May 10, 202
Bella Keefe graduated, so I had to put the outfit back on. Am I'm really proud of Bella? Yes! Am I good at selfies? No!
April 18 and 21, 2025
We presented three VIP posters at the Biology Research Round-up this year, describing the methods we are using to identify microsatellite markers in big sagebrush for use in conservation. ISU President Robert Wagner was captivated!
December 13, 2024
Both Trey Harris (MS) and Elizabeth Lay (BS) graduated, forcing me to show up in this ridiculous outfit for the occasion. Luckily, we don't have to say goodbye. Trey is now a a Clinical Assistant Professor with the ISU Bengal Bridge program. And Elizabeth will start her MS degree in the Turner lab in the Spring.
October 31, 2024
Trey Harris, co-advised with Dr. Josh Grinath, has successfully defended his MS defense! He is now officially a master of science. He is going on to a position as a Clinical Assistant Professor with the ISU Bengal Bridge program. So proud!
September 2, 2024
I survived my tenure talk! No one passed out or burst in to flame or anything. Check it out for an overview of what the Turner Lab has accomplished.
June, 2024
Funded entirely through student effort, the Turner lab returned (triumphant!) to the Botany Conference, this year in Grand Rapids, MI. Rachel Havok, Elizabeth Lay, and Bella Keefe all presented. Bella was supported by a travel award from the ISU Office for Research. Rachel was a 2024 MANRRS/SACNAS Travel Award recipient. Elizabeth Lay was a PLANTS Grant recipient. Elizabeth was further awarded the Botanical Society of America's 2024 Young Botanist Award. Just out here smashing it, no big deal.
February 21, 2024
Desde Abajo Root to STEM episode hosted by SACNAS President Aaliyah with guest Rachel Havok who is the SACNAS Native American/Graduate student chair. Listen as we discuss life, science, university, and SACNAS. Rachel Havok is a graduate student here at ISU working on her master's in Kathryn Turner's lab here in the biology department at ISU.
January, 2024
Rachel Havok has been awarded funding for both of us to travel to the Botany Conference in Grand Rapids, MI, this summer! Which is incredibly awesome. Award announcement here.
December 8, 2023
Carson Kantack, in a first for the Turner Lab, has successfully defended his MS defense, despite a poorly timed snow-pocalypse! He is now officially a master of science. He is also a biologist with the US Forest Service.
November, 2023
Rachel Havok (MS) presented her research at national SACNAS conference in October and was featured in the Idaho Diversity Network newsletter! I'm so proud!
April, 2023
Trey Harris' MS project, in collaboration with Dr. Josh Grinath, is featured in this month's issue of the Idaho EPSCoR newsletter!
July, 2023
We all made to the Botany Conference in Boise, ID, a fantastical conglomeration of botany nerds. Trey Harris, Rachel Havok, Elizabeth Mandala, and Audrey Jorgensen all presented. Plus friend of the Turner lab, Spencer Roop won an award!
November 8, 2022
I was invited to give a keynote talk at the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution Regional Meeting in Hamilton, New Zealand. Eeep! You can watch the full line-up of awesome talks here. I talked about preliminary and ongoing work investigating current population structure and historical patterns of genomic and metagenomic diversity using herbarium specimens in an invasive crop weed, Blue Mustard (Chorispora tenella, Brassicaceae). The talk features exciting preliminary work by Therese Balkenbush, Rachel Havok, and collaborators Rachel Reeb (University of Pittsburg) and Mason Heberling (Carnegie Museum of Natural History).
November 28, 2022
Our group has been featured in the Idaho EPSCoR newsletter. Photo thanks to our own Elizabeth Mandala. Newsletter here, see page 6: https://www.idahoepscor.org/sites/default/files/newsletters/2022_epscorOctNwsltr.pdf
September 26, 2022
Our group has been unofficially designated as 'power users', so that's something to brag about! Article here: https://www.isu.edu/news/2022-fall/university-adds-third-high-performance-computing-system-to-on-campus-research-data-center.html
September 14, 2022
I got to chat with the folks at the The Nature of Idaho about weeds and invasive plants in Idaho. It was on the radio and everything!
November 16, 2021
I was invited to give a talk to the Biology Department at Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada. I talked about my work on the current patterns of genomic diversity in an heavily human dispersed ornamental wildflower, Texas Bluebonnet (Lupinus texensis, Fabaceae), and ongoing work investigating historical patterns of genomic and metagenomic diversity using herbarium specimens in an invasive crop weed, Blue Mustard (Chorispora tenella, Brassicaceae).
November 8, 2021
Lab/VIP members Treyton Harris and Olivia Swainston discuss finding their way into undergraduate research through an REU and the VIP course at ISU. They are just so charming and thoughtful, I don't know what to say.
I'm not crying, you're crying!
November 11, 2020
I was invited to give talk for the California Academy of Sciences Genomic social hour on my work using natural history collections to investigate evolution in an invasive weed, blue mustard (Chorispora tenella, Brassicaceae). A collaborator of mine, Dr. Rafal Gutaker also presented during this session, and his work is soooooo cooooool. Thanks to Dr. Lua Lopez (who also works on herbarium genomics) for organizing!
July 27, 2020
I was invited to give a 5 minute Inspire talk at Virtual ESA 2020 Symposium supporting the Plant Science Decadal Vision. Five minute talks are hard! The Plant Science Decadal Vision maps out the future of plant science and how we can use new technologies and approaches to address pressing problems in our world. You can read more about the Plant Science Decadal Vision here.
Dr. Kathryn Turner - Idaho State University Kathryn tells me about her experience in the job search and what sort of things to look out for. She stresses the importance of hobbies, or taking time away from work, and she ends with the power of sleep and talking to humans - we are social creatures after all.
December 17, 2019
June 2019
Thanks to the efforts of organizers and filming volunteers, you can see my talk from the Evolution 2019 Conference on Youtube! Enjoy my excessive hand-waving and fast talking! You can watch all the filmed talks here.
March 26, 2017
On Wednesday, March 27, 2019, I’ll be featured on an rOpenSci community call, presenting an example of using the ‘rgbif’ R package to download a whole lotta biodiversity occurrence data.
Details here: https://ropensci.org/blog/2019/03/11/commcall-mar2019/
‘Community Call – Research Applications of rOpenSci Taxonomy and Biodiversity Tools – rOpenSci – open tools for open science
Our next Community Call, on March 27th, aims to help people learn about using rOpenSci’s R packages to access and analyze taxonomy and biodiversity data, and to recognize the breadth and depth of their applications. We also aim to learn from the discussion how we might improve these tools. Presentations will start with an introduction to the topic and details on some specific packages and we’ll hear from several people about their “use cases in the wild”.’
If you are not familiar with rOpenSci, they are a non-profit that develops R packages to help researchers access and use data, and train people in R. Check out: https://ropensci.org/about/
You are welcome to join! The community call will also be posted on the website, if you want to view it later.
Check out the call notes here. The rOpenSci discussion page is here. My slides are here. The code I demonstrated is here. Along with some great collaborators, I used this approach to work on this cool bit of science, looking at the association between drought frequency and annual/perennial life history traits. Check out the publication here!
April 13, 2018
I was recently brought on as a regular contributor to the impressive blog at The Molecular Ecologist. This is a great motivation for me to write more and try really hard to have insightful thoughts. Here is the the introduction to all the new contributors, and here is my very first post, near and dear to my heart, about hybridization and invasive species.
July 12, 2017
Thanks to the efforts of organizers and filming volunteers, you can see my talk from the Evolution 2017 Conference on Youtube! Enjoy my excessive hand-waving! You can see all the talks that were filmed here.
August 9, 2016
After much toil, and thanks to co-organizers Brook Moyers and Chris Schell, and our wonderful sponsors (the American Genetics Association, the Genetics Society of America, ROpenSci, and ThermoFisher), our Genomics of Adaption to Human Contexts Symposium at the end of July 2016 was a great success! In the Software Carpentry workshop, Daisie Huang and Scott Chamberlain shared some really useful skills in reproducible research computing. And in the Symposium, some intriguing similarities came to light across all the different fields that our speakers came from. We are currently considering pursuing a journal special issue on the topic, please contact me for more information. Check out our program to see the list of fabulous speakers. Also, I have storified all the tweets!
Phew, that’s a lot o’ links!
Centaurea diffusa and Chorispora tenella. Mayan-stylized glyph art by Monarobot.
Header image: Chorispora tenella grown from USDA GRIN accession. Image by Kathryn Turner.