2023 Biology Symposium

The 2023 UNC Biology Retreat and Research Symposium was held on February 23rd.

The Department of Biology hosted a departmental retreat on Monday, February 13th at the Haw River Ballroom (1711 Saxapahaw-Bethlehem Church Road Graham, NC 27253).

The first portion of the day was for faculty only. Trainees arrived at lunch (12:00) and participated in the last portion of the day.

2023 Spring UNC Biology Retreat Schedule

12 – 1 PM: Lunch (hosted by the Department)

1 – 1:20 PM: EEOB Featured Talk

Ethan Cissell – [In]Direct persistence: Trophic interactions modulate cyanobacterial mat metacommunity dynamics

1:20 – 1:40 PM: MCDB Featured Talk

Courtney Clark-Hachtel – Mechanisms of extreme survival: Uncovering how tardigrades can tolerate extreme radiation

1:40 – 1:55 PM: Break

1:55 – 2:55 PM: Workshops

Workshop I

Mentorship: Aligning Expectations

(with the Safe Space Committee)

Workshop II

Data Visualization

(with Lorin Bruckner)

2:55 – 3:10 PM: Break

3:10 – 3:30 PM: QBio Featured Talk

Drew Davidson – Searching for the site of associative learning-related plasticity in the memory center of the fly brain

3:30 – 3:50 PM: Faculty Featured Talk

Sophie McCoy – Species interactions as agents of resilience

3:50 – 4:05 PM: Break

4:05 – 4:25 PM: Lightning talks

Wenxia He – Not easy to say it’s poly A

Pu Zhang (MCDB) – Understanding how actomyosin dynamics drive apical constriction

Katherine Malinski – High temperatures disrupt parasitic manipulation in an insect host-parasitoid-endosymbiont system

Nathanael Prunet – Department of Biology Microscopy Core

4:25 – 6:00 PM: Happy hour and poster session

Jon Hibshman – Tardigrade small heat shock proteins can limit desiccation-induced protein aggregation

Scott Allen

Justin Waldern – Disease-associated human genetic variation through the lense of precursor and mature RNA structure

Anastacia Wienecke

Mark Geisler – The Mute button: Turning down the volume of histone expression

Wenxia He

Jeanne-Marie McPherson – Histone gene copy number affects Polycomb function in Drosophila melanogaster

Aaron Crain – Set and modification of histone H4K20 have distinct functions in development and gene expression