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.