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Social distancing won't stop our party! With a beverage of choice in hand and a computer equip with zoom, we caught up with each other to talk about life in Minnesota, transitioning to teaching online, surfing, and Spongebob.
When Ben joined the lab, Claudia was about 5 months pregnant. They both quickly bonded over their love of park skating and as soon as baby was safely out of mom, the team hit up the skate park, FINALLY!!
[Not pictured, their amazing skate + life partners A & A.] Danielle presented a 3-minute talk which got her through semi-finals and the final UCR Grad Slam competition, earning her an