news

Julene joins the lab

Julene is a third year undergraduate student, she’ll be working with Michelle to test out perturbations to tubule cell number. We’re excited to have her on board.

Michelle attends & presents at the AI & Digital Biology Symposium

Michelle attended and presented at this local conference hosted by our neighbors at the Allen! It was a great opportunity for her to learn about what’s going on in the space of AI for biological uses and for her to present her recent progress on her segmentation model and downstream analyses.

2nd(?) annual pumpkin picking with the Kwon lab

Thanks to Annabel’s fearless leading and shepherding, the Kwon & Vásquez labs took a trip out to Snohomish for to pick apples and pumpkins.

Hayden is in her “PhD candidate” era 🌟🎤🌟

Hayden passed her general exam! She worked incredibly hard in preparing her proposal, presentation, and studying for the diverse questions her committee might ask her – and it paid off, she gave a real “mic drop” performance, so to speak! Meanwhile the rest of the lab was excited to celebrate Hayden with a custom Taylor Swift inspired Labubu.

 

2nd annual Golden Gardens picnic with the Kwon Lab

We had a lovely afternoon picnic with the Kwon lab at Golden Gardens.

TWO rotation students

The lab welcomes two rotation students this fall quarter: Gavin Wheeler & Val Browning! We are super excited to have them both in the lab with us!

Marcel updates and other news of note

Marcel’s taking decided two things: first, that he needs to start training for his half marathon, and second, that he needs to take an active role in his mentorship of Claudia. Also, Sonny got an update to reflect his new home at LAFC. The lab is excited to hopefully see his namesake play vs. the Sounders next season!

Megan presents a poster at the Undergraduate Research Symposium

Megan had the opportunity to present her work to the broader UW community. After presenting her work at NWSDB earlier this year, this presentation was easy as pie!

1st inaugural “hang” with the Akamatsu Lab 🎳

After some intense cat herding by Valerie and Vesta – we had our first ever hang with the (aka)Matsu Lab (UW Biology). They think about how the actin cytoskeleton produces force at a much smaller scale than we do – so we thought it might be fun to hang out! We went bowling – it was great fun and many of us improved a lot!

Claudia presented at the Cell Contact & Adhesion GRC in Switzerland! 🇨🇭

Claudia got to present the lab’s work at the Cell Contact & Adhesion GRC, which also happened to be in front of her PhD and postdoc advisors. It was fun to connect with friends and make new ones. And it was energizing and exciting to see all the cool work happening around the world, and to get feedback on the lab’s projects. Also, the location was unbeatable!

Graduations galore! 🎓🥲

Wowee – Jade graduated from UW and Melissa & Rishik graduated from their respective high schools. We have lots of feelings: we are so proud of their achievements, we are sad to see them go, and we are excited to see what they do next!

Michelle is a Curci PhD Fellow!

Michelle earned the departmental and institutional nomination for an invitation to apply to be a Curci PhD Fellow…and she earned it! Many thanks to the Shurl & Kay Curci Foundation for supporting Michelle and her studies!

 

The lab makes their annual pilgrimage to NWSDB

We made our annual trip to Friday Harbor Labs for the Northwest Regional Society for Developmental Biology meeting at Friday Harbor Labs. Michelle & Claudia gave talks and EVERYONE presented a poster! It was a privilege to get to share our work with this community and to hear about all the fun & impactful science happening in the region.

Marcel helps us cull the lab stocks

In order to maintain a manageable size of lab fly stocks, Marcel helped us cull unused fly stocks & spearheaded making new stock labels.

We celebrated the end of fall quarter by having a potluck with the Bryant Lab. We had pizza, mac & cheese, Salvadorian quesadilla, an elaborate salad, macarons, tiramisu, and two chaotic puppies.

• • (left puppy) Hibou Andre Cissé Konaté Vásquez Shipway
  • (right puppy) Gareth Cheez-It Bryant

The lab turns two and two new lab members!

On January 3rd, the lab turned 2, and we also welcomed two new lab members, Gabe and Jade! They are both UW undergraduates and they’re working with Isabel and Hayden respectively!

Incubators in the wild

All our fly incubators have names – and it’s exciting to see their namsakes in the wild. Michelle spotted a wild Seedot, and Claudia spotted a wild Son Heung-min!

