October 25, 2024 – Congratulations to Irmak Altinok! After giving a fantastic talk at the BSCD Research Fellowship symposium, Irmak was awarded a yearlong fellowship to support her continued work on her project throughout the academic year. The Rebay Lab has an almost perfect record with our undergrad trainees receiving this award (we all put alot of effort into the practice talks), so it’s great to have Irmak carrying the torch this year!
September, 2024 – The Rebay Lab welcomes Zach Baker! Zach spent a summer as an NSF REU student in the Fehon Lab, and we’re delighted to have him continue his scientific education for a couple of years as a technician in the Rebay Lab.
August 28, 2024 – Congratulations Dr. Miranda-Alban!!! Julio successfully defended his PhD dissertation today!! His mother, who travelled all the way from Peru for the occasion, contributed to the celebratory atmosphere by festooning the MGCB auditorium podium with the Peruvian flag. Despite the end of summer timing, his seminar was really well-attended and the weather was perfect for a fun celebration out on the CLSC patio afterwards. Lots of additional friends and family from Peru, as well as a few former Rebay Lab members, were able to enjoy the seminar on zoom.
August, 2024 – The Rebay Lab welcomes Jolyne Lin! Jolyne joins us through the new MGCB Post-Bac Scholars Research program in Cell, Developmental and Molecular Biology. We’re delighted she chose us and look forward to teaching her all about Drosophila!
June, 2024 – The Rebay Lab welcomes Carol Dilts! Carol rotated in the winter quarter and we’re thrilled she has decided to join the team! She also just passed her DRSB prelim exam with flying colors, so congrats Carol!!
May, 2024 – Congratulations to Amanda Hill who was chosen to receive the Frances E. Knock Prize for Outstanding Academic Achievement in Biological Chemistry! Amanda graduates later this month and will be taking a gap year to travel, hike the Appalachian Trail, apply to MD-PhD programs and pursue a research internship in NYC.
May, 2024 – Congratulations to Suzy Hur for being awarded the 2024 DRSB Program Dissertation Award! Suzy is currently a first-year associate consultant at McKinsey where she helps life sciences clients incorporate AI/ML-based approaches to improve their drug design and clinical trial protocols.
April, 2024 – Congratulations to Irmak Altinok who received a BSCD Summer Research Fellowship Award! We’re excited to have Irmak working full time in the lab this summer.
March, 2024 – Check out the research highlight in Development on our retinal morphogenesis paper! Congrats again to Xiao, Jacob and Nicelio!
March, 2024 – The Rebay Lab welcomes Irmak Altinok, a first year undergraduate student. Irmak will be working with Jacob, studying how cell-cell interactions impact tissue-scale change in the pupal retina.
March, 2024 – Congratulations to Sherzod Tokamov who won the 2024 Larry Sandler Award. The award is given by the GSA to recognize the best PhD dissertation in any area of Drosophila research. Sherzod got his start at UChicago as a summer NSF REU student in the Rebay Lab, and then joined the DRSB graduate program where he worked in the Fehon lab studying growth regulation in the developing wing. Sherzod gave an amazing talk at the TAGC meeting in front of an enormous audience.
January 12, 2024 – In press at Development! A good start to 2024 – our lab started working on retinal morphogenesis a few years ago, and our first paper in this field, “Inter-plane feedback coordinates cell morphogenesis and maintains tissue organization in the Drosophila pupal retina” was officially accepted! Congratulations and kudos to Xiao, Jacob and Nicelio for all the hard work, innovation and gorgeous microscopy that went into this nice story!
January, 2024 – The Rebay Lab welcomes Carol Dilts, a first year DRSB student who will be rotating during winter quarter. Carol will be working with Julio, exploring Notch-Delta signaling during wing vein patterning.
January 2024 – Former Rebay Lab member Juana Delao gets some local press. Juana is now a graduate student at MIT, working in Adam Martin’s lab. https://news.mit.edu/2024/food-for-thought-juana-de-la-o-0110
September 18, 2023 – Good rhino news in the news today: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/18/climate/rhino-herd-sold-south-africa.html
July 14, 2023 – Congratulations Dr. Hur!! Suzy successfully defended her PhD dissertation today! Suzy gave a great seminar that was really well attended both in person and on zoom and then we had a fun celebration outside. Fun fact – Suzy’s mother travelled all the way from Australia to cheer her on! I always love meeting the proud parents!
June, 2023 – The Rebay Lab welcomes Chyan Rangel, who is returning for another summer of collaboration with Julio studying Notch signaling during wing vein patterning, and Audrey Chang, a UChicago undergrad supported by a Metcalf summer fellowship who will be joining Team Yan.
May 2, 2023 – Congratulations Dr. Sun!! Xiao successfully defended her PhD dissertation today. Unfortunately the seminar had to be by zoom, but the silver lining was that it made it possible for several former lab mates to participate and chat afterwards.
