Dr. Medina was recently interviewed and quoted on the state of coral reefs for the Environmental Health News magazine. She and other top coral researchers discussed the importance of using genetic tools to understand corals and call for the cessation of climate change. You can read the article here.
Summer Internships
Sofia Roitman and Victoria Sharp have embarked this summer on exciting internships to learn new research techniques. Sofia enjoyed her time at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology learning to process bacterial metagenomes. Victoria Sharp is in Japan interning with two cnidarian researchers as part of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science program. She […]
Good luck, Dr. Kerwin!
We wish our post-doc, Dr. Allison Kerwin, all the best as the begins her assistant professorship position at McDaniel University! While she will continue working with us on collaborative projects, her expertise in microbiology and her great sense of humor will be sorely missed.
Welcome, Leah!
We are so pleased to welcome Penn State alumna, Leah Guizar, to our lab as our jellyfish husbandry expert! Victoria and the undergraduate students have increased the number of jellyfish experiments, so we are happy to have Leah’s aquaria expertise in rearing more jellies. Leah and her family maintain several saltwater tanks in their home, […]
Welcome, Dr. Crandall!
We are so pleased to welcome Dr. Eric Crandall to Penn State as a research associate professor. He is participating in our lab initiatives as he settles in to research in the Biology Department. He comes to us from Cal State University at Monterey Bay where he was an assistant professor. His research has been […]
Diversity Podcast with Colin
Colin was interviewed in 2020 for the Out There Podcast. The discussion on the resilience through diversity can be found here. Great work, Colin!
Sofia wins Dean’s Climate & Diversity Award
Sofia adds another award to her shelf when she won the Penn State College of Eberly Science Dean’s Climate & Diversity Award in January 2021! She has worked hard for many justice, equity, diversity and inclusion efforts, including starting the SACNAS chapter at Penn State, teaching data processing techniques to URM, assisting with the Bridge […]
Victoria earns Sloan Scholarship
We couldn’t be more proud of our second Sloan Scholar in the Medina Lab, Victoria Sharp! She has been diligently working on justice, equity, diversity and inclusion (JEDI) projects at Penn State, in addition to her excellent graduate work on Cassiopea. Her latest achievement has been writing Wikipedia pages about underrepresented minorities (URM) in science […]
Colin wins at SACNAS!
We congratulate our new Ph.D. student, Colin Howe, on his Outstanding Presentation Award at the Fall 2020 Society for the Advancement of Chicano/as and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) conference. He presented his Master’s degree work on coral nursery transplants. Way to start off your Ph.D., Colin!
Sofia’s study is published
Sofia’s stellar study, performed with Medina Lab collaborators, on the microbiomes of transplanted corals in reefs in and around Varadero has been published in Coral Reefs! Learn more about how the reef environments influenced the microbial community and survivorship here
Dr. Medina interviewed for Nature article
At the Science Writers’ conference hosted by Penn State in October 2019, Dr. Medina presented her labs research and fielded questions about the future of coral reefs. She was interviewed by a science writer for the Nature magazine and gave a sobering reminder about maintaining hope for reefs while avoiding a sense of complacency. Read […]
Congratulations, Drs. Avila & González!
Viridiana Avila Magaña and Ana María González Ángel have successfully defended their dissertations and completed their doctorate degrees. Dr. Avila studied the phylogenetic effects of potential coral bleaching survivorship among three divergent species, as well as microRNAs and developmental gene expression of the Upside-Down Jellyfish, Cassiopea xamachana. Dr. González researched the gene expression during spawning […]