News
Graduate student Jennifer Jenkins competed in the finals of the 3 Minute Thesis competition at Cine this week. It was a tough competition, with lots of excellent UGA graduate students sharing their thesis work. She did a great job sharing her work and explaining our research objectives to her audience! Excellent work!
Jennifer telling her audience all about planarians in just a few minutes!
The undergraduate students in the lab are preparing their talks and posters for the upcoming Undergraduate Research Symposium, hosted by the Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities (CURO). Our students will be presenting April 8-9 at the Classic Center in Athens, GA. Hope to see you there!
Princess Dikko - Monday 4/8, 4:30-6:30 PM Poster #366
Alicia May - Tuesday 4/9, 9:30-10:45 AM Room I
Yamini Chavan & Lauren Thompson - Tuesday 4/9, 11 AM-12:15 PM Room D
Jada Summerville - Tuesday 4/9, 2-3:15 PM Room H
UGA has a tradition in which students (or faculty) can ring the chapel bell on the occasion of a personal or team victory. We ring the bell when our athletic teams win big games and students—I’m told—ring the bell when they graduate… or pass organic chemistry. Since we received good news about funding from the Sloan Foundation last week, we hopped up to North Campus on Monday to go ring the bell. I’m looking forward to making this trip to celebrate lab achievements in the coming years. You can learn more about UGA traditions here.
Alicia May presented her undergraduate research on identification of new glial markers at the recent Emerging Researchers National Conference in Washington, D.C. Alicia has been supported by Peach State LSAMP (Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Partipation). Congrats, Alicia!
Now that we are getting our feet firmly underneath us research-wise, we have started to build an outreach/service program for the lab. We were recently helped in this endeavor by UGA’s chapter of SciREN (Scientific Research and Education Network). We put together lesson plans for 5th and 7th graders and then networked with teachers in the Athens area to share our resources and build connections for future outreach efforts. Our 5th grade lesson plan focuses on worm classification. Our 7th grade lesson plan focuses on biological hierarchies (cell/tissue/organ/organ system) and is fully focused on planarians.
I also did my first preschool outreach event. (Side note: I was exhausted after only half an hour!) We talked about living vs. non-living things and I brought several living things (planarians, centipede, plants — all “gross”) to the classroom.
We also frequently volunteer (individually) for local/regional Science Olympiad and Science Fair competitions. I just judged the CCSD middle school science fair for the 2nd year in a row. It was awesome.
Both events were fun and we are very excited to build more outreach activities to share our research, learn from our community, and hopefully contribute to STEM education efforts in our community, too! Teachers in the greater Athens-Clarke County area who would like to bring planarians into the classroom are always welcome to contact Rachel for more information.
