It was eye opening to listen to Sara Molinari (University of Maryland)'s fascinating talk on engineering protein secretion to create cell aggregates/living materials. Asked so many questions and learned so much! @saramol.bsky.social

It was one of the most interactive departmental seminar I've given. Thank you @xinsun-putiger.bsky.social for hosting this seminar in the beautiful campus of Penn, Department of Biology! Astounded by a full room of people studying soil, marine ecology, plant biology, and earth/environmental science.

Woohoo!! Starting Gordon Research Seminar (Microbial population biology) at Andover, NH. Thank you GRC GRS organizers!! @mikeblazanin.bsky.social @lcatherines.bsky.social

Graduation happened last week! So grateful for all the relationships I nurtured at uchicago. I will miss this place! Thank you Cathy for hooding me! Also, I am very excited to start postdoc tomorrow in Aditya Kunjapur @kunjapur.bsky.social lab in University of Delaware!

Thank you everyone for coming to my PhD defense today in person and on zoom. Really can't thank everyone enough. Special thanks to Seppe Kuehn @seppekuehnlab.bsky.social and Madhav Mani for supporting me throughout the PhD journey.

Thanks Hyunkyung for the beautiful cake resembling the soil!

Such a great conference! @recombconf.bsky.social RECOMB-Microbiome. Learned so much and asked a lot! Was able to catch up with many colleagues/professors and met amazing people doing great science!!

Caltech is such a research paradise! The resource, the people... just in awe. Thanks for hosting me Hannah!! Made so many amazing scientist friends/colleagues!!

So great to be breathing the same air with the great minds in the same room! Simons foundation NITMB annual meeting in NY!

It was amazing to connect with Dr. Otto Cordero again! His talk at UChicago was intellectually very satisfying!! I knew Xiaoyu's great coarse-graining work but Dr. Stefany Moreno Gamez's work on the molecular mechanism of niche partitioning was super stimulating...!! Thanks Otto!

If you are interested in environmental microbiology and the intersection of ecology and physiology, join this wonderful group of scientists in Karna Gowda lab at Ohio State University!! I guarantee great mentorship and fascinating science!

Happy to be reunited with Professor Yong-Hwan Lee (SNU) at his RR Nelson memorial lecture at Penn State! He is a living history with ~40 years of ground-breaking forward/reverse genetics and bioinformatics on rice blast. He had a profound influence on me.

The annual microbiome symposium TMC2025 will be on April 11th at UChicago 9am-5pm. We had so many new faculty hires at UChicago studying microbiome in the last 3 years that this is an exciting place to be in! Certainly a frontier in the field. Typo in image: Alice Cheng.