2024 news

What a year! It’s been fun settling in and building in exciting new directions. Some highlights and happenings as we say goodbye to 2024:

February 2024: We received our first octopuses! After a long journey, it was so rewarding to finally get them into the lab.
March 2024: Two new undergraduates, Aimel and Ashlyn, joined the team! Welcome!
April 2024: I was an invited speaker at the inaugural CephNeuro conference at Woods Hole, MA. Hopefully this is the first of many future CephNeuro conferences!
April 2024: My manuscript, “Signaling Ligand Heterogeneities in the Peduncle Complex of the Cephalopod Mollusc Octopus bimaculoides” was officially published in Brain, Behavior, and Evolution.
May 2024: Micaela Romero joined the lab! Micaela is supported by the UW-ENDURE program!
June 2024: We welcomed Ellie Park to the lab as a new undergraduate researcher!
July 2024: Our first postdoc, Dr. Nastacia Goodwin, joined the lab! Nastacia’s research is supported by the T32 in Nutrition and Metabolism. Congratulations!
July 2024: I was an invited speaker at the International Congress on Neuroethology in Berlin, Germany
August 2024: Micaela presented her summer research as a talk and poster at the joint Center for Neurotechnology and ENDURE Summer Undergrad Research Symposium
September 2024: We welcomed Juwayriyah and Jessie, undergraduates in the TRIO program, to the lab!
September 2024: Nastacia named a STEP-WISE Postdoctoral Fellow!
September 2024: Amanda and Stephanie’s research abstracts were accepted as talks at the upcoming SICB 2025 Annual Meeting in Atlanta, GA! Wahoo!
October 2024: Nastacia attended the Jackson Labs Short Course on the Application of Machine Learning for Automated Quantification of Behavior in Bar Harbor, Maine, on a partial scholarship!
October 2024: Micaela presented her research, “Using bumblebees as a model for investigating social isolation,” at the SfN 2024 Annual Conference in Chicago, IL!
October 2024: Amanda shared her research with regional leaders in science and philanthropy at the ARCS Night to Ignite Science fundraiser! See more pictures of the event here
October 2024: Ellie is accepted to the neuroscience major! This extremely competitive major accepts only 75 students a year. Congrats!
December 2024: Micaela hosted WA Representative Roger Goodman in the lab to learn about our research on social isolation and how it may influence solitary confinement conditions in WA state
December 2024: I was interviewed by Shaena Montanari for a piece in The Transmitter, “The non-model organism ‘renaissance’ has arrived“