I heard great news this week - our NSF CAREER Award has been funded! This will support the lab’s work on signaling in planarian regeneration over the next 5 years. It will also support many other cool educational and outreach efforts that we’re excited about. We’re eager to carry out these exciting research projects!
Summer updates
The lab has done a great job of making the best of our forced absence from lab due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Graduate student Jennifer has been working on a manuscript and presented her work virtually at the Society for Developmental Biology meeting. Graduate student Tulip has been working on preparations for her qualifying exam – writing a proposal and studying up on lots of interesting topics. Technician Britessia has been keeping the ship afloat! RRG presented the lab’s work at the Southeast Regional Society for Developmental Biology meeting, worked on a Perspective article for Science, and wrote a methods chapter. From March to June, we were only permitted to do essential work (e.g. keeping our planarians alive), but since June we have started to ramp back up and are now working at ~50% capacity. We are doing our best to prioritize experiments for a few projects that are close to completion. Everyone has done an excellent job in planning and being flexible. We are also making plans for rotation students this fall. Because of the extra challenges of social distancing, we are making training videos to supplement in-person training. We also have a fun idea for working on a review article as a group this fall. So stay tuned!
Congratulations UGA class of 2020!
Sending a big congratulations to our graduating lab alumni: Yamini Chavan, Princess Dikko, Alicia May, Lauren Thompson, and Jada Summerville. Each of these bright and wonderful women spent multiple semesters in the lab as an undergraduate researcher. And each is graduating from the University of Georgia today. I could not be any more proud. Yamini, thank you for bringing a constant dependability and organizational spirit to our group; I never had to worry about any undergrad deadlines when you were in the lab! Princess, thank you for your generous spirit and positive attitude. From the first day you walked into my office, you were always were a beacon of light in our lab and in my life. Alicia, thank you for your commitment and your ability to bring out the best in others. I always admired your focus and clear sense of purpose. Lauren, you possess a golden pair of hands (you can get almost anything to work!) and an unstoppable work ethic - a rare and wonderful combination. And Jada, you have blossomed into such a brilliant scholar and scientist. Your unshakeable determination, steady calm, and many talents will be huge assets in your future and to your lucky graduate advisor. (I’ll also miss your great book recommendations!)
Being your mentor and teacher has been a wonderful gift to me and it was a joy to watch you grow and develop as scientists. I’ll miss you lots, but I am so excited to watch you go out into the world and do big things. I wish I could celebrate this day with you, in person, as we had all planned. But know that I am with you in spirit, today and always. (I put a sign in my yard, too!)
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!