Qianna Xu

Every year Georgia Tech hosts the Earth Day Festival on campus to celebrate our planet Earth. Our lab members were excited to participate again this year to share our knowledge on the biodiversity and the ecological importance of freshwater protozoans with the general public. Crowds were attracted by our interactive booth with microscopes, agar plates on which bacteria isolated from Piedmont Park ponds are growing, and microcosms containing various protist species. Thank you to everybody who came by and helped today!

To read more about Georgia Tech Earth Day Festival, go to http://www.earthday.gatech.edu/

 

Our lab member Dr. Shaopeng Li will soon start a faculty position as a professor at East China Normal University, a prestigious university in China. His research focuses on questions about biodiversity and biological invasion, specifically how species invasion and extinction influence the biodiversity maintenance and community restoration. Dr. Li is now seeking new graduate students and post-doctoral fellows to join his research group. Detailed information is available at the Li Lab website https://lilab-ecnu.weebly.com

All of our lab members would like to bid him farewell and wish him all the best at his new job!

 

 

Jess Vorse, an undergraduate student from the College of Wooster, presented her research project, which was conducted in our Lab, at the final REU student research symposium today.  During the summer,  Jess investigated the effects of habitat fragmentation on species diversity, community assembly, and ecosystem functions with freshwater protist communities assembled in laboratory microcosms.

Jess is a student who participated in the NSF-sponsored summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program. The REU program provides great opportunities for undergraduate students to gain hands-on experience in scientific research with faculty members. In a course of 10 weeks, the REU student will work with faculty and graduate students to design an independent research project, carry it out, and present the results at a final symposium to a broader audience.

Online applications of the REU program opens early December. Each successful applicant will receive a stipend, plus accommodation. For more information, visit http://biosciences.gatech.edu/undergrad/reu

 

Pandeng Wang, a visiting Ph.D. student at Sun Yat-sen University in China, joins our lab in August 2018. Welcome!