David Baker wins the Nobel Prize – and we get to celebrate!

David Baker was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with Demis Hassabis and John Jumper for their grounding breaking work in computational protein design.

There was a celebration at the IPD! Claudia unfortunately missed said celebration, but she was flying to Baltimore to give a talk at JHU Cell Biology Department on Mike Piacentino’s invitation. It was so much fun!

Pumpkin admiration with the Kwon Lab

Some of us were available to go admire some pumpkins and fall weather with the Kwon Lab.

Michelle Chicas passes her General Exam! 💫💫

It was a lot of work and she, in the words of one of her committee members, “knocked it out of the park!”.

Hayden and Claudia attend TEMTIA 11

Hayden and Claudia ventured to the other side of Lake Union to hear about current topics in EMT and MET in cancer and development. It was a treat to have all these experts in our “backyard”and to have the opportunity to meet with them and hear them share their work!

A story of Agar troubles

A needed and loved reagent in the Vasquez Lab are the apple juice agar plates that we use to collect Drosophila embryos. Vesta prepares them in mass. The troubles began in September when one after another autoclave failed to dissolve the agar properly. After consulting with experts, determining the autoclaves are cursed, saying some blessings, considering different sacrifices, avoiding the autoclaves entirely, Vesta succeeded in making plates again. YAY FOR ALL OF US, and thank you Vesta!!!

 

An exciting visit!

We had our youngest, to date, scientist visitor come check out our set up. She figured out how to differentiate male and female flies from each other!

Capstone achievements of the summer

Michelle attended an incredibly intense workshop on AI and machine learning at the Marine Biological Laboratory (Woods Hole, MA). She’s applying what she’s learned to train a model to help her segment and track cells.

Makenna presented their work this summer at the ISCRM undergraduate symposium. They gave an excellent poster!

Melissa presented her work at the BRIGHT UP symposium in a well-delivered lightning talk. The lab got to meet Dubs! Good luck Melissa during your senior year!

 

Out with Virgo season, it’s Libra season!

We celebrated some birthdays! (And now we’re wondering when Marcel’s birthday is 🧐)

in other news…

We also determined that the lab has the ideal balance of chaos and order muppets (50/50).

Claudia named a Cancer Consortium New Investigator 2024 🎉

The Vásquez lab received a New Investigator Award from the Hutch/University of Washington/Seattle Children’s Cancer Consortium to use the developing renal system of the fruit fly as a model to identify the fundamental cellular processes driving loose collective cell migration and MET – which are both essential developmental programs and steps in metastasis.

Seizing the summer days with the Kwon Lab

Together with our friends in the Kwon Lab , we took to Golden Gardens to grill and have a beautiful afternoon.

We also went kayaking near UW!  Everyone survived, some of us even had fun!

Highschool interns – Melissa and Rishik

Melissa and Rishik are back for another summer in the Vásquez Lab. Rishik is working with Isabel and Melissa is working with Vesta.

They both still like boba.

Megan Yi awarded Mary Gates Research Scholarship!

Congratulations to Megan for receiving the prestigious Mary Gates Research Scholarship! The Mary Gates Research Scholarships are competitive awards intended to enhance the educational experiences of undergraduate students at the University of Washington while they are engaged in research. Yay Megan!

Makenna Carnahan selected as ISCRM Undergraduate Fellow!

Congratulations to Makenna for being awarded this competitive fellowship intended to provide foundational research experiences for undergraduate students. Makenna was selected from talented pool of undergraduate students. Yay Makenna! [stay tuned for news release]

Pew biomedical scholars funds the lab!

Claudia is selected as a 2024 Pew Biomedical Scholar, to learn more about her and the other scholars you can click here and the news release. Yay Claudia!

 

We’ve come a long way since last summer when the fly room became functional, to having all fly stations in use at the same time!

Makenna and Megan present at the UW  Undergraduate Research Symposium

Makenna and Megan beautifully and effectively presented their projects at the undergraduate research symposium!

The lab welcomes Isabel and Hayden!

We are so excited that Isabel Mejia Natividad and Hayden Gizinski are joining the Vásquez lab!!!

What’s on deck? ☀️

Summer! We’re excited to have Rishik and Melissa joining us again this summer and to incorporate our new graduate students!