News & happenings
Talks, milestones, and the occasional cake.
What the shoal has been up to since the lab opened at Rice in 2024.
2026
Tanushree organizes the Mantra Pearland Durga Puja, and we join her for a night of music, dance, and festive food.
We raise a glass to Emilio’s first paper, accepted in the Journal of Experimental Biology!
We wrap up the first rotation of the year at a tiki bar with Bryson and Tomas, who were amazing.
Brandon finishes SECOND in a local race at Rice, and we turn out to cheer him on.
We celebrate Tomas’s birthday with a “surprise” party!
We kick off the academic year with the Biosciences Symposium and welcome our incoming 2026 class of PhD students.
We send off our summer rotation students, Danny and Julianna, with a Peruvian-Japanese fusion dinner. We loved having you!
Brandon presents his summer research on a microglia CRISPR screen and zebrafish behavior at the Rice OURI symposium.
Emilio goes to his first national conference — SDB in Las Vegas! And the Uribe lab very kindly temporarily adopted him.
Paraguay wins against Germany at the World Cup, and we add to Sven’s suffering by making him buy us tacos.
Marcos graduates, and we send him off with a farewell dinner. We will miss him very much!
Brandon and Emilio present at the Amyloid Center Poster Blast.
Brandon takes Emilio and Marcos on a road trip through Arizona and up Humphreys Peak, where Marcos begins reconsidering every life choice made above 8,000 feet.
Emilio and Mark celebrate successfully passing their A exams with matching hairstyles.
We celebrated Brandon’s fantastic finish in the 3K steeplechase final by livestreaming the American Outdoor Track & Field Championships.
Commencement season! Othniel receives two Biosciences awards!
Emilio gave his first external presentation at the Houston Methodist Neuroscience Graduate Student Symposium, sharing the lab’s work with the broader TMC neuroscience community.
We celebrated Tanushree’s birthday with some delicious treats from Pondicheri!
We celebrate Susan Cates’s retirement with an outdoor party.
We celebrated Marcos’s Catan-themed birthday party by aggressively trading sheep.
We join the dinosaurs at the Houston Museum of Natural Science for the Night at the Museum event, where we welcome prospective graduate students to Rice.
2025
We ring in the holidays at the Biosciences holiday party.
Othniel presents a poster at the 31st Annual Neuroscience Poster Session at UTHealth.
We celebrated Jesus’s birthday with mouth-watering Venezuelan treats in Valhalla!
We wrapped up rotation 2 with Iyer lab & friends, some delicious Thai food, and even more delicious Thai dessert!
We wrap up the first rotation of Fall 2025 with some Korean food — and delicious zebrafish-themed cookies!
Alex Keene visited Rice and we heard about some cool features of cavefish adaptation!
The first-year graduate students move out of campus housing, and Emilio packs himself in the perfect spot for the move.
We are on snail-feeding duty while Dan enjoys his summer vacation!
The Developmental Biology groups at Rice go to Quintana Beach for the annual beach day tradition. And Arya steals the show as always…
Arya joins the Biosciences junior faculty happy hour to supervise.
We move to our permanent home in Anderson Biology, and it’s the perfect excuse to have a party!
We wrap up the March birthdays by celebrating Sarah’s ultimate-frisbee-themed birthday bash.
We celebrate Emilio’s first birthday away from home with a Paraguayan-themed party!
Our TOMODACHI STEM undergraduate intern, Mari Iida, presents a poster with her mentor, Sarah Downing.
We bid farewell to Eileen, the shining star of the Rice fish facility, at her retirement party.
2024
All we want for Christmas is: a brand new fish facility!
We wrap up the year with rotation student Sadie and undergraduate Othniel — and Ivy, of course!
Othniel Amanyi, our undergraduate, presents at the Neuroscience Poster Session at UTHealth.
We got rotation two — with Emilio and Mark — on the books and welcome our SSPB rotation student, Beatrice!
We bid farewell to our first graduate rotation students, Olivia and Meggie — with Ivy!
We welcome the 2024 incoming graduate class, and Harini gives a talk at the Rice Biosciences annual symposium.
Murtaza Kazmi, our summer undergraduate, presents a poster at the Rice OURI symposium.
Meranda, our first research technician, and Murtaza, a summer undergraduate, get comfortable with handling zebrafish and performing injections.
