Lee Lab pumpkin carvers show off their entries for the Biology Department!

Undergrads Elizabeth Posten, Jon Wick and Kaila Wildermuth show off their research at the Biology Department Poster session to fellow WWU students, WWU faculty, and local high school students!

Savanna Cox graduates with her Bachelor’s in Biology!  Congratulations Savanna!  Former Lee Lab alums, Lola Lang, Maya Matsumoto, Courtney Yoshiyama came back to cheer our graduate on! 

MS student Marques Kuehn-Herrera and undergrad Savanna Cox co-presented a poster at the Annual International RNA Society meeting! Marques received a Travel Award to attend and Savanna won an Outstanding Undergraduate Poster award!  

Makazlynn Schulz from Pacific University joined us for a summer of research and we loved having her! 

WWU Give Day is happening today, April 24th, 2025! Give Day is an annual 24-hour event hosted by Western where you can donate to your favorite groups, including WWU Biology! Donations support the Biology Department’s research programs, microscopy facilities, and MS grad and undergrad student researchers, like Lee Lab alum Hannah Thorp who was interviewed for Give Day last year! Hannah graduated from Western in June 2024 with a BS in Cellular and Molecular Biology and is now a Research Associate at the Allen Institute for Cell Science.

Donate to WWU Biology for WWU Give Day HERE – all gifts matter and are appreciated, big or small!

The Lee lab has three undergraduates graduating this spring 2024 and all will be presenting their honors capstone projects in June! Lola Lang will be presenting “Tets, Blots, and Ligases! Oh My! An undergraduate’s research journey” June 12th at 11am, Hannah Thorp will be presenting “Fem in STEM: a podcast series exploring the experiences of women in fem-dominated research labs” June 13th at 10am, and Toby Traudt will be presenting “Pond scum genome protection program” June 14th at 10am.

 

Current Lee Lab members Toby Traudt and Hannah Thorp have been named a Hallson Scholar and CSE Elwha Scholar, respectively, to support their research efforts this summer! They will be continuing with some of their current research and taking on new projects as well.

We are excited to share that Lee Lab Alum Briar Jochim will be starting this coming academic year as a PhD Candidate in the M3D (Molecular Medicine and Mechanisms of Disease) Program at the University of Washington! Since his time in the Lee Lab, Briar has been a research assistant in Dana Miller’s lab at UW and Nic Lehrbach’s lab at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

Congratulations to Lee Lab members Lola Lang, Hannah Thorp, Alison Witwer, and Toby Traudt for all their work this summer as part of WWU Biology’s SURP, culminating in a poster session to present their research projects. The Western Today featured stories from all labs participating in the program including the Lee Lab in SURP’s Up: Worms, pond scum and fruit flies make for interesting summer research.

And shoutout to Lola for receiving a Hallson Stipend Award and Alison for receiving a Seagen Stipend Award.