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It's almost summer! We had a month full of events, so let's begin.

A big thank you to the Stormo Symposium Planning Committee and everyone who attended the event! It was a massive success with 11 renowned speakers and around 300 registered attendees. Announced at the Stormo Symposium was the Gary D. Stormo Lectureship and the Stormo Fellowship. This fellowship will support recipients for two years, providing a $5,000 increase above the base student stipend. Check out the application instructions by clicking the button below!

MGI’s Mass Spectrometry Technology Access Center (MTAC) is offering hands-on training sessions this summer. Gain valuable insights and knowledge on the Thermo Fisher Orbitrap Exploris 240 and Vanquish Neo UHPLC instruments. Collaborate with fellow researchers, exchange ideas, and find solutions while utilizing the most advanced equipment in the field.  Apply here:  Mass Spec MTAC @ MGI WashU - Summer Workshop (wustl.edu)

Substance use disorders remain a big problem for society with very limited treatment options available. The Egervari lab studies how abused substances affect the brain, and particularly how they influence the epigenome and gene expression.

Congratulations to postdoctoral researchers Ibrahim Saliu, PhD and Bijesh George, PhD, in the Zhao lab for being selected as Travel Awardees for the PURPOSE Annual Meeting 2024! PURPOSE (Positively Uniting Researchers of Pain to Opine, Synergize and Engage) meeting is meant for every pain researcher in the United States. It offers unique insights, strategic networking, and collaborative discussion with a focus on elevating the careers of early and mid-career researchers and their mentors. 

Congratulations to Yujie Chen (Ivy) and Xuan Qu in the Wang lab for successfully defending their PhD thesis!

Congratulations to Dr. Guoyan Zhao for her pilot grant being funded by the Emory National Primate Research Center Pilot Research Program 2024! This project is in collaboration with Dr. Adriana Galvan at Emory University. This project will use the state-of-the-art single-cell transcriptomic techniques to profile the molecular and cellular landscape in the substantia nigra pars compacta in old and young monkeys (rhesus macaques). This project addresses our gap in understanding how gene expression changes with age in various cell types (e.g. neurons, microglia, astrocytes) in a brain region that is most vulnerable in Parkinson Disease. The Zhao lab will perform single-cell transcriptome comparison between human, monkey, and mice.

The Jin lab welcomes 3 PhD students! From left, Emma Casey (Molecular Genetics and Genomics), Purva Patel (Computational & Systems Biology) and Zefan (Vivien) Li (Molecular Cell Biology). Congrats! 

The Dougherty lab just celebrated many accomplishments with a float trip at Meramec State Park in Sullivan, MO on May 30th! Recent news from the lab include:

- Llaelyn Sierra-Cortez joining as a graduate student, Cory Palmer joining as a Research Tech. II, and Tony Fischer accepted position with lab as a Staff Scientist (previously PostDoc). 

- Undergraduate researchers graduating: Yvette Sol (with honors), Jackson Pan, Shirley Lopez De Leon

- PhD graduate Allen Yen accepted a position in California. 

- New paper "Relationship between sex biases in gene expression and sex biases in autism and Alzheimer’s disease" has been accepted for publication in Biology of Sex Differences.

The Meers lab welcomes two new graduate students Zack Skovgaard (DRCB) and Cassidy Pitts (MGG)! 

The lab's technician Brittany Johnson is going to graduate school as a PhD student in IBiS (the Interdisciplinary Biological Sciences PhD program at Northwestern) this fall. Congrats!

Introducing "This Genomic Life", a new blog started by Dr. Mike White, and sponsored by the McDonnell Genome Institute. The blog covers stories on functional genomics, new perspectives on technology, as well as what’s going on at the McDonnell Genome Institute and Washington University! If you are interested, check it out and subscribe here.