Welcome to the Whitney Lab!

Welcome to the Whitney Lab!

Published: Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Whitney Laboratory has several new faces this Fall!
Please take a moment to read about our newest colleagues below, and join me in welcoming them to Whitney. Welcome, newcomers!

Milou Bron is an exchange student from the Netherlands. She is studying BSc Animal Management, major Wildlife Management, at the University of Applied Sciences Van Hall Larenstein Leeuwarden. Milou is doing a 6 month research internship with Dr. Osborne in his lab. Her project will be about the differences between saltmarshes and mangroves when it comes to UV light and (benthic)biodiversity. In her free time she likes to go out and bird watch, visit concerts, go to the gym, and dance bachata.

Anna Thornton’s passion has always been her love for marine organisms, especially sharks. She received her bachelors of science from Stetson university with a focus in marine biology. Anna has worked with sharks both research and conservation wise for the past seven years. She did her internship with the FWC and gave many volunteer hours to the RJ Dunlap shark research program at the university of Miami. She performed her senior research on the frequency of aerial respiration in juvenile armored catfish. Anna is helping in Dr. Liao’s lab as his lab technician and volunteer for the next year.

Maddison Harman recently graduated from the Florida Institute of Technology with a BS in Aquaculture and in Marine Biology. Before that, she attended an Aquarium Science technical high school in Des Moines, Iowa. Her research experience includes seahorse aquaculture and genetic work at the Vero Beach Marine Lab. She is interested in marine ornamental aquaculture, especially larval development and conservation genetics involving species threatened by the aquarium industry. Maddison now joins the Schnitzler Lab as a Lab Technician where she will learn many genomic procedures while caring for/aquaculturing the colonial cnidarian, Hydractinia. In her free time she enjoys cooking Mexican food, staring at aquariums, scuba diving, and hanging out with her Australian Shepard, Shadow.

Aaron Szczepanek completed his B.S in Biology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. During this time he worked as a research assistant studying the evolution of unusual genetic systems and microbiome genomics. He was a student-athlete on the Umass Division 1 swim team. After graduating, he rode his bicycle across America. Aaron now joins the Ryan Lab as a Post-Bac Technician where he will be using genomics to understand evolutionary pressures that drive diversification in ctenophores.

Dimitri Skandalis is a zoologist who has spent most of his career studying metabolic physiology and biomechanics of animal flight, most recently the hovering flight of hummingbirds. He is broadly interested in locomotor variability and evolution, especially how and why individuals differ in locomotor performance, and what this can tell us about evolutionary diversification.

Dimitri is Canadian, and received his BSc from Brock University in St. Catharines (near Niagara Falls), and his MSc from the University of Ottawa in Ottawa. His PhD research was conducted with Dr. Douglas Altshuler at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where he will be defending his dissertation at the end of November. Dimitri now joins the Liao Lab as a Postdoctoral Associate, and plans to research the development of the larval zebrafish sensorimotor network, and how it may be plastically reorganised by mechanosensory feedback. Dimitri also enjoys travelling, and photography and illustration.

Rosemary Kelley is a recent graduate from the University of Michigan. She received her BSc in aquatic ecology with a minor in geochemistry. While her research background lies in anthropogenic disturbance and their effects on ecology, she will be working in Dr. Todd Osborne’s lab on wetland soil cores until late December. When not busy in the field or doing bench work, Rosemary enjoys cooking and playing video games in her free time.