What An Exciting Time!

A highlight of these conferences was Amanda Mileham winning the best oral presentation at the URS in the STEM field. I know that Anna Carey enjoyed herping at the SEPARC meeting! And everyone in the lab presented at the first GURC!

Riley Fuller, Leigha Henson, Amanda Duffus, Anna Carey, Ami Jo Davis.

Well, I am long overdue for an update on here. This past year has been exceptionally busy!

It’s a time of change in my research group right now, all of my wonderful students have either just graduated or will be finished at the end of the summer term. They are all going off on big adventures like internships in Nevada or a gap year before they start PA or medical school. While I am very much going to miss all of them, I wish them the best in their future endeavors.

Lab Group: Leigha Henson, Ami Jo Davis, Anna Carey, Amanda Mileham, Riley Fuller, Amanda Duffus. Missing Abigale Garner

These young women have presented at multiple conferences this year, including the Georgia Undergraduate Research Conference (GURC), the Southeastern Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation (SEPARC), the Georgia Academy of Sciences (GAS), and the Gordon State College – Undergraduate Research Symposium (URS). I am very proud of the work that they have done on their projects!

They have been diligently working on a large project that involves examining the utility of the 26 Iridovirus core genes in reconstructing meaningful Ranavirus phylogenies. This fall my group will start to work on the next steps of this project and we hope to complete it by the end of the academic year.

A highligh of these conferences was Amanda Mileham winning the best oral presentation at the URS in the STEM field. I know that Anna Carey enjoyed herping at the SEPARC meeting! And everyone in the lab presented at the first GURC!

This year was also a big year for me professionally. I was elected President-Elect of the Georgia Academy of Sciences. I am very much looking forward to working with the executive and membership of the Georgia Academy of Sciences for the next few years! In addition to this, I became the Interim Associate Director of the Global Ranavirus Consortium, an organization which I have been involved with since its founding in 2011. Until this past February, I served as the Secretary-Treasurer and I look forward to serving the GRC in this new role.