Things are busy at the EMRLab. A big thank you to all our lab members for their hard work!
Nik recently passed his prelim defense with flying colors. Last week he went on to present this work in a platform session at the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting. Abstract
Lab alumna Manuela Ayee was also at the meeting. She presented her recently highlighted postdoctoral work with Dr Irena Levitan of the UIC College of Medicine. Go Manuela!
In just one semester, David’s contributions to the lab are taking us in new directions. With his co-authorship on a manuscript in Human Biology and a chapter in a book on Humanitarian Forensic Science, David’s Bayesian approaches have taken us into the field of Computational Forensics, with new collaborator Dr Chelsey Ann Juarez. David’s work has also impacted our other modeling efforts involving scarce and qualitative data, with applications in membrane fusion and plant physiology.
Dr Akpa recently highlighted our collaborative work with NCSU Plant Biology colleague Dr Marcela Rojas-Pierce in a keynote presentation at the NC State Genomic Sciences and Biomathematics Symposium. Her talk, entitled “Realizing the potential of ‘tiny data’: a cell biology case study”, described our successes in building quantitative, multi-scale signaling models based on qualitative data describing cell and organelle morphology. This talk highlighted the critical role that modeling can play at very early stages of biological inquiry, helping to precisely frame biological questions and experimental strategies. Drs Akpa and Rojas-Pierce will speak about the nature of their integrative work at this year’s NSF-sponsored Finding Your Inner Modeler workshop (June 12-14), which is now open for registration.