The Anderson Lab began the transition from The Ohio State University to the University of Wisconsin – Madison back in August earlier this year. Making the move from OSU were Dr. Abhishek Mishra and Emily Simonton, who entered the Microbial Doctoral Training Program. In the meantime, many folks remained in Columbus, Ohio, including Paula, Andrew, Audra, Dale, and Shane. The recently conferred Dr. Bobby Fillinger moved at the same time to Michigan to begin a remote position in the lab.
The Anderson Lab moved into space on the 4th floor of the Genetics-Biotechnology Center Building in Henry Mall centered on Ho-Chunk land named Dejope. Here we are placed in the Center for Genomic Science Innovation and academically in the Laboratory of Genetics. This spot offers an unobstructed view down Randall Avenue towards the Engineering Quad and the train that faithfully crosses in front of the building at noon every Thursday during lab meeting. Since arriving, the lab has enjoyed trips down to Memorial Union for ice cream, a trip up to the Minnesota State Fair, and helping each other settle into our new city.
Personnel moving on
Dr. Bobby Fillinger found an ideal position for his interests in informatic analysis of biological datasets at the Van Andel Institute in his home state of Michigan in September. He has since been enjoying the challenges of working with people’s data to identify interesting stories.
Personnel joining the Wisconsin Lab
We have been fortunate to welcome a number of new folks to the lab in the last few months:
- Dr. Zinnat Shahina joined us as a new postdoc from the University of Regina where she trained with Dr. Tanya Dahms. Shahina has quickly taken up work on the TLO gene family in C. albicans to understand how each gene contributes to adaptation of this malleable yeast.
- Tammy Armbrust joined our group in November to lead a project conducting wastewater surveillance with a Northern Plains tribe. Tammy has extensive experience in epidemiological testing and molecular work, making her an ideal candidate to help the tribe build out testing protocols and empower autonomous research capacity.
- Siobhan Dietz joined the last just last week as a new graduate student in the group from the Cellular and Molecular Pathology Program at Wisconsin. She is super excited to begin dissection of commensal-pathogen differences among C. albicans strains and to look at population dynamics during in vivo infection.
- Shane Hendricks transitioned from Ohio State to Madison just this week to continue his work in dissecting TLO function and characterization of the TLO null mutant. In addition, he will continue to provide the much-needed assistance to the lab as lab manager (and take the relief off of Matt, who has been a barely functional lab manager in the interim).