Principal investigator:
Dave:
Dave started in Genetics at UGA in the summer of 2006, arriving from the University of Texas at Austin where he was a Senior Lecturer in Biological Sciences. As a teaching faculty, he taught a variety of courses, ranging from introductory biology to ornithology, to over 6000 students. He has very broad interests and is comfortable talking about experimental evolution in yeast, determinants of matrices, how to distinguish venomous and non-venomous snakes and setting the timing advance and point gap on older cars. His primary interests are in all things genetic, with a primary emphasis on genetics at the population level.
Holly: Holly joined the lab in theSpring of 2016 and is currently figuring out possible dissertation topics.
Undergraduate students:
Alexander: Alexander is a student at the University of Puerto Rico at Cayey who joined the lab for the summer as part of the SUNFIG undergraduate research experience program. He worked primarily on dosage compensation in yeast.
John: John has been with the lab since early 2015 and has worked on yeast and fireflies. He is currently learning bioinformatics by working with a large transcriptome data set.
Katie: Katie is currently pursuing a biochemical engineering degree and is working on a project involving the simulation of sub-telomere evolution in microbes.
Alumni:
Jake, postdoc:
Jake was in the lab from September 2008 to August 2009. He worked on two projects while he was a member of the lab. The first examined the effect of utilizing the middle class neighborhood design in mutaion-accumulation studies when social effects contribute to fitness. The second examined the antagonistic pleiotropy hypothesis for aging and how the evolution of senescence itself reduces the probability that such alleles would further contribute to aging. Jake brought an upbeat attitude, analytical mind, and broad interests into the lab. He was then a postdoc in the Alberts lab at Duke University. Now he has his own lab at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
Sarah, graduate student
: Sarah graduated from Amherst College in 2006 with a B.A. in Biology. At Amherst she studied th
e evolution of sexually dimorphic bills in Purple-throated Carib hummingbirds. She began graduate study at UGA in the fall of 2009 as an
Interdisciplinary Life Sciences student and joined the lab in the Spring of 2010. Sarah spent the intervening years exploring a variety of jobs including: Scientist-in-Residence, veterinary assistant, aquarist, ballroom dance teacher, actress, and samba percussionist. She is featured on the original cast recording of
Who is Natalie Spoo? as the voice of a cat. In April of 2010 she was awarded an NSF GRF. In the Spring of 2012 she was awarded an Innovative and Interdisciplinary Research Grant from the graduate school at UGA. In 2014-15 she was a NIH T32 trainee. Sarah worked on fireflies, examining the evolution of genome size across North American species and opsins within and among species. She graduated with her PhD in the Summer of 2015 and is currently a postdoctoral associate in the lab of
Daniel Barbash at Cornell University..
Megan, graduate student
: Megan received both her B.S. and M.S. degrees from Auburn University. At Auburn she studied antimicrobial resistance in prokaryotes. She started in the Genetics Department at UGA in the Fall of 2011 and joined the lab in the Spring of 2012. She honed her bioinformatic skills with projects involving model organisms and with next-generation data from fireflies. For her PhD, she worked on both fission and budding yeast and on intron evolution. She was an NIH T32 trainee from 2014-2016. She graduated with her PhD in the Spring of 2016 and is currently a postdoctoral associate in the labs of
Michael Lynch and
Jay Lennon at Indiana University.
Ian, lab technician: Ian joined the lab in the summer of 2012 after finishing his BA degree in Biology at UGA. As an undergraduate, he worked in Mike Strand’s lab on phenotypic plasticity of multi-embryonic parasitoid wasps. He is spent most of his lab time dissecting yeast mutation-accumulation lines. He is currently in dental school at VCU.
Audrey, lab technician:
After graduating from the University of Texas in May 2006, Audrey joined the lab in the summer of 2006 and left in
the summer of 2009. Audrey worked on essentially all of the yeast projects in the lab. She is currently working as a naturalist in Costa Rica. She plans to maybe go to graduate school for museum studies or library science. Maybe. She would like to either design exhibits for the American Museum of Natural History or raise like 10 kids on a farm with lots of goats and vegetables. Audrey’s likes include swimming (for fun not fitness), tv (when she can get it), bicycles, dance parties, chocolate, and the outdoors. Her dislikes include indoor plant pests, overly air-conditioned buildings, pickles, and talking politics. She is currently a graduate student in the
Ecology, Evolution and Behavior Graduate Program at the University of Texas.
