Last night was the last trivia night in which Penny and Jenn could participate together. So, we knew it had to be bigly…
And it was! We won third place! Wohooo!
Penny and Jenn showing off their prize (gift card for Cypress):
The rest of the team:
Jenn defended her thesis!
Jennifer Pentz, the first Ratcliff lab student, defended her thesis today. Her thesis was titled “Exploring the ecological and evolutionary consequences of clonal and aggregative development during the transition to multicellularity.”
It was pretty great! Jenn did an incredible job in her PhD, authoring 8 papers (with one in review and one in prep). Jenn was a touchstone for the lab- a consistently upbeat and collaborative soul who always made the projects she joined better. She has left an enduring mark on the lab, seeding its cultural bedrock with precisely the traits we need in academia: compassion, thoughtfulness, helpfulness, and enthusiasm for science. Jenn is off to do a postdoc in Sweden under Peter Lind and will be greatly missed.
Jordan Gulli defended her thesis!
Jordan Gulli, a member of the Rosenzweig lab who used to be in the Ratcliff lab, defended today! Jordan was an incredibly self-driven scientist, who found her path from basic evolutionary biology to applied industry-related research (her long-stated goal). She will start a job at New England BioLabs this fall. Congrats on a very nice thesis Jordan, and best luck at NEB!
New lab!
After 5 years of working in the Environmental Sciences & Technology building, we are moving across the street to join the cool kids at Cherry Emerson:
For those folks at Georgia Tech who don’t know, the roots of “Bio” in our campus are at Cherry Emerson!
Our new lab is great, spacious, and was a good cooperative exercise:
Our new office space is also great. We got great views from it:
We can even see when the rain is coming!
We also got a new website! (finally!)