March 13, 2023 – Suzy’s paper is accepted at Development! Those were some tough experiments, but we got it done. Bernasek, Hur, Pelaez-Restrepo et al., “Ratiometric sensing of Pnt and Yan transcription factor levels confers ultrasensitivity to photoreceptor fate transitions in Drosophila”.
March, 2023 – The Rebay Lab welcomes Hannah Thier, a first-year UChicago undergrad to the lab. Hannah will be working with Jacob on a pupal eye morphogenesis project, funded over the summer by a BSCD fellowship.
September, 2022 – The Rebay Lab welcomes first-year DRSB graduate student Isaak Tarampoulous for a fall quarter rotation. Isaak will be working with Suzy, using smFISH to explore how differences in SAM-SAM binding affinity impacts transcription dynamics of Yan/Pnt target genes.
August 22, 2022 – Christine Cao heads off to St. Louis to start a two year post-Bac program at WashU where she’ll be working in Helen McNeil’s lab. Christine has been an integral part of the Rebay lab for almost four years and will be missed!
August 17, 2022 – Chyan Rangel heads back to school after a very successful and productive summer internship in the Rebay Lab. Her mastery of pupal wings and the complexities of Notch-Delta feedback mechanisms was impressive!
.June 14, 2022 – Welcome Chyan Rangel! Chyan is an undergraduate student at St. Mary’s College in Notre Dame, IN who will be spending the summer in the Rebay Lab as part of the NSF-sponsored REU program. She’ll be working with Julio, studying Notch-Delta feedback mechanisms that pattern the pupal wing.
June 4, 2022 – Graduation day – congrats Christine Cao, UChicago class of 2022! Christine will continue working in the lab over the summer before moving to St. Louis to start a post-bac program at WashU in the fall.
May 19, 2022 – Huge congratulations to second year undergraduate student Amanda Hill who just got the great news that she has been awarded a University of Chicago Stamps Scholarship. This competitive award provides an enrichment grant of $20,000 to support her research over the course of her third and fourth years in the College. The Stamps Scholar program was established in 2006 and its mission is to identify and support exceptional undergraduate students across 37 Universities and Colleges in the U.S. and a few in the U.K.
April, 2022 – Congratulations to Tina Tootle on her promotion to Full Professor!! Tina was a graduate student in the Rebay lab and is now at the University of Iowa in the Department of Anatomy and cell biology.
April, 2022 – Xiao Sun heads off to Marseilles to spend several months in Thomas Lecuit’s lab pushing the boundaries of pupal eye live imaging, while taking full advantage of life in southern France. The pandemic delayed this trip for two years, but the green light was finally given!
April, 2022 – Congratulations to Daisy and Amanda for being awarded summer research fellowships. Daisy received a Quad Summer Undergraduate Research Scholarship and Amanda a BSCD Summer Research Fellowship.
April, 2022 – Congratulations to former Rebay Lab member Saman Tabatabaee (now a grad student at Stanford) for being awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.
December 11, 2021 – Former Rebay Lab member Erin Davies (now a PI at the NCI) quoted in NYT article on hydra head regeneration. Always fun to be reading the NYT over breakfast and find a former Rebay Lab member quoted in the science section!
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/11/science/hydra-regrow-head.html?smid=em-share
October 20, 2021 – Daisy is awarded a year long BSCD Fellowship! Congratulations to Daisy Maslan for a fantastic talk in the BSCD Symposium on October 2. Her engaging presentation and her willingness to ask lots of questions of her fellow presenters earned her a fellowship award that provides a full year of support to continue working in the lab this year. Not to brag, but Daisy’s award completes the hat trick for Rebay Lab undergraduates participating in the BSCD Summer Fellowship program, as both Christine and Saman won the award in their year. Pressure’s really on for the next undergraduate student who joins the lab – can we make it four for four?
September, 22 2021 – Today is World Rhino Day! If you can’t name the five extant species, here’s a good site to start your education: https://www.worldrhinoday.org/
September, 21 2021 – The Rebay Lab welcomes our fall rotation student Hsin-Chiao Huang! Hsin-Chiao is a first year DRSB student and will be working with Jacob on a retinal morphogenesis project.
August, 24 2021 – Geneticists map the rhinoceros family tree! Check out the paper by Liu et al in the August 24, 2021 issue of Cell. Although this is not work from the Rebay Lab, we always try to keep up to date on the latest rhino research. Apparently there has been a long-standing question going back to Darwin about the relationships among the current five living rhinoceros species (for those who don’t follow rhinos as closely as we in the Rebay Lab do, there used to be lots more rhino species, but most went extinct before the Pleistocene). By comparing the genomes of all five living rhino species to those of three ancient and extinct species, this paper settles the rhino phylogeny debate. There are lots of other cool observations, so well worth a read, at least if you’re a rhinophile!
