How's your virtual 2020 experience so far? We hope you are doing well and keep up the good work!

Meanwhile, we have some updates for you...

• We say good bye with all the best wishes to Wei Lu, our graduate student alumni, for he has transferred to College of Veterinary Medicine this semester to continue his PhD program with fascinating research topics!

• Congratulations to Laura Moody, our graduate student alumna , for publishing a research manuscript titled Epigenetic stratification of head and neck cancer survivors reveals differences in lycopene levels, alcohol consumption, and methylation of immune regulatory genes, co-authored with Dr. Pan and Dr. Chen, on Clinical Epigenetics! Click here if you are interested :)

• Happy birthday to ★ Yingwei Zhao ★, our graduate student! Hope all your wishes come true!

• We have a new undergraduate student joining our lab! Welcome John (Chia-Hao) Lin from Department of Kinesiology! John will be helping us with lab maintenance, real-time PCR and histology staining, and more to be planned! Thank you John!

Welcome back, undergraduate, graduate students and visiting scholars! :) Hope you are ready for FALL 2020!

Just a reminder regarding U of I COVID-19 testing policy:

• Mandatory twice weekly testing will be required for all faculty, staff and students who participate in any on-campus activities.

• You should refrain from eating, drinking, tooth brushing, mouth washing, gum chewing and tobacco use for 30 min before submitting your saliva sample.

• Faculty, staff and students visiting campus only occasionally (for example, picking up something from their office) will be required to go to a testing center, get tested and have test results dated no more than four days prior to entering any university facility.

Mandatory testing for students living in the community begins on Aug. 16.

For more information about testing and the full list of testing sites (including mapped locations and hours), please visit this link on the university's COVID-19 website. Please note that the Illinois Fire Service Institute testing location is not currently available.

Next week (Aug. 16-22), testing at State Farm Center is highly discouraged, as it will be used for University Housing Move-In.

1. Congratulations to Yingwei Zhao, one of our graduate students, for receiving the Emerging Leader in Nutrition Science Finalist awarded by American Society for Nutriton (ASN) 2020!

2. Congratulations to Jiaxuan Li, one of our graduate students, for receiving the Summer Block Grant Fellowship awarded by Graduate College of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign!

3. Congratulations to Bianca Xu, one of our graduate students (admitted Fall 2020) , for receiving the Philip L. and Juanita Fitzer Francis Fellowship in Health and Wellness awarded by Department of Food Science and Human Nutriton, U of I!

Job well done and keep up the good work 😊

1. Congratulations, Class of 2020! You should be so proud of this incredible achievement! Wishing you the best of luck on your next adventure! Special congratulations to our undergraduate lab assistants, Jie(Avery) Zhang and Sucie Chen for their graduations!! :) Avery has received the Bronze Tablet Honor from our university and she is going to continue her graduate study at Cornell University this coming Fall semester! Job well done indeed, and we wish you the best, and we hope to see you in future.

2. Our lab decide to hold Journal Club during the summer semester, as most of our lab members plan to stay around. Quarantine time is reading time! Please check here to see what we have been discussing!

1. Welcome our newly admitted PhD program student Andrea Dest, who has accepted the offer and will join us this fall semester!