Red foliage at the UC Davis Arboretum
New academic year, new foliage color at the UC Davis Arboretum. Greg Urquiaga/UC Davis

Alumni update, Fall 2024

  • by Carole L Hom

We've heard from a few of our alumni.

From Johnny Vertiz at UC Irvine:

Instagram photo of man in a chair, connected to blood transfusion equipment, receiving accolades for being a blood donor.
Johnny Vertiz manages to find time to contribute to the community in myriad ways. Thanks, Johnny, for all that you do!
"I have joined the lab of assistant professor Pablo Lara-Gonzalez. In the lab I am studying the mechanism of cell cycle quiescence in the germ cells of the nematode C. elegans [ed: can't you feel Dan grinning from ear to ear?] I am also working on studying the same quiescence pathway within human cells in hopes to understand the underlying mechanisms that lead to erroneous cell division and cancer.
 
"I have also been part of a local outreach program called BioEYES, where a group of graduate students go to a local middle school in Santa Ana and teach young students about the scientific method. It’s a week-long program where we bring zebrafish to the class and teach students about basic genetics and have them formulate a hypothesis. At the end of the week we then have results from a fish cross that the students did in class and they get to see If their hypothesis was right.
 
"Lastly, life has been really fun in UCI. I have a great cohort that is very active and diverse. We are constantly going hiking or to the beach and I have taken up a liking to Pickleball. I do miss the agriculture in UCDavis and the cows most of all. However, I do enjoy being closer to my family and having their support throughout the stressful first year of grad school is a huge plus for me... I am constantly putting the PREP lessons that I have had to good use in my grad school career."
 
members of the third cohort of Vivien Thomas Scholars at Johns Hopkins
Andrew Barber, front row, second from left, looking all serious and proud (we're proud of you too). And Alexandria Falcon is on the left end of the first row. 
Andrew Barber has started his tenure as a Vivien Thomas Scholar at Johns Hopkins University. And there's an Aggie in the cohort too: Alexandria Falcon, Cell and Molecular Biology, 2019. Go Ags!
 
Carla Campos earned a MS degree at the University of Oregon. Congratulations, Carla!
 
Earlier this fall, Maribel Anguiano got an update of her own.
 
Brayan Vilanova-Cuevas also has a separate update about his outreach efforts in Puerto Rico. In addition, he's published a couple of papers and is continuing his third year in a marine biology lab.
 
In July, Kevin Abuhanna wrote with a heads up about an "exciting thing" coming, with a promise of details later. Well, it arrived! Kevin earned authorship on a publication from a rotation lab about gene expression in mTBI mice. And during his tenure as a lab tech, he contributed to a big collaborative project that has been published in Nature. Whoo hoo!