August 6, 2021 – Saman heads off to the west coast! The Rebay Lab got together in the main campus quad for a picnic pizza lunch and a bit of frisbee to say goodbye and good luck to Saman Tabatabaee. After 3+ years as a UChicago undergraduate researcher in the lab, Saman is starting graduate school at Stanford in the Chemical and Systems Biology Ph.D. program.
Summer 2021 – The Rebay Lab welcomes two new rotation students, Alec Buttner and Manasa Prahlad! Alec is an incoming first year student in the CMB graduate program and Manasa is a rising second year student in the GGSB Program. Neither had ever worked with Drosophila before, so both are learning the basics of fly genetics and competing to see who can dissect eye discs the fastest.
April 2021 – Congratulations to our two new undergraduate students Amanda Hill and Daisy Maslan who both received BSCD-sponsored fellowships to support their summer research! Daisy will be on campus for the 10-week summer program learning as much as possible from Saman before he leaves for graduate school, while Amanda will be working remotely under Suzy’s tutelage.
Spring Quarter 2021 – The Rebay Lab welcomes a new rotation student, Cassandra Azeredo-Tseng! Cassandra, a first year DRSB graduate student, will be rotating in the lab during spring quarter.
March 23, 2021 – Juana Delao awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship! A former UChicago undergraduate student in the Rebay Lab, Juana is currently a 2nd year graduate student in Adam Martin’s lab at MIT.
March 19, 2021 – Match Day! Nicelio Sanchez-Luege, an MSTP student and former DRSB graduate student in the Rebay Lab, got his top choice and matched to the UCSF Research Resident Training Program in Psychiatry.
November 19, 2020 – Congratulations Dr. Wu! Catherine successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation and gave a great public seminar. One of the few advantages of a Zoom defense is that quite a few former Rebay Lab members were able to attend her talk – it was great to “see” and chat with Jemma, JF, Matt, Nicelio, Trevor, and Charlene.
October 21, 2020 – Congratulations to Catherine – her paper is now in press at PLOS Genetics! ”A context-dependent bifurcation in the Pointed transcriptional effector network contributes specificity and robustness to retinal cell fate acquisition” Chudong Wu, Jean-François Boisclair Lachance, Michael Z Ludwig, and IlariaRebay
October 2020 – The Rebay Lab welcomes a new rotation student, Honorine Destain! Honorine, a first year DRSB graduate student, will be rotating in the lab during fall quarter.
September 2020 – Jacob Decker joins the Rebay Lab! Jacob, now a second year student in the Development, Regeneration and Stem Cell Biology graduate program, pioneered the art of socially distanced rotations over the summer and somehow learned to dissect and image pupal eye discs using instructional videos. We are delighted he has decided to join our team.
August 2020 – Jacob Decker appointed to the Molecular and Cellular Biology T32! Congratulations to Jacob Decker, a DRSB summer rotation student, for his recent appointment to the Molecular and Cellular Biology Training Grant.
July 2020 – The Rebay Lab welcomes a new rotation student, Jacob Decker! Jacob is a DRSB graduate student. We are thrilled Jacob is able to do his rotation in person, and are looking forward to the challenge of teaching him pupal eye dissections via video.
April 2020 – Misha Ludwig, a long-time collaborator, joins the Rebay Lab! We are delighted to welcome Misha to the lab as a part-time Research Associate. Misha combines exceptional scientific creativity with years of experience with Drosophila, molecular biology and genetics. We look forward to his contributions to the lab’s science.
March 2020 – Pavithra Vivekanand is now a tenured professor! Congratulations to Pavithra Vivekanand, a former Rebay Lab Postdoc, who was just awarded tenure in the Department of Biology at Susquehanna University.
February 2020 – Saman is awarded a Beckman Scholars Fellowship! Congratulations to Saman Tabatabaee who has been offered a spot in the University of Chicago Beckman Scholars Program. The award is funded by the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation and includes a generous stipend and research funds for the next two summers and intervening academic year, regular scientific mentoring outside the Rebay Lab and a trip each summer to the annual Beckman Scholars Symposium in Irvine, California. Competition was unusually intense this year, with 16 outstanding undergrads vying for only two slots. Special thanks to all Rebay Lab members for participating in the multiple practice rounds that helped Saman perfect his presentation and ace the final interview.
October 2019 – Christine is awarded a year long BSCD fellowship! Congratulations to Christine Cao whose fantastic talk in the BSCD Symposium last month earned her a fellowship that provides a full year of support to continue working on her project. This makes it two in a row for the Rebay Lab, as Saman Tabatabaee won the award last year. Pressure’s on for the next undergraduate student who joins the lab…..
August 2019 – Juana goes to MIT! Past and present members of the Rebay Lab got together to say goodbye and good luck to Juana Delao. After 3+ years as a UChicago undergraduate researcher in the lab, Juana is starting graduate school in the MIT Biology Ph.D. program.
