UGA Graduation 2023 - Hooray!

We are joyfully celebrating our lab graduates this week. We first celebrated our grads — Dr. Jennifer Jenkins (Ph.D. Cellular Biology), James Gaither (B.S. Biology) and Andres Villalobos (B.S. Engineering) with a lab lunch at the National on Wednesday. Yesterday, we celebrated Jen’s graduation with a toasty but exciting celebration in Sanford Stadium. I got to hood her and she got to walk across the stage to officially have her degree conferred. This morning was the Engineering Convocation, where Andres was selected to be the student speaker. He did a wonderful job and represented himself and the College well. Later today, I’ll head to the Cellular Biology Ceremony. Then tonight is the full UGA undergraduate ceremony where both Andres and James will officially receive their degrees. We are so proud of our grads and grateful to have shared time and science with them in the lab.

Lab Lunch!
Left (front to back): Tulip, Christina, Rachel, Jen, Taylor, Kendall
Right (front to back): Macey, Chris, James, Andres, and Skylar

Our happy doctoral graduate!

It was so fun to get to wear our regalia and to hood our first Ph.D. student!

Andres was selected as the Convocation Speaker for the College of Engineering.

Here he is delivering his talk!

Other good news for the semester

We have lots going on, but I wanted to highlight that Skylar Settles received a T32 Training Grant (Genetics) and Taylor Medlock-Lanier was just accepted to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Advanced Techniques in Molecular Neuroscience Course! Hooray for you both!

Congratulations, Andres!

Andres has been on a roll lately! He received a graduate research fellowship from NSF, a UGA College of Engineering Research Merit Award, and a Presidential Award of Excellence. Here he is smiling at the Presidential Honors Luncheon being honored for his undergraduate successes. In other exciting news, he also just committed to Northwestern University for his Ph.D. He will enter the Driskill Graduate Program in Life Sciences at the Feinberg School of Medicine. Yay for you, Andres!

CURO 2023

I usually don’t miss our Undergraduate Research symposium (CURO) but had to miss it this year. Andres presented his work on neural control of stem cell behaviors and James presented his work on satiety in planarians. Grad students did a great job of supporting our trainees in my absence (thanks, y’all!). They reported back that Andres and James did a fantastic job!

Congratulations - Dr. Jennifer Jenkins!

Congratulations to lab member Jennifer on successful completion of her Ph.D. defense! She did a wonderful job, crafting a wonderful thesis and presenting her work in a beautiful seminar. She also worked hard to complete her projects and graduate on time, despite the challenges and delays of conducting graduate research through the pandemic. Also, she was the first student that joined the lab and she has been instrumental in both scientific and community lab missions!