News
September 2023– Liz, Malia, and Rodrigo join the lab. Welcome! We’re excited that you’re here!
May 2023 – Aziza, Emily, Julia, and Sydney graduate from UMass. Congratulations! We’ll miss all of you and are so proud of all of the exciting things you are each starting in the next phase of your careers.
February 2023– Congratulations to Wayne for successfully defending his PhD dissertation! We’ll miss you, but look forward to hearing about your postdoctoral work at Eli Lilly.
December 2022 – New paper alert! Check out our latest work here in which we collaborated with Dr. Alison O’Neil’s lab at Wesleyan University. We examined the effects of c-chlordane on motor neurons. Cis-Chlordane is a suspected contributor to sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). It’s the cover article! Congratulations to Madison, Gregory, and all of the other authors.
September 2022 – Wayne and Madison win the Neuroscience and Behavior Graduate Program Distinguished Student and Early Career Awards! Read about the awards here.
August 2022 – Gerry’s personal and profession story about rare diseases is featured on the Story Collider podcast. Listen to the story here.
February 2022 – New paper alert! Check out our latest work here in which we performed a combinatorial screen of GABAA receptor subunits. We got the cover! Congratulations to Wayne and all of the other authors!
January 2022 – Aryanna joins the lab as a post-bac student. Welcome aboard, Ary! We’re glad to have you join us!!
December 2021 – We’re thrilled to win a 2021 Million Dollar Bike Ride Pilot Grant Award from the Orphan Disease Center to support our work on TBCK Syndrome. Read more about the Million Dollar Bike Ride here.
September 2021 – Julia, Sydney, Colin and Vasudha join the lab. Welcome aboard! We’re excited to see what you will discover!
July 2021 – We’re happy to win the 2021 Armstrong Award, along with ChangHui Pak‘s lab, to study TBCK Syndrome in Human Neurons and Zebrafish. We’re super excited about this project, and grateful for this award. Read about the award here.
July 2021 – Gerry co-directs the SPINES course, for advance graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, at the Marine Biology Course in Woods Hole. Wayne participated as a student in the course. Congratulations on joining this great group of scholars!
July 2021 – Pre-Print alert! We posted a new pre-print on BioRxiv about our screen to identify GABAA receptor alpha subunits that control locomotor behavior. Congratulations to all the authors on reaching this step! Check out the pre-print here.
February 2021 – New publication in collaboration with the Timme-Laragy lab. It has been a pleasure for us to work on this project with them. This paper describes the effects of the environmental toxicant, PFOS, on zebrafish development. It was a National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences paper of the month! Check it out here.
May 2021 – It has been challenging time dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, but the folks in the lab have been amazing. We’re sad to see Hanna, Akanksha, Ben, and Sophia leave for the next phase of their careers. Hanna is off to join TickReport, a local business that tests ticks for Lyme Disease; Akanksha is enrolling in Medical School at UMass Chan/Med School; Ben is enrolling in the Molecular and Cellular Biology PhD program at UMass Chan/Med School; and Sophia works as an EMT while preparing for Physician Assistant school. You’ve all done a great job and we’re so proud of all of you!
May 2020 – After a tough semester with the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinemerem defends his undergraduate thesis and graduates. Great job! Good luck working as a clinical research technician at Mass General Hospital while applying to med schools!
December 2019 – Gabi defends her undergraduate thesis and graduates. Gabi, you’re a rockstar! Good luck working as a lab technician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital while applying to med schools.
November 2019 – Gregory and Wayne present their work at the Zebrafish Neural Circuits & Behavior conference at Cold Spring Harbor, NY. Great job! We look forward to each of them publishing some of their work soon!
September 2019 – A new academic year, and new students. We welcome Madison Riffe, a new Neuroscience and Behavior PhD student, and Ben Clayton, an undergraduate, to the lab. We’re glad you’re here and can’t wait to see what you discover!
May 2019 – Graduation season and it’s time to celebrate, although we’re sad to see undergraduates Sarah and Ana leave the lab. It’s been great to have such excellent students, and they both did an outstanding job completing their capstone projects. It’s also thrilling to hear the news about former students beginning the next phase of their careers. Abby Case is enrolling in Medical School at Quinnipiac University, Bahati N’kera is enrolling in the Neuroscience PhD program at Brown University, and Chris Huenneke is enrolling in Medical School at Harvard University. Bravo! We’re so proud of all of you!!
February 2019 – Wayne passed Comps I, a big hurdle in his PhD program! Way to go!
January 2019 – Thanks to UMass alum and local entrepreneur, Steven Richtor, for his generous gift to our lab. We’re using the funds he donated to build a new zebrafish behavioral analysis rig. Stay tuned!