Kora, lab technician:
Kora graduated from the University of Kansas in 2007, and joined the
lab in the spring of 2008 and left in the spring of 2009. Kora worked primarily on the molecular evolution project in fireflies. She is currently working as a lab technician at Emory University in Atlanta and she plans to go to graduate school or become a science teacher. Her primary interests include decorating her house, painting, SCUBA diving, marine invertebrates, volvox, pina coladas and getting caught in the rain.
Andrea: Andrea joined the lab in the Fall of 2011. She worked on a yeast project.
Jenna: Jen
na joined the lab in the Spring of 2012 and left for medical school at Washington University, St Louis, in the Fall of 2014. She worked on fireflies.
Katharine: Katharine joined the lab in the summer of 2014 and performed many yeast tetrad dissections. She then worked on a firefly project with Sarah before starting graduate school at Duke University in the Fall of 2014.
Charan, undergrad: Charan worked in the lab during the Spring and Summer of 2012. He worked on a yeast project.
Farres, undergrad:
Farres joined the lab in the Spring of 2010. He worked on models for the
evolution of chromosome architecture.
Farres began medical school at the Medical College of Georgia in the Fall of 2012. He is currently doing his residency at Wake Forest University medical school.
Allison, undergrad: Allison started in the lab at the end of her Freshman year, in the Summer of 2008. She worked on numerous yeast projects. She then attended Pharmacy School at the University of Georgia.
Ji-Sun, undergrad:
JiSun entered the lab in the Fall of 2009.
She worked with mutation accumulation lines examining the effect of spontaneous mutations on chronological aging. She recently started a premedical program at the University of
Michigan.
Laura, undergrad: Laura joined the lab in the Fall of 2011. She worked on a firefly project.
Seth, undergrad: Seth joined the lab in the Summer of 2011. He worked on a firefly project.
Andrew, undergrad: Andrew joined the lab in the Spring of 2011. He worked on a firefly project. He graduated in Fall 2011.
Amy, undergrad: Amy joined the lab in the Fall
of 2009 and stayed through the Spring of 2011. She is currently in Texas with her husband Ben who is an Army officer. She worked on a variety of yeast projects while she was in the lab.
Lauri, undergrad: Lauri joined the lab in the Fall of 2009 and stayed
through Summer 2010. He worked primarily on a firefly project. He is currently at the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta. He plans to attend medical school.
Sara, undergrad:
Sara started in the lab at the end of her Junior year, in the Summer of 2008 and continued until July of 2009. She worked primarily on the epistasis project. In the Fall of 2009 she began medical school at Mercer University in Macon, GA.
Kris, undergrad (no picture): Kris worked in the lab at the end of her Junior year, in the Summer of 2008. She worked on firefly communities throughout Georgia. She plans to go to graduate school in marine biology after she graduates.
Ben, undergrad: Ben worked in the lab from Spring 2007 through Spring 2008. Ben worked primarily on the molecular evolution project in fireflies. Ben began medical school at the Medical College of Georgia in the Fall of 2008.
Matt, undergrad: Matt worked in the lab from the summer of 2007 through the Spring of 2008. Matt did his honors thesis in our lab. His project examined epistasis in yeast. He presented his results at the
2008 meeting of the Society for the Study of Evolution in Minneapolis. He started medical school at Emory University in the Fall of 2008.
Jessica, undergrad
: Jessica worked in the lab in the Fall of 2007 and Spring of 2008. She helped with a variety of projects. Jessica's latest update is that she started graduate school in the Summer of 2010 at the University of Alabama in Birmingham.
Celine, undergrad: Celine was a Genetics major who joined the lab in Fall 2006. One of the “dissecting duo”, she stayed with the lab through the Spring of 2007. She is currently in graduate school in the bioinformatics program at UGA.
Stacey, undergrad: Stacey was a Genetics major who joined the lab in the fall of 2006. One of the “dissecting duo”. Stacey did an enormous number of dissections and also counted a massive number of sporulation cultures. Stacey remained with the lab through the summer of 2007 and then began pharmacy school at
UGA in the Fall of 2007.
Will, undergrad: Will worked in the lab during the summer of 2007. His primary project involved characterizing firefly communities in and around Athens.
