Program Spotlight

I’ve been thrilled to explore octopus arm regeneration over the last few years in the Ragsdale lab. Working on a novel system has required collaboration across DRSB, drawing from the vibrant community on campus as well as with the renowned resources available at the MBL. My first trip to the MBL was as part of the quantitative biology bootcamp, which is the first experience I had at UChicago, where I was exposed to coding in R while making friends I still depend on. This was followed early in my PhD with a higher education course at MBL, “Stem Cells and Regeneration”, where I got to meet with and learn from the experts of my field. I was also fortunate enough to return on a Whitman fellowship with several collaborators from around the world, building a cephalopod community at 4 AM injecting euprymna squid embryos and potluck dinners in the cabins. These connections made at MBL have been crucial to building a scientific community, something I’ve been fortunate to explore at conferences in Portugal, Spain, and Vienna. Beyond MBL, I have been supported by the DRSB Data club and the Dev Neuro seminar series, where I have presented to a friendly audience and gotten feedback from across the developmental biology community, as I define a new model of neural regeneration.