Congratulations to Ryan Weesner, Mason Clark, Elena Duran, Paola Facinetto-Zago, Maria Hurtado, Hanna Justen, Ali Zeltzin Lira Olguin, Jorge Medina-Duran, Griffin Nicholson, Alanna Noland, Breann Richey, Jordan Salomon, Nicole Scavo, Kyle Simpson, Brooke Torjman, Natalie Aguirre.
Check out the Feb newsletter to learn more about their individual projects.
We are excited to welcome a diverse and highly accomplished incoming cohort of twelve first-year PhD students this semester!
Welcome!
Keith Andringa, Audelia Mechti, Vivian Peralta Santana, Nicole Stevens, Brooke Torjman, Chris Brennan, Matthew Marano, Ali Lira Olguin, Angela Haggard, Benton Fry, Andie Miller, Maria Alejandra Hurtado
Find out more about them in the September 2021 NewsfEEB.
Natalie Aguirre (Helms lab) graduated with a B.S. in biology from Pepperdine University. During this time, she completed an honor’s thesis conducting research on the interaction of drought stress and pathogen infection in a chaparral shrub species, Malosma laurina. She then spent a year as a Fulbright scholar at the Universidad Politecnica in Madrid, Spain, where she studied effect of water stress on Dutch Elm Disease. Most recently, Natalie worked for the Everglades Foundation in Miami, Florida, creating educational programs and materials about the Florida everglades.
EEB student Owen Dorsey graduated from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 2014 with a BS in Biology. After graduation, he took a couple of years off, working as a laboratory technologist at the American Red Cross, before starting his MS work at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina. For his research, he investigated inbreeding avoidance and mate choice behavior in the invasive western mosquitofish (a close relative of swordtails!) using a combination of behavioral assays and genetic analyses.
Owen joined the Rosenthal lab in 2019 and is broadly interested in studying the fitness consequences of inbreeding and the evolution of pre- and post- copulatory mechanisms to avoid inbreeding. Owen plans to investigate the “cost-benefit” to inbreeding in swordtails.
Please join EEB affiliate student David Saenz for his dissertation defense on Tuesday, 6/8 at 11 am. See the announcement with zoom details.
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