Congratulations to Skylar Settles, who passed her qualifying exam and advanced to candidacy as a Genetics Ph.D. student! She was really wonderful at thinking on her feet and asking some tough committee questions that were very wide ranging. Skylar is tackling a newer project in the lab and has taken such extraordinary ownership, taking the research in new and exciting directions (and even bringing me papers that I haven’t seen before)! It has been so fun to watch her ideas develop during the Qual process! Woohoo, Skylar!
Congratulations Christina!
Congratulations to Christina Endara-Arnold, for passing her qualifying exams and advancing to Ph.D. candidate in Neuroscience! Christina did a great job answering questions and presenting her thesis plan to her committee! My favorite part was when she volunteered to describe mass spectrometry without her committee members even asking! My favorite Christina-ism in the exam was “I would love to tell you about that!” Yay for you!
Dr. Tulip Chandra leaving us for Rice University!
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.