Meet the 2024 Presidential Members (Part 2)

The Presidential Membership Initiative was launched in 2020 as a way for the Genetics Society of America to invite talented and creative individuals from diverse backgrounds into our community. We are pleased to introduce the next cohort of Presidential Members. Throughout 2024, they will network with one another and with other Society and Board members, participate in GSA Conferences, and be valued additions to our community. Welcome, Presidential Members!

We are introducing Presidential Members this week, so be sure to check back and meet your new colleagues.

Kayla Ly

Undergraduate Student, University of California, Irvine
My research aims to discover novel genes contributing to transposable element-mediated heterochromatin formation in Drosophila melanogaster.

Kevin Sule

Postdoctoral Researcher, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
My research work aims to elucidate the mechanisms of nuclear envelope budding, which is an emerging nuclear export process for large macromolecular complexes. Using Drosophila as my model, I plan to uncover key players involved in the physical aspects of this pathway and its associated regulatory mechanisms.

Lexi Papamechail

Undergraduate Student, Bridgewater State University
I am investigating the interaction between the expression of Jasmonic acid in the mustard plant, Arabidopsis thaliana, and the infection of root knot nematodes. I also am investigating the impact of metal contamination and point in the growing season on the microbiome of Salicornia depressa.

Maksym Dankovskyy

Graduate Student, Arizona State University
Our lab focuses on tissue regeneration in Drosophila following necrotic wounding.

Miyauna Incarnato

Graduate Student, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
My research investigates how the interactions between climate change, predator-prey dynamics, and phenotypic evolution are vital for predicting the resilience of populations to shifting climatic variables and building models to also predict these shifts. By using Paramecium caudatum and their two nuclei, I am investigating these variables by testing for genetic variation in trait plasticity in response to temperature across genetically diverse lineages in the presence and absence of predators, assess whether genomic plasticity via changes in copy number of loci during macronuclear formation underlies adaptive trait plasticity, and evaluating if including trait plasticity improves our temperature predictive models of trait evolution to climate change.

Nikita Divekar

Postdoctoral Researcher, University of California, Berkeley
I aim to discover factors required for heritable epigenetic silencing in human cells through CRISPR Screens, and further expand on these studies to build novel epigenetic editors.

Stephan Baehr

Postdoctoral Researcher, Arizona State University
I study mutations of many flavors: DNA, RNA, and epigenetic. I seek to quantify their importance to things like the biology of aging and CRISPR genome editing.

Tamsen Dunn

Graduate Student, San Diego State University
I develop new computational methods for the study of polyploidy and evolution.

Toheed Olalekan Oyerinde

Graduate Student, University of Medical Sciences, Ondo, Nigeria
I study gene-environment interactions in brain disorders and the role for metal neurotoxicity.

Trevor Mugoya

Graduate Student, San Diego State University
I study the development of reproducible Snakemake pipelines for the genomics of the domestication of hops.

Xinmi Zhang

Postdoctoral Researcher, Scripps College
I am working on understanding the mechanism of a selfish B chromosome called Paternal Sex Ratio (PSR), which can cause paternal genome elimination in the early embryo of the parasitoid wasp, Nasonia vitripennis, turning the diploid female into the haploid male. I did time series RNA-sequencing at different stage of wasp development to find the expression pattern of wasp normal genes and PSR genes.

Not pictured:

Camryn Schmelzer
Damilola Oloyede
Jasmine Xi
Jordan Hieronymus
Kenza Lahbabi
Nikita Divekar
Olayinka Asafa
Priyanshi Shah
Raya Esplin
Saul Landaverde
Seema Plaisier
Selamawit Asfaw