We were grateful to have Taylor Medlock and Justin McCurdy rotate with us in the first ILS rotation. They were eager and adaptable, which has been especially important for rotation students working in the lab during a pandemic! They tried some new techniques and even got some things to work! Hooray! We wish them the best in their future rotations. We’re also excited to welcome Kendall Clay and Anna Iouchmanov to the lab for the 2nd rotation! Lots of exciting science happening this fall!
Congratulations, Tulip!
Congratulations to Tulip for passing her qualifying exams and becoming a doctoral candidate! She conducted her exam by Zoom and was a champ despite having to do things in several pandemic-adjusted ways. We’re looking forward to celebrating her next week!
A new (academic) year...
We’re excited (and maybe a little trepidatious) about a new academic year here at the University of Georgia. I (RRG) am teaching Cell Biology again (CBIO3400), which will be online. Though online teaching is a little disappointing, the course plan is really exciting and I’m looking forward to meeting a new cohort of students. I’m also teaching a small first year seminar on undergraduate research opportunities, so that will be fun. We have two ILS students joining us for the first rotation, Taylor Medlock and Justin McCurdy. We’re excited to have some new folks in the lab and have done a lot over the past several weeks to make training them easier and more effective (e.g. making training videos, reorganizing the lab). It’s an experiment but hopefully we’ll be able to give them a great training experience despite the pandemic still very active in our state! We’re taking a little hiatus from having new undergraduate trainees in the lab, but look forward to having some new undergrads join us in coming semesters.
Great news - NSF CAREER award!
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!