Please welcome Dr. Emily Setton to the Whitney Laboratory! She recently joined the Seaver Lab as a Postdoctoral Associate.
Emily spent her undergraduate career at the University of Wisconsin—Madison where she earned her B.S. degrees in Biology and Anthropology. Her introduction to research began here with a semester in a biological anthropology lab working on a self-designed project for course credit. Finding how much she enjoyed research, she then moved into the Zoology department and began working on the evo-devo of chelicerate arthropods.
She decided to remain at Wisconsin—Madison for her graduate studies, with a short period as a technician between her undergraduate and graduate careers. She earned her Ph.D. in 2023 and her thesis focused on the evolution of the spider body plan. She worked to identify the developmental genetic underpinnings of segmentation in chelicerates (which differs from that of classic insect models) and explored how whole genome duplication events may influence the rise of evolutionary innovations. Her time as a graduate student fostered her love of comparative approaches, non- and emerging- model organisms, protocol development, and field work. Her time there also showed her the value of integrating multiple data classes toward understanding evolutionary processes and got her interested in bioinformatics.
Now that she is at Whitney, she is excited to begin working with a wholly different segmented invertebrate: the annelid Capitella teleta. In Dr. Seaver's laboratory, she will be working on characterizing the putative multipotent stem cell cluster of this marine annelid using classical embryological, next generation sequencing, and gene manipulation techniques. By characterizing this cluster, she aims to improve the understanding of how these animals are able to regenerate lost posterior body regions.
When she is not in the lab, Emily can be found at the barn. A life-long rider and horsewoman, she enjoys developing young horses and working with other "project horses." Her current ride is a mare named V and they compete together in the jumpers.