Jillian Ramos, a PhD student in Dragony Fu’s lab (part of the Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology program) won first place in the Three Minute Thesis competition. To win this competition, students have to explain their complicated research in a way that a general audience can find accessible. The catch, you have to do this all in under three minutes! Jillian presented her work called: Modify or Die: When Protein Translation Goes Awry and successfully captured first place prize as well as the people’s choice award.

Congrats Jillian! Read an article about the competition and a transcript of Jillian’s presentation here.

Check out this recent article in the D&C “To bee or not to bee: Wasp population booms”. The article cites resident expert Bob Minckley on ways to differentiate bees from wasps.

John Jaenike and Vince Martinson’s new paper in Ecology Letters was featured in the Rochester Newscenter this week. The research focuses on the communities of bacteria found in the guts of wild Drosophila. Check out the feature and read the paper!

The Genetics Society of America awarded Ching-Ho Chang with a travel award to present his work at the Population, Evolutionary & Quantitative Genetics (PEQG) meeting this summer in Orlando, Florida. The PEQG meeting is part of The Allied Genetics Conference (TAGC) – a giant conference combining meetings from 7 different genetics communities for the first time. Ching-Ho is a 2nd year grad student in the Larracuente lab. He will present his work on Y chromosome evolution in Drosophila. Congratulations, Ching-Ho!

Sometimes art and biology do mix! Our very own Bob Minckley collaborated with Arizona artist Heather Green on an exhibition featured in Hartnett Gallery. The exhibition- Pinpoints of Perception: 1000 Native Bees– illustrates the diversity of bees in the American Southwest. To learn more, check out this article and video describing the student-run gallery, and the scientific significance behind the art. The exhibit wont be up for much longer, so go check it out!

Dr. Daven Presgraves, an EEB Professor of Biology, was named the University Dean’s Professor in recognition of his achievements. Dr. Presgraves is a population geneticist studying speciation genetics, recombination and meiotic drive in Drosophila species. Read more about his lab’s work here.

A belated congratulations to Jeffrey Vedanayagam from the Garrigan Lab who successfully defended his dissertation about “Evolutionary genomics of piRNA mediated transposon silencing in Drosophila”. Jeffrey will be heading to Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to begin a post-doc in Eric Lai’s Lab.