The PhD defense is a huge milestone, a true testament to years of hard work, perseverance, and growth. It represents all the hurdles overcome, the lessons learned, and the exciting scientific insights and discoveries made along the way. We don’t just defend our work; we celebrate our journey that brought us here. Congratulations to all our graduates!
Yael defends June 2nd, 2025 from the Voshall Lab at Rockefeller University on her thesis "Evolution of a novel neuronal sex specifically spliced gene in mosquitoes." Congrats Dr. Tsitohay!
Yael hails from Madagascar, a land of the baobabs and unfortunately malaria. Here, we see Yael defend against female mosquitoes in her native land; these ladies hold out their uniquely spliced gene in neurons to her. En garde!
Kwamina defends April 4th, 2025 from the Abu-Remaileh Lab at Stanford University on his thesis "Mechanistic Insights into Lysosomal Phospholipases and their role in Neurodegenerative Diseases." Congrats Dr. Nyame!
Kwamina has a great fondness for soccer, is a proud patriot of Ghana, and is a mass-spec wizard. Here, he kicks the lysosomal lipid BMP straight into the chromatogram net whose shape reflects its multiple structural isoforms.
Sam defends March 18th, 2025 from the Abu-Remaileh Lab at Stanford University on her thesis "A novel lysosomal pathway for lipid recycling has life or death consequences for tumor cells." Congrats Dr. Sam!
Sam loves the show Arcane, so I drew the new Dr. in Jinx's iconic pose from the show and in the Arcane style. The graffiti and icons are a nod to her work on choline metabolism.