Department Retreat 2022

The Department held its annual retreat on Friday May 13 in the Longship Room at UK’s Kroger Field (the football stadium). The day was kicked off with a presentation by Assistant Professor Houfu Guo on his work on the glycosylation of fibrillar collagen. This was followed by Dr. Chen-Yu Wu, a postdoc in Dr. Becky Dutch’s lab, discussing human metapneumovirus replication and Martha Sim, a graduate student in Dr. Jeremy Wood’s lab, talking about the dysregulation of coagulation in HIV and SARS-CoV-2 infections. After a coffee break Rebecca Norcross, graduate student in Dr. Emily Galperin’s lab, talked about the role of the scaffold protein Shoc2 in neural crest development and Trace Jolly, graduate student in Dr. Jessi Blackburn’s lab, discussing work on PRL phosphatases. Lunch was bracketed by two poster sessions featuring over forty posters. After the second poster session Kia Markussen, graduate student in Dr. Matt Gentry’s lab, discussed her work on metabolic fingerprints associated with Lafora disease. The research talks were finished up by Tiantian Chen, a graduate student in Dr. Craig Vander Kooi’s lab, talking about the structural basis of the activity of the novel LSF3 glucan phosphatase. Attendees then participated in some fun and games with a Science Olympics. Lastly, Dr. Tianyan Gao, interim chair, presented a series of awards before a closing reception.

Congratulations to our award winners!

Best Retreat Posters:

Sumati Hasani

Shravani Prakhya

Lyndsay Young

Smita Joshi

Best Retreat Talks:

Kia Markussen

Rebecca Norcross

2021-2 Best Student Seminar Talk Given by a Second Year Student:

Trace Jolly

2021-2 Best Student Seminar Talk Given by a Third Year or Higher Student: