December 2021: Katie and colleague Kyle Broaders had the opportunity to present their work with Mount Holyoke undergraduates as a part of their former research advisor Bob Paley's retirement celebration at Swarthmore College. Bob was an incredible mentor whose ability to intellectually involve undergraduates in his research and also make the lab a fun place to be was an important model for both Katie and Kyle.
November 2021:
President Sonya Stephens will be recommending Katie for tenure and promotion!! 🎉🎉
A huge thank you to the 18 amazing Mount Holyoke undergraduates who have helped establish the Berry lab's research program and the B3H assay as an important genetic tool!
Here's to many more years and fabulous mentees!
April 2021: Congratulations to graduating senior Oliver Stockert on successfully defending his Honors Thesis and for his fantastic presentation on ProQ-RNA interactions at Mount Holyoke's Senior Symposium. Like so many other events, Senior Symposium looked different this year than in the past, but it was great to see our seniors' amazing work on display!
January 2021: Congratulations to former lab members Clara, Rachel, Hannah and Chandra on the acceptance of their B3H Optimization manuscript at RNA!
October 2020: Katie was selected as a 2020 Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Awardee. The award honors faculty in the chemical sciences for developing outstanding research programs and for their deep commitment to undergraduate education. Congratulations to all current and past members of the laboratory -- this award is a celebration of their hard work and great scientific contributions!
July 2020: Congratulations to recent graduate Chandra Gravel '20, who gave a Flash Talk at the virtual Boston Bacterial Meeting on her recent collaborative work with the Olejniczak lab in press at Nucleic Acids Research. Interested in our work and have 4 minutes to spare? Chandra's awesome talk is a must watch!
May 2020: Congratulations to Berry Lab senior Hannah LeBlanc '20, who not only successfully defended her Honors Thesis this week, but was also awarded this year's Laurie Priest Scholar Athlete Award from Mount Holyoke: "annually given to an exceptional athlete who displays great character and leadership, exemplary scholarship and is an outstanding representative of our school and athletic program." We are so proud of you, Hannah, and thankful you have brought the same determination and leadership with you to the bench as on the water!
April 2020: Congratulations to Berry Lab senior Anh Tran '20, for giving a wonderfully engaging Senior Symposium talk and showing us how fun a virtual seminar can be. Well done, Anh!
February 2020: Congratulations to former Berry lab members Smriti, Clara and Courtney, and current members Chandra, Oliver and Hannah as the lab's first manuscript is accepted for publication at Nucleic Acids Research. Wonderful collaborative effort!
October 2019: Welcome to new lab members Linh and Katherine! Your energy and enthusiasm is already felt and appreciated in the lab.
September 2019: We are delighted to share that the Berry Lab has received an R15 AREA award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to support our work exploring "Genetic Identification of Bacterial RNA Chaperone Proteins and their Mechanisms of Action." Congratulations to Katie, and to the entire team of undergraduate researchers for their hard work collecting preliminary data. We are excited to share what we have learned soon!
April 2019: Courtney Hegner '19 and Anh Tran '20 gave talks at the American Chemical Society - Connecticut Valley Section Undergraduate Research Symposium, hosted at Amherst College's new Science Center. Amaka Onyewadume '19 and Linh Ngyuen '22 attended to cheer them on!
April 2019: Congratulations to Smriti Pandey '19 and Courtney Hegner ' 19 for presenting their work at the American Society for Biochemistry and Microbiology National Meeting in Orlando, FL.
November 2018: Congratulations to Hannah LaBlanc '20 and Anh M. Tran '20 for their second place poster ("Characterizing Hfq-RNA interactions using a bacterial three-hybrid assay") at Worcester Polytechnic Institute's Next in Bio symposium!
More photos here.
November 2018: We hosted the inaugural meeting of the Pioneer Valley RNA Club (PiVaRC) and were delighted to be joined by colleagues at U Mass Amherst and Smith for an evening of networking and great science with lots of 2' hydroxyls! Thank you to RNA Society and Lexogen for funding our RNA Club through the RNA Salon program!
October 2018: Matt Francis, long ago chair of Katie's qualifying exam committee, visits MHC from UC Berkeley! Chandra, Anh, Oliver and Smriti, along with many other Mount Holyoke students, were able to chat with Matt over lunch about research life and graduate school.
June 2018: Amaka, Anh and Smriti attend the Boston Bacterial Meeting, representing Mount Holyoke with Lijek and Camp labs. Special congratulations to Smriti for winning a People's Choice award for her poster! See more photos here.
May 2018: Congratulations to Kelly and Lillia as they graduate! And to Kelly for successfully writing and defending the first Honors thesis from the Berry Lab! Very proud of you both!
February 2018: Welcome the lab, Amaka! So happy to have you join the team!
January 2018: Congratulations to Smriti, Courtney, Lillia and Kelly for presenting their first individual posters at the Pioneer Valley Microbiology Symposium. It was a great day of science for all involved, and you all did a fantastic job! More photos here.
November 2017: Congratulations to Mount Holyoke Students from the Berry Lab and Broaders Lab for winning first and second place poster prizes at the Next-in-BIO undergraduate research symposium at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. The students really enjoyed meeting microbiologists Rich Losick (Harvard) and Scarlett Shell (WPI), among other faculty!
October 2017: Katie's Bacterial Three-Hybrid manuscript with Ann Hochschild has been accepted at Nucleic Acids Research! Keep your eyes out for it soon.
September 2017: Welcome to new lab members Anh, Hannah, Rachel and Lillia. We're thrilled to have you join the team.
June 2017: The lab attends our first scientific meeting as a group, the Boston Bacterial Meeting on the campus of Harvard University. We had a large group representing Mount Holyoke, from the Berry Lab, Camp Lab and new PI (starting this summer) Becki Lijek.
April 2017: Katie attends the March for Science in Amherst, MA with her three-year-old scientists along her side.
January 2017: Welcome to founding lab members Kelly, Courtney, Clara and Smriti! We are excited to have you on board!