We welcome Ms. Mengwei (Carol) Hu and Mr. Jonathan Radda to join our lab for their second lab rotation in the 2018-2019 academic year!

Carol is a first-year BBS graduate student of the MCGD track. She conducted her undergraduate research in Dr. Alan Jian Zhu’s lab at Peking University, using Drosophila as a model organism to identify new regulatory components of Hedgehog signaling. With a broad research interest from developmental biology to immunology, she seeks to examine the genome architecture of neutrophil during its development and immune response with our high-resolution imaging-based techniques, in collaboration with Dr. Jun Lu’s lab. Outside of lab, Carol is a fan of sports, including running, swimming and yoga. She enjoys music of various genres, from modern musicals to classical music.

Jonathan is also a first-year student in the BBS program and of the MCGD track. He earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Southern Oregon University. During his undergraduate summers, he studied Drosophila egg chamber basement membrane dynamics at The University of Chicago, and zebrafish heart development at the University of California, Los Angeles. He also studied atmospheric chemistry at Portland State University and worked as an industrial intern at Carestream Health, supporting thin film production. Jonathan asks: How does biological information support robust development of functional organisms and at the same time remain flexible enough to allow evolution? He is excited to learn the imaging-based omics techniques in the Wang Lab and to deploy them towards answering this question. In his spare time, Jonathan enjoys and creates music. He is also a poet and aspiring writer of (philosophical) fiction.

We welcome Mr. Mark Pownall, first-year BBS graduate student of the MCGD track, to rotate in our lab! While an undergraduate at William & Mary, Mark studied early neural development and polyploidy in Xenopus species. Mark is excited to work with imaging-based omics techniques in the Wang lab to explore the spatial organization of the genome and transcriptome. Outside of the lab, Mark enjoys hiking and running. Welcome aboard, Mark!

Wang Lab welcomes Mr. Yanfang Lu, the first postgraduate research associate and visiting graduate student of the lab. In his undergraduate study, Yanfang majored in Pharmaceutical Preparations at Henan University, China. Then he studied at Southern Medical University, China in a master’s degree program, majoring in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. During that time, his main research direction was to explore the mechanism of radioresistance of C. elegans using genetic approaches such as CRISPR/Cas9. He then went on to pursue a PhD at the same university, and his current visit to Yale is part of his PhD training. He is interested in using a combination of high-throughput sequencing and imaging approaches to study developmental processes. Yanfang is an adventurer at heart and likes to challenge himself, both inside and outside of lab. In his spare time, he plays pool and computer games. Yanfang has in fact been working part-time in the lab as a collaborator since December, 2017. We are glad to officially host Yanfang in the new academic year starting today. Welcome, Yanfang!

We are glad to welcome Ms. Angela Su, the first ever visiting student of our lab. Angela is currently a sophomore pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Diagnostic Genetic Sciences at the University of Connecticut. Interested in immunogenetics and cell biology, she is eager to assist in the Wang laboratory and is incredibly grateful for the hands-on learning experience. She hopes to gain a deeper understanding of various techniques used in the biomedical field while working alongside other lab members. In her free time, she enjoys discovering music of all genres and is currently learning to sew and propagate plants.

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Wang has received Yale Liver Center 2018-2019 Pilot Feasibility Grant. This grant will support our pilot investigation of the three-dimensional (3D) genomic organization and 3D transcriptomics in aging liver and age-related liver diseases.

After a very successful rotation and careful consideration, our third rotation student Bing Yang has now decided to join Wang Lab for her dissertation research! This concludes our 2017-2018 academic year graduate recruitment with a 100% retention rate of all three outstanding rotation students, who had hundreds of potential thesis labs to choose from here at Yale. Again we welcome Bing, as well as Miao and Yanbo, to join our young lab and to lead an exciting journey of research in the following years!