Schedule

(Schedule subject to change)

Arrival

9:30 Coffee, Snacks, Arrival (Center for Natural Sciences - CNS - 1st Floor)

Poster Abstracts 18-41 hang up posters on CNS 1st Floor

10:15 Welcome, Textor 102

10:25 Talk sessions 1a (Abstracts 1-5 - Textor 102) and 1b (Abstracts 6-9 - Textor 101)

Talks = 10 mins, with 2 minutes for questions

11:30 Poster Session 1 (Abstracts 18-41), CNS 1st floor lobby

12:30 Lunch (CNS 206/208)

1:00 Poster Session 2 (Abstracts 42-65), CNS 1st floor lobby

2:00 Talk sessions 2a (Abstracts 10-13 - Textor 102) and 2b (Abstracts 14-17 - Textor 101)

Talks = 10 mins, with 2 minutes for questions

3:00 Keynote Speaker Ben Brack, Textor 102

3:45 Career Panel, Textor 102

4:30 Community meeting and awards, Textor 102

5:00 Depart

Keynote Speaker: Ben Brack

Ben’s research broadly aims to understand how changes to developmental programs across evolutionary time scales produce varied and diverse phenotypes in animals, and how these developmental mechanisms in turn can shape and constrain evolution. He received his B.A in Biology from Cornell University, where he did his undergraduate thesis in the lab of Dr. Robert Reed studying the genetic basis of ommochrome pigmentation in butterfly wings. Currently, he is a PhD candidate in the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University advised by Dr. Ricardo Mallarino, where his work focuses on uncovering the gene regulatory and developmental mechanisms that underly diverse stripe pigment patterns in two distantly related rodents: the African Striped Mouse (Rhabdomys pumilio), and the Thirteen-lined Ground Squirrel (Ictidomys tridecemlineatus).

Uncovering the regulatory mechanisms underlying pigment pattern diversity in striped rodents

Across the animal kingdom, periodic pigmentation patterns (stripes, spots, etc.) are diverse, adaptively significant, and labile traits that arise from an incredibly varied array of developmental and cellular mechanisms. Given their prevalence, visual accessibility, and diversity, these pigmentation patterns are a powerful system with which to ask questions about how pre-existing developmental mechanisms constrain evolution, and at what mechanistic levels independently evolved and diverse patterning traits converge. While these mechanisms have been partially decoded in some model species, mammalian coat patterns have remained particularly challenging to interrogate. Here, using two distantly related rodent species with unambiguously independent origins of remarkably distinct coat patterns, I dissect the developmental and gene regulatory mechanisms that underly pattern diversity across rodents. First, I will discuss work I have done to uncover the regulatory mechanisms in each species that define distinct spatial landscapes of pigment gene expression and uncover how evolution of these mechanisms at different levels has facilitated convergent evolution of stripe patterning. Then, using a model developed from prior work in our lab, I will illustrate how patterning can be established during embryogenesis through different means of modulating a core developmental pathway.

Career Panelists:

Marybeth Slack is a second-year PhD student working in Teresa Lee’s lab at UMass Lowell. She received her BS in Biology from Grove City College where she worked in Drosophila performing genetic screenings for cancer-related genes. Her current lab at UMass Lowell focuses on epigenetics and development using the model organisms C.elegans to study chromatin modifications involved in transgenerational inheritance relating to longevity, fertility, and developmental delay phenotypes. Marybeth’s current projects include using molecular techniques to study differential gene expression in long-lived mutants, studying lifespan, and performing computational analysis.

Kevin Lin is currently a 5th year MD/PhD student at SUNY Upstate. I decided to commit to the MD/PhD track because of my interest in cancer biology and career goal to work in academic medicine. My PhD project in the lab of Dr. Leszek Kotula focuses on understanding how therapy resistance develops in prostate cancer. I hope to defend my PhD in the spring of 2027 and return to complete medical school by 2029. Prior to coming to Upstate, I majored in Human Biology, Health and Society at Cornell, where I also conducted research on the role of RNA helicases in translation initiation under the mentorship of Dr. Shu-Bing Qian.

Sarah LaTorre is a Laboratory and Education Coordinator at ChristianaCare’s Gene Editing Institute. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Biology from Wilmington University and brings a diverse research background spanning biodiversity, conservation, and genetic sequencing to address climate change in coral reefs of Belize and the Florida Keys. Beyond biology, Sarah expanded her research experience through Delaware Space Grant, contributing to NASA's student rocket research for several years.

She is passionate about showcasing her journey “from reefs to rockets,” which strengthened her confidence and commitment to inspiring others to pursue STEM opportunities and careers. Since joining the Gene Editing Institute in September 2023, Sarah has led education and outreach initiatives, engaging over 3,000+ students and educators through CRISPR in a Box™. Her work emphasizes hands-on laboratory techniques and the transformative potential of CRISPR/Cas technology in gene editing.

Devin Mellini graduated from Ithaca College with a Bachelor’s degree in biology. He is currently a research technician at the Epigenomics Core Facility (EGC) at Cornell University. As a core, they offer many assays to clients and also develop new assays depending on client needs. Their main assays that we offer are ChIP-exo and ATAC-seq which assess protein-DNA binding and accessibility of chromatin, respectively.

Dallas Fonseca is currently a postdoctoral researcher at New England Biolabs in the Biochemistry and Microbiology research division in the lab of James Eaglesham. Dallas completed his undergraduate degrees in Biochemistry and Mathematics from Ithaca College in 2018, then completed his PhD at the University of Minnesota in the Microbiology, Immunology, and Cancer Biology Program in 2023. Throughout his scientific career, Dallas has been fascinated by the weird ways microbes have evolved to survive harsh selective pressures in the environment and has applied genetics techniques to uncover these biological phenomena.

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