Congratulations to Itziar on completing her PhD in Biophysics!

Itziar with David and Georjana all decked out in their caps and gowns.

Itziar celebrating post-graduation.

Congratulations to Jessica Hong and Jordan Said who recently completed their undergraduate degrees! Jordan will enter Harvard Medical School this fall, while Jessica begins a prestigious internship at Google this summer and plans to attend medical school in the future. Best wishes to our new grads!

Jessica with her mentor Ross after graduation.

Congratulations to Julian Hassinger on his paper “Design principles for robust vesiculation in clathrin-mediated endocytosis” now published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Design principles for robust vesiculation. The rigidity of the plasma membrane, as well as the membrane tension, resists budding by curvature-generating coats. In the low tension regime, as defined by the vesiculation number, increasing the coat area or spontaneous curvature is sufficient to induce a smooth evolution from a flat membrane to a closed bud. A combination of increased coat rigidity and force from actin polymerization is necessary to ensure robust vesiculation in the high membrane-tension regime.

Congratulations to Rebecca Lu on her paper, “Selection and stabilization of endocytic sites by Ede1, a yeast functional homolog of the human Eps15“, now in press in Molecular Biology of the Cell.

After hosting visiting scholar Prof. Sandra Paiva and then her student Rosana, David and Georjana decided to take a trip to Portugal to visit. Upon their return, they treated the lab to a port and cheese tasting.

Port tasting in the break room! – 5/9/2016