino Ácidos em Peptídeos Sintetizados Aleatoriamente” (On the Statistical Distribution of Amino Acid Residues in Randomly Synthesized Peptides) Poster presented at the III CONIC (Undergraduate Research Congress), Recife, Brazil, 1995.
• Cavalcanti ARO, Ferreira RF “Sobre a Distribuição Estatística de Resíduos de Amino Ácidos em Peptídeos Sintetizados Aleatoriamente” (On the Statistical Distribution of Amino Acid Residues in Randomly Synthesized Peptides) Seminar presented at the Brazilian Academy of Sciences Meeting, Recife, Brazil, 1994.
  

TALKS:

Zachary Brown (07), Karnovsky N, Cavalcanti ARO, Welcker J, Harding A “A Multi-Colony Comparison of the Diving Behavior of Little Auks (Alle alle)” at the 35th annual meeting of the Pacific Seabird Group, February 29, 2008.

POSTERS:

Salim HMW (’10), Cavalcanti ARO “Patterns of codon usage in two ciliates that reassign the genetic code: Tetrahymena thermophila and Paramecium tetraurelia.” at Southern California Conference For Undergraduate Research (SCCUR), November 17, 2007.

Adachi M (’10), Cavalcanti ARO “Tandem stop codons in ciliates that reassign stop codons.” at Southern California Conference For Undergraduate Research (SCCUR), November 17, 2007.