In personal good news, my new brain surgeon says the gliosis (white area on right) from my surgery in 2006 looks the same as it did on my last MRI in 2013. He'll keep me on the anti-seizure med I started in May (the one that made me mean 20 yrs ago) but reduce the daytime dosage.

Dr. Nila Pazhayam, PhD! Nila authored a review and 2 research papers, was on T32, had an F31, mentored undergrads, and more. Fun fact: Since Nila did a straight-to-MS degree (no BS) before her PhD, if she were to apply for a job in India that requires a BS she would be deemed unqualified.

Congratulations to Nina Wozniak, Ilan Socolovsky_Hull, and Josh Ponder, who all earned Honors in Biology for research they did in the Sekelsky lab! (Also to Sasha Sagar; her degree is Neuroscience so a different venue.)

Enjoyed reading this history of a great Drosophila geneticist. Among my prized possessions are original reprints (not an oxymoron) of LV Morgan's compound X and ring X papers, a gift from Scott Hawley, who got Parker's collection, who got Cooper's collection, who got Bridges collection...

Congratulations to Nila Pazhayam for a successful defense of her PhD dissertation! Her research provided important insights into how crossovers are kept away from the centromere.
doi.org/10.1093/gene...
doi.org/10.1093/gene...

It's happening on March 7: Nila's PhD defense!
(We know this conflicts with #standupforscience2025, but this was scheduled months ago.)

What's the biggest Drosophila gene?
Priscila Santa Rosa, co-mentored by Bob Duronio and me, is studying fragility within Myo81. In FlyBase, Myo81F is at least 1.966 Mb, but Pri has this exciting Nanopore sequencing that adds at least 24 kb to that.

Of course, there had to be t-shirts...and they are fantastic! They made a reunion logo on the front and this spectacular image on the back clever title. (In the lab, we refer to flies resulting from nondisjunction as "exceptional progeny".)
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Bob Goldstein, UNC Biology's talented faculty printmaker, asked me why he wasn't asked to make a poster. I suggested it to the organizers and they asked...Bob declined. Because they had ideas - he only does it if he has complete artistic freedom. Here's what came out of that. Nice!
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We started with dinner & drinks at my house Friday. Saturday morning was a scientific symposium. SO great to hear people talk about their amazing accomplishments after leaving the lab! That evening we enjoyed each others' company at Haw River Taproom, then finished with lab visits Sunday.
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Now that there are people here, I want to post about the highlight of the summer for me: My lab's 25th anniversary reunion, organized by several former members. They made a wonderful website that I looked at frequently. I made a timeline poster of everyone that's been in the lab.
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Congratulations to our three undergraduate researchers that graduated with Honor in Biology. Emerson & Reese are off to graduate school, while Gray goes into the real world.