Spring 2020 wrap-up

I haven’t posted much this semester, mostly due to the big upheaval that the lab has experienced this semester. For the past two months or so, we have been out of lab (except for “essential” activities like a very minimal level of animal care) due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Lab members have done an amazing job of adapting to this difficult situation, with Tulip working on preparations for her qualifying exam, Jennifer writing a draft of her first manuscript, Britessia keeping the lab running and working on data analysis, and undergraduate students completing presentations for our CURO symposium and for a semester-end lab meeting by Zoom (pictured below). All lab members have shown extraordinary resilience and have done a lovely job supporting each other. We are all excited about getting back to our science, but first and foremost we are working hard to keep ourselves and each other safe and sane.

This is not a situation that I feel like I could have prepared for as a junior investigator, but I am so grateful for my lab members for their positive attitudes and openness as our little community faces this challenge together. I miss them a lot and look forward to being back to normal operations as soon as it’s safe to do so!

2019 - Year in Review

A Top 10 List of RRG Lab Highlights:

1) We were awarded 2 grants this year from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the McKnight Foundation. These grants will fund our work on nervous system regeneration in the coming years.

2) Graduate student Jennifer Jenkins passed her Qualifying Exam.

3) We welcomed several new lab members: graduate student Tulip Chandra and undergraduate students Rachel Grimes, Anusha Jain, Labo Oke, & Raag Patel.

4) Several undergraduate students finished their time in the lab, with many contributing valuable data and two - Jada Summerville and Yamini Chavan - writing undergraduate theses.

5) We enjoyed lots of exciting science events on campus, including Developmental Biology Alliance Fall Symposia and the Regenerative Bioscience Center Connections Series. We also had many wonderful guest speakers.

6) We participated in several excellent outreach activities. One highlight was our student-led STEMzone booth.

7) We tried some exciting new career development activities during group meeting: elevator pitches; storyboarding; mock peer review; & image processing.

8) We worked together to gather data on several exciting projects, with strong efforts toward getting multiple projects close to publication.

9) RRG taught Cell Biology and a First Year Odyssey class and loved getting to know her new classroom students.

10) We had fun and learned lots!

STEMzone and late fall update

We had a great November in the lab, with Sneha Kotagudda Murali Mohan rotating with us. She has done a great job so far!

We have also had undergrads hard at work with their presentations and mini-papers. It has been bittersweet to have our senior undergrads - Jada, Yamini, and Lauren - wrapping up their last semester in the lab. I will be sad to see them go!

Finally, one of our big efforts in November was the STEMzone booth. Lab members did a great job putting together an educational plan, activities, and fun visual aids. It was really fun for all of us and we hope that our visitors learned something new. We were happy to see that the “What did you learn?” board was full of comments about regeneration!

Congrats to Tulip

We recently celebrated graduate student Tulip Chandra’s submission of her NSF GRFP proposal. It is really hard work to put together your first grant proposal and Tulip was super thoughtful in the way she approached her writing, scholarship, and the nuts and bolts of finishing up her first grant submission. Great job, Tulip!

Preparations for 2019 STEMzone

Under the leadership of graduate student Jennifer Jenkins (and with help from many lab members), our group has been developing a booth for 2019 STEMzone, an annual event in which departments and labs share STEM outreach booths at a UGA football game. We’re looking forward to participating in this event on November 9, 2019. R-G lab students developed a promotional video for our booth (see here). We also took some photos of my hilarious students setting up their shots.