We were lucky to have our recent Ph.D. graduate, Tulip Chandra, stay with us for a few weeks to finish up a screen she was conducting before she left for a postdoctoral fellowship in the Uribe Lab at Rice University. We celebrated her during her last week in the lab with a lunch and photo shoot at UGA landmarks like the Arch and the Chapel Bell. We already miss Tulip loads but can’t wait to see what she does next!
Conference on the First Year Experience
Dawn Hart and I have been collaborating on a Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience for first-year students at Grand Valley State University for a few years now. Students characterize planarian genes that we are interested in within the context of regeneration. We attended the Conference on the First Year Experience to present our collaborative approach to designing this CURE, which was also funded by our NSF CAREER award. Dawn and I have been colleagues since I was a graduate student and she was a post-doctoral fellow in the Gould Lab at Vanderbilt University. We love working together and are grateful for continued collaboration and fun!
Happy Graduation Day, Tulip!
It was so fun to get to “hood” Tulip today at her official Ph.D. graduation. We are so proud of you, Dr. Tulip! Tulip has done incredible work during graduate school and we can’t wait to see where her bright future takes her!
Rachel and Tulip in their regalia!
We were a little excited about the streamer cannons.
Congratulations to Taylor!
Congratulations to grad student Taylor Medlock-Lanier for being accepted into the 2024 cohort of the Future Faculty Fellows program (F3P) at UGA. Taylor was selected for this competitive program on the basis of her outstanding teaching and mentoring abilities, displayed often in the lab and also through Taylor’s role as a teaching assistant in the Anatomy & Physiology course in the CBIO department. F3P will help Taylor’s professional development toward a teaching-focused academic career path and she will have an opportunity to learn, develop skills, and create new teaching products with colleagues across the university. This program is hosted by University of Georgia’s Center for Teaching and Learning, which is a great resource for grad students and faculty alike. Congrats, Taylor! We are proud of you and can’t wait to see what you learn in this program!
Fun news from Fall 2023
Our students are in the Finals period, wrapping another successful semester. I thought I’d share some fun things we have been up to this fall:
Several lab members went to a UGA volleyball match.
Lab folks have been lobbying for a lab pet.
My Queen of the Night plant bloomed; this is historically a good luck charm because the last time it bloomed I got my job at UGA.
I made a fun visit as a student-invited speaker at U Colorado Anschutz Medical School.
I celebrated my first Lilly Fellows family dinner as a Lilly alum (pictured with Anny Chung from Plant Bio, a current Lilly Fellow).
Our technician, Chris, has started a cottage industry of taking lab waste and converting it into jewelry.
We have some rad new data stickers for progress on our projects.
I got a sparkly Christmas tree for my office.
