Multiple lab members will be presenting research at the annual Molecular Psychiatry conference, this year in San Francisco from October 17-19. Learn about our work with the role of regulatory DNA in disease (Jason and Tracy), mechanistic insights of Dlx regulation (Rinaldo), Chd8 mutations (Cesar), and maternal immune activation (Alex and Karol). For more info, click here.
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After graduating from UC Davis with majors in NPB and Psychology and over a year
working under the supervision of Postdoc Cesar Canales in Chd8 related projects,
undergrad researcher Hafsa Mir, was recently recruited as a Junior Specialist in
a neighbor lab in the Center for Neuroscience. She will be joining the lab of
Dr. David Richman and be working under the direct supervision of Dr. Lucia
Borges on the development and study of animal models of disorders of the
neuromuscular junction. Good luck in your new role Hafsa, we will miss you!
Congratulations to Nord lab Neuroscience PhD student Ayanna Wade for being awarded a NIH F31 predoctoral fellowship! She will continue her work on understanding the link between mutations to the Chd8 gene and neurodevelopmental disorders including autism and intellectual disability.
Nord Lab postdoc Jess Haigh is taking the next steps in her career and moving back home to the UK to do it. After a successful two years in sunny Davis, she is back under the brooding skies of her hometown of Leeds. She will be joining the lab of Dr. Beatrice Filippi at the University of Leeds, working on brain-metabolism signaling. Good luck, Jess! We’ll miss you!
Our collaboration with the Rubenstein Lab at UCSF on the function of Dlx TFs in lineage specification of basal ganglia and cortical interneurons is out in Cell Reports. Congrats to co-first author Rinaldo Catta-Preta, PhD student in the Nord lab, who did the computational heavy lifting and statistic analysis required to show how Dlx TFs work through genomic binding, chromatin regulation, and transcriptional activation or repression. Read the paper here.
Bradley Jenner, Junior undergraduate student at UC Davis majoring in Biotechnology, began an internship at Nord Lab in July 2019. He will work with Rinaldo and be trained in bioinformatics/computational biology, eventually contributing to a number of computational projects that address biological questions. Check out his personal website here, and connect with him on Twitter, Github, and LinkedIn!
Rinaldo Catta-Preta received a 1-year AAAS-sponsored membership through the AAAS/Science Program for Excellence in Science. He will be part of the AAAS community, participate in AAAS initiatives, and receive the weekly Science journals at no cost. By awarding these sponsored memberships, this program recognizes the achievements of selected students and young investigators, and it enhances their educational experience and laboratory performance by providing them with links to leading scientific resources as well as connections to colleagues worldwide.
Rinaldo Catta-Preta received a GSR Summer Award aimed at supporting graduate research in engineering, computer sciences, and disciplines with engineering-related applications and methods, such as materials science and nanotechnology, computational science, bioinformatics, and information technology.
Postdoc Karol Cichewicz’s abstract was selected for a talk at a nanosymposium Behavioral Analysis of Developmental Disorders at the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) meeting in Chicago. He will present our work on how maternal immune activation perturbs transcriptional co-expression networks during corticogenesis. Meet with Karol and other members of the Nord lab at SfN.
Graduate student Linda Su-Feher’s abstract was selected for a talk at the nanosymposium “Genomic Engineering Using Enhancers or CRISPR” at the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) meeting in Chicago. She will present our work on developing a functional enhancer assay to test DNA sequences for enhancer activity in vivo in mouse brain. Meet with Linda and other members of the Nord lab at SfN.