Genetics and Developmental Biology Retreat

March 6, 2026

The Genetics and Developmental Biology (GDB) Area of Concentration gathered on February 19, 2026, in the Academic Rotunda for the 2nd Annual GDB Retreat. Titas Grabauskas and Zengshuo Mo were selected from the submitted abstracts to present a talk on their research. This year's GDB guest speaker was Summer Thyme, PhD from UMass Chan Medical School. The Thyme lab studies neurodevelopment, Autism and Down Syndrome in zebrafish, and Dr. Thyme is a terrific science communicator and motivator! She was a Pew Biomedical Scholar, and recipient of both the NIH Directors DP2 New Innovator Award, and a NIH Transformational Research Award (R01). The title of her talk was: "Zebrafish as a Platform to Discover Drug Treatments for Neurodevelopmental Disorders". To find out more about Summer's latest research, please see her lab's website: https://www.umassmed.edu/thymelab/. Following the speakers a poster session was held for the GDB students to present their research.

42^nd Annual Biomedical Science Graduate Student Research Day

August 20, 2025

The 42^nd Annual Biomedical Science Graduate Student Research Day took place on August 20, 2025.  The following students from The Genetics and Developmental Biology Graduate Program presented posters, Sanjucta Adak (Beaudoin Lab), Allison Andrade (Miura Lab), Rachael Massey (Pinter Lab), Martina Miranda (Li Lab)  and Zengshuo Mo (Guo Lab).  In addition, an oral presentation was given by Sarah Alshawi from the Beaudoin Lab.  The day ended with announcements and award presentations.  The Department of Genetics and Genome Sciences was proud to have a faculty and former student recognized.  Dr. Pedro Miura received the 2025 Osborn Award for excellence in Biomedical Science Graduate teaching and Dr. Nagham Farah received the 2025 Henderson Award for the best dissertation in the Biomedical Science Ph.D. program. 

More details at UConn Today