News

2023

December 2023

• Congrats to Ethan Nguyen for winning the Campbell Undergraduate Student Award for Outstanding Research and Alex Borowsky for winning the Bailey Farms Outstanding Graduate Student Research Award at the CEPCEB Annual Awards Ceremony!

November 2023

• Congrats to Jeoffrey George for being awarded an OASIS postdoctoral fellowship!

June 2023

• Welcome to CEPCEB REU Student Eric Luera who is joining us for the summer! Eric is working with Alex on the effects of nutrient status on rice root suberization. 

• Congrats to Bailey-Serres lab undergraduates Jackie Torres, Kristina Baker, and Gabriel Chavez on graduating! 

• Adeel Zafar presents his previous work at the RPA Early Career Symposium

May 2023

• Graduate student Alex Borowsky presents his work on suberin in rice drought response at the International Symposium on Root Development in Ghent, Belgium

April 2023

• Adeel Zafar joins the lab a postdoc to study root responses to drought as part of the Plasticity project. Welcome Adeel!

February 2023

• Tania Chancellor visits us from Uta Pazkowski's lab to work collaboratively on the Plasticity Project

• Former postdoc Mauricio Reynoso visits the lab from Argentina.

• Graduate student Alex Borowsky wins a CNAS Science of Sustainability Fellowship.

2022

November 2022

• Plant Biology PhD Students Rachel Strout and Haley Larsen finished their rotations, and Gaby Salazar Soriano starts her rotation in the Bailey-Serres Lab. Welcome Gaby!

• Farewell to postdoc Matt Prior. Best of luck in North Carolina, Matt!

September 2022

• Sjors van der Horst will speak on his PhD research (Utrecht U) showing "plant ribosomes are a sucrose sensor" at the Cold Spring Harbor meeting on Translational Control. 

• Undergraduate Andra Vacaru was accepted to the Loma Linda University School of Medicine. Congrats Andra!

August 2022

• Plant Biology PhD Student Rachel Strout joins us for a rotation. 

• Both Jackie and Gabriel were awarded UCOP Global Food Initiative Fellowships! Congrats!

• Caroline Buhler heads to UCLA as an undergraduate.

July 2022

• Alex went to Cold Spring Harbor to support the Plant Course as a TA. Julia and Garo also taught students in the course t a TRAP and INTACT lab. 

June 2022

• We welcomed Carolina Buhler to the lab through the CEPCEB REU Program. Buhler is working with Jeoffrey to study biomolecular condensates under hypoxia.

• Jerry was awarded a UCEAP Global Scholarship to conduct research in France for the Fall 2022 semester. This scholarship is awarded to the top 100 UCEAP applicants each year.

• Andra and Jasmine both graduated with their Bachelor's degrees with honors. Congratulations Andra and Jasmine!

May 2022

• Jasmine was admitted to the UCR School of Medicine through the Early Assurance Program! Congrats Jasmine!

• Julia was named UCR's Faculty Research Lecturer for 2022-23, the highest honor bestowed by the Academic Senate!

• Our Rice Root Response Atlas is published in Developmental Cell! 

March 2022

• Congratulations Garo! Postdoc Garo Akmakjian was awarded a NIFA Postdoctoral Fellowship to study the impact of drought on the rice root microbiome.

January 2022 

• Welcome Sjors and Janty! New postdoc Sjors Van Der Horst joins us from the Netherlands with an EMBO Fellowship, and Plant Biology graduate student Janty Woojuh joins us for a rotation. 

2021

July 2021

• Alex B. was awarded a USDA NIFA Predoctoral Fellowship!

• Jeoffrey George joins the lab as a postdoc.

• Lab attends the Plant Biology Worldwide Summit Online 2021. Julia and Maureen presented in a workshop describing NSF NRT Opportunities in Plant Science and Alex B presented a poster - "A field-grown rice translatome atlas"

June 2021

• Andra Vacaru awarded a Chancellor's Research Fellowship! Congrats Andra! 

May 2021 

• Andra Vacaru presents at the UCR Undergraduate Research Symposium

April 2021 

• First lab in-person get together since June 2020. This time in honor Elaine and Alek.

March 2021 

• Very fond farewell to Elaine Yeung, who leaves the lab after a postdoc. Elaine  will soon be at Rothamstead Research, UK on an NSF-PGRP fellowship.

• March 2021 - Alek Kettenburg  recieves his MS in Plant Biology. "Phenotypic and Molecular Consequences of OsPSTOL1 Ectopic Expression in Wheat".

