One year down!

The Davies Lab has officially been up and running for a full academic year!

In September, PI Sarah brought on inaugural PhD student Nicola and lab manager Brooke. The lab was also lucky enough to have a team of undergraduates ready to hit the ground running with us: Alizah Ali, Alyssa Pereslete, Andrea Rodas, Darren Stanizzi, and Brittany Williams. Though lab renovations extended into the fall semester, our undergraduates helped organize and digitize mountains of data in the meantime. Nicola also saw her first field season with the lab when she and collaborators from the Castillo Lab at UNC Chapel Hill traveled to the Florida Keys in October under an NSF sub-award! The trip sought to characterize reef responses to Hurricane Irma, and the team saw several striking differences between inner and outer reef corals (manuscript in prep).

January saw the official opening of our genomics lab, and our team grew by three more undergraduate students: Chris Reyes, Katherine Galeas, and Tiffany Wong. Undergraduates worked hard to extract DNA from all of the Hurricane Irma samples and process flash-frozen coral nubbins from a tank experiment conducted by Sarah and Brooke. The lab also welcomed Harvard Curriculum Fellow Rachel Wright, who will be joining us full time for the summer to work on symbiont culturing and experiments! With these projects and more all on the table, the Davies Lab sure has a lot to get done this summer…good thing we have an army of undergraduates at the ready (11 UG + 1 high school student will be with us!).

Last but not least, one year down means that we are so proud to see off our first graduates! Congratulations to Brittany Williams and Alizah Ali!!!! The Davies Lab will miss you both dearly. Cheers to your bright futures and to the awesome science the lab hopes to put forth this summer!