We condemn, in the strongest terms, the systemic racism that is pervasive in this country, and indeed, in the Academy itself. We condemn police murder and brutality against people of color, and we cannot tolerate racist and classist policies that assume the wealth and privilege of graduate students/postdocs in our university. We must do better and make EEB at UCI the inclusive place we want it to be. It starts with our local lab environment, and the German Lab remains committed to anti-racism. #BlackLivesMatterDepartment
of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
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Spanning from the molecular to the whole-organism level, research in our laboratory focuses on the energy acquisition strategies of organisms. In short, we are interested in how organisms make a living and the consequences of different energy acquisition strategies for ecosystem fluxes. Most of us work in the marine environment, but some prefer terrestrial & freshwater systems. Applying to grad school in biology? Here is a guide our lab developed. News: October 2024: We are so excited to announce that Dr. Karina Brocco French (PhD 2024 from our lab) was selected as a NOAA Knauss Fellow in Marine Policy! You can read more about that here. It was always Karina's dream to work in science policy in the federal government and now she will be doing that in the legislative branch. When one wants to pursue a PhD, they can find the "perfect" fit from a research standpoint, but it may not be great from a mentoring standpoint. The mentoring matters so much. In this case, I have never worked in policy, but we catered the mentoring towards Karina's goals, and she is now pursuing her dream job. Enjoy the work, get the mentoring you need, and chase your dreams! September 2024: So many things have happened in the last six months, I hope I can get them all. First off, congrats to Dr. Matea Djokic! Dr. Djokic successfully defended her dissertation in August 2024. She is the sixth PhD from the lab. She expertly defended her work on microbiomes in stomachless fishes! She also won a Eugene Maughan Graduate Student Scholarship from the Western Division of the American Fisheries Society in addition to some other smaller awards. She is doing amazing! Next, Nefertiti Smith Christman won a Dissertation Year Fellowship from the American Association of University Women. This is a national level award and we are so happy for her! It allows Nefertiti to focus on her research in her final year. Then, Newton Hood won Best Student Presentation at the Western Society of Malacologists meeting in August. He delivered an excellent talk on dietary impacts on gonadotropin releasing hormone in red abalone. Finally, Daniel Rankins won a Rose Hills Foundation Science and Engineering Fellowship! This is a huge honor and comes with quite a financial boost. Way to go Daniel! This year is a good one in the lab! We welcome Valentina Peña, as she starts her voyage to earn her PhD. A new AI tool called Notebook LM (NotebookLM | Note Taking & Research Assistant Powered by AI) is doing crazy things. We put in German and Bittong (2009), and it returned an intelligent podcast on the paper. It is kind of scary. You can listen to that here. March 2024: Dr. Michelle Herrera (PhD 2023) was just awarded a Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellowship to work at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (UCSD)! This is very exciting. The Chancellor's Fellowship comes with all the same benefits of the UC President's Postdoctoral Fellowship, so this is huge for Michelle's advancement and career. Congrats, Michelle! Kaitlyn Steinmann was awarded a Undergraduate Research Oppotunity Program Travel Award to present her poster at the American Physiological Summit in April 2024 in Long Beach! Her poster is on digestive enzyme activities in prickleback fishes with different diets. See you at the APS Summit! Dr. Beck Wehrle (PhD 2018) will start as a tenure-track professor at LeMoyne College in New York in July! Congrats to Beck! Finally, Valentina Peña will join the lab as a PhD student in the fall! You can read about Valentina's current position here: Research Scholars… | The Graduate School of the Stowers Institute February 2024: Special day! Dr. Karina Brocco French defended her PhD and did an amazing job. Her dissertation was on how the microbiomes of sea urchin larvae change across ontogeny and in response to the pollutant TBT, which is in antifouling paints and persists in the environment. She also did an amazing meta-analysis on what we know about TBT globally. She is the 5th PhD from our lab, and is on the market for a policy position. Onward and upward for members of our lab! December 2023: As the year windes down, we had some more good news. First, Nefertiti Smith Christman won best graduate student presentation at the Southwest Organismal Biology meeting in November. We only recently got the news. Way to go, Nefertiti! Then, four undergraduates won funding from the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program at UCI! Congrats to Jordan Buckner, Kaitlyn Steinmann, Shannon Stolaruck and Harleen Thandi! August 2023: Is there a doctor in the house?! Dr. Michelle Herrera defended her dissertation! Congrats, Dr. Herrera. She conducted quite the dissertation on digestion, metabolism and the microbiome of fishes. She is the fourth PhD out of the lab. Then, we got two papers accepted! Daniel Rankins is Lead author on a snazzy new paper that shows that L. sagitta cannot digest algae like its better-studied intertidal relatives. That paper includes Dr. Michelle Herrera, Newton Hood, and Dr. Joseph Heras. Then, we have a paper showing that the genome of the stichaeid fish, Anoplarchus purpurescens, reflects its carnivous dietary habits! That includes Dr. Herrera, Dr. Heras, and two colleagues from Soka University. See our publications page. Finally, K. Clerre Rafanan (CSU Fullerton) wrapped up her 10 weeks in the lab as an American Physiological Society Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow. She steadfastly and expertly worked through nine different enzyme assays on C. violaceus guts, examining how they responded to laboratory diets. She will present her work at the APS meeting in April 2024. Way to go, Clerre! April 2023: Matea Djokic cleaned up this month, winning a Society for Freshwater Science Graduate Student Conservation Award, and a Southern California Academy of Sciences Research Award. Way to go, Matea! Michelle Herrera and I presented posters at the American Physiological Society Summit. We need to bring more comparative physiology to the biomedical world. Welcome to new undergraduate researchers Tatum Osborne, Shannon Stolaruk, and Pearl Choi! Undergraduate training is a big part of our mission and creates a life-long love for research. As part of this, we will be hosting Kirsten Clerre Rafanan from Santiago Canyon College this summer! Clerre won an American Physiological Society Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship and will be with us for 10 weeks! Welcome to Clerre. March 2023: Three students advanced to candidacy this week: Nefertiti Smith Christman, Newton Hood, and Matea Djokic are all now PhD Candidates! Passing your advancement exam is one of the great challenges of earning a PhD and they all did amazing! Congrats to all! These are the recent news stories. Check out the "People" page for links to each person's personal page, which will have more individual news. We are always recruiting graduate students. Please contact Dr. German if you are interested in pursuing your PhD in Nutritional Ecology and/or Marine Biology at UCI. Are you an undergrad interested in doing research in our lab? Bio 199 Application |