January 2021 - Welcome Thomas!

• Visiting graduate student Thomas Roulé joins the lab to work on long noncoding RNAs.  Thomas is from Martin Crespi's lab  at the Saclay in Paris and joins us a Fulbright Fellowship for 6 months.

Andra wins Chancellor's Research Fellowship, 2021

2020

October 2020 - Plant Genomes in a Changing Environment Conference

• Julia and Alex Borowsky both present talks in the Abiotic Adaptation section of this virtual conference, sharing our progress on understanding environmental response networks in rice. 

July 2020 - Our UG intern from UCD returns as a Grad Student to UCR

• Welcome back Annalise Gushue, prior summer UG researcher and now UCR Plant Biology grad student. Enjoy your rotation, despite COVID19.

• Nature News and Views by Julia.

June 2020 - New Publications and Goodbyes 

• Farewell Thanin Chantarachot. We hoe you enjoyed your party that included physically distanced croquet on the UCR quad. Wishing you rapid success on the academic  job market in Thailand. We will miss you. 

• Thanin Chantarachot, with prior group member Reed Sorenson (U of Utah) co-publish with other collaborators in Nature Plants. Their work highlights a group of RNA helicases that identify stress-responsive mRNAs and targets them for degradation shortly after they are synthesized, under non-stress conditions. Using TRAP-seq to monitor ribosome-associated mRNAs, the study shows linkage between dynamics in translation and turnover. 

• PNAS Commentary led by Garo Akmajian. 

• Managing with COVID-19: Our group continues to "hang in there" with remote research and the first NSF Plants3D NRT Project Design Course.  Our coping strategy is to meet almost daily to share new data analyses, methods and recent papers. We also have attended several on-line meetings together, such as the Plant Cell Atlas workshops.

May 2020 - Recognition for Lab Members! 

• Elaine Yeung was awarded an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship to study the interaction of post-submergence recovery and immunity at Rothamsted Research. 

• Alex Borowsky received an Honorable Mention from the NSF GRFP and a Plants3D NRT fellowship. 

• Andra Vacaru received a Sean and Stella Harper Endowed Scholarship. 

• Isabelle Do was a Finalist in the Regeneron ISEF 2020 Science Fair.

January 2020 - Welcome Garo - Garo Ackmakjian joins the lab to begin work on the Plasticity Project 2.0

Farewell Thanin - June 7, 2020

2019

November 8, 2019 - Julia's Review published in Nature! "Genetic strategies to improve crop yields". Describing how plant science can lead to a more sustainable and productive future for agriculture. With Jane Parker, Lisa Ainsworth, Giles Oldroyd, and Julian Schroeder https://rdcu.be/bWqGF

September 19,  2019 - Lab research published today in Science! Congrats to Maurico, Germain, and collaborators at Davis and Emory. Evolutionary flexibility in flooding response circuitry in angiosperms. 

September 12, 2019 - Congrats Travis Lee, on your future Plant Cell paper. Travis was a lab PhD student Through June 2018  and is now in the Ecker group at The Salk Institute. Check out Travis' mammoth data set on our Data page.

September 1, 2019 - Lab bids farewell to Postdoc Miguel Lopez who is returning to Spain. Thanks for all your hard work, Miguel! Summer undergraduate students Annalise Gushue, Esperanza Garcia, and Carlee Krann wrap up their hard work.

August 3, 2019 - Lab research presented at Plant Biology 2019 in San Jose, California. Presentations by Alek Kettenburg and Sonja Winte.

June 2, 2019 - International Society of Plant Anaerobiosis. Presentations by Julia and Miguel Lopez. 

May 12, 2019 - Lab research presented at the Keystone symposium, "Climate Change-Linked Stress Tolerance in Plants"  organized by Julian Schroeder (UCSD)  and Julia Bailey-Serres (UCR). Highlights: Resilience from genomic selection and newly defined loci. 

May 6-8, 2019 - Lab research presented  At the Forefront of Plant Research conference in Barcelona, Spain. Press Release. Highlight: Single-cell sequencing providing developmental pseudotime.

April 25, 2019 - Alex B. was accepted to the Cold Spring Harbor Frontiers and Techniques in Plant Science Course.

March 28, 2019 - Welcome back Elaine! Elaine Yeung did her Master's in the lab before going to Utrecht for her PhD followed by a postdoctoral position at Rothamsted Research in the UK.