Congratulations to Heidi MacLean for successfully defending her dissertation on March 31, 2015!

Graduate students Kate Augustine and Laura Sligar have been busy with outreach this month! On November 8th, 2014 they brought the Caterpillar Experiment to share with 4th, 5th, and 6th grade girls at the Females Excelling More in Mathematics, Engineering, and Science day camp held on UNC’s campus. Kate also has been busy helping to organize the inaugural Scientific Research Education Network (SciREN) event in the Research Triangle at the Museum of Natural Science in Raleigh. SciREN is a graduate student-led event that aims to connect local STEM researchers and educators throughout the Triangle to foster the dissemination of current research and ultimately enhance the science literacy of today’s youth. Laura participated in the event and brought her own lesson plan and some caterpillars to share with the 200 local educators who attended the event. Great work Kate and Laura!

Congratulations to Jessica Higgins for successfully defending her dissertation on October 10, 2014!

Graduate students Heidi MacLean and Kate Augustine have recently returned from a trip abroad to attend the Pieris Jamboree Workshop 2014 August 5-8 in Stockholm, Sweden. During this workshop, Heidi and Kate learned the latest bioinformatic skills from Dr. Chris Wheat’s lab at Stockholm University and helped to annotate the Pieris napi genome.http://www.christopherwheat.net/

PI Joel Kingsolver along with graduate students Kate Augustine, Jessica Higgins, and Heidi MacLean all attended the 2014 Evolution meeting in Raleigh, NC June 20-24. Kate and Heidi presented posters while Joel and Jessica gave talks.

The Kingsolver Lab finished off the school year by visiting 7 Durham County Public Schools and visiting 31 2nd grade classrooms to talk about life cycles of butterflies and moths. Everyone had a great time and learned a lot!

Congrats to undergraduate Kati Moore on her acceptance into the Nicholas School for the Environment at Duke University!

The Manduca sexta caterpillars just can’t seem to stay in the lab! They visited the Moorehead Planetarium after school program on February 18 so that 40 students could learn about their life history and participate in the thermal sensitivity of feeding experiment.

The Manduca sexta caterpillars were out on the town again as graduate students Heidi MacLean, Jessica Higgins, and Kate Augustine participated in Darwin Day 2014 on February 15 at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences. Museum visitors were encouraged to hold the caterpillars as they learned about their life cycle and were even able to participate in an experiment testing the thermal sensitivity of caterpillar feeding. The event was a huge success with over 4000 visitors to the museum that day!