Fantastic news!!

Congratulations to our Ph.D. Candidate, Jordyn Vanportfliet, from Dr. A. Phillip West Lab who just received an NIH F31 award for her project “Targeting the Nrf2 axis to reduce lung immunopathology in PolG-related mitochondrial disease.”

Whoop! This is an exciting achievement! We are so proud of you and we can’t wait to see where your research takes you next!

Jordyn also gave a short talk and poster presentation at the Keystone Symposia for Mitochondria Signaling and Disease in February. What a great start to the year for Jordyn!

Congratulations to our Genetics and Genomics students, Emmarie Alexander, from Dr. Bill Murphy’s laboratory, and Aaron DeSalvio, from Dr. Seth Murray’s laboratory, on being selected for the prestigious 2023 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)! Emmarie and Aaron are two of 6 winners from Texas A&M, with only 3 in the Life Sciences at Texas A&M! 

Emmarie is interested in using genomic tools to investigate the complex evolutionary history of mammals by way of their genome to their phylogeographic structure. She is particularly interested in mammals of conservation concern, such as pangolins and felids. Currently, Emmarie is parsing the evolutionary origins and structure of mammalian sex chromosomes. 

Aaron’s goal is to uncover the applicability of temporal spectral data to predict agronomically relevant traits in maize (corn) using a combination of high-throughput phenotyping (HTP) data captured by unoccupied aerial systems (drones) and genomic marker data. His current project is focused on performing single plant analysis, with the intent of uncovering differences in the performance of genetically identical plants. The goal is to enable single plant selection, which could greatly reduce the plant breeding cycle’s turnover time and increase genetic gains more rapidly. Additionally, he aims to enable researchers across the globe to implement HTP into their programs through methods-based publications and demonstrations using open-access data collected on our lab’s agricultural experiments in College Station. 

We are so excited to celebrate this achievement with you! 

Interested in science and learning about the grad student life? We talk to world-class faculty about their research at Texas A&M and hear first-hand from grad students about how to thrive in a PhD program.

Check us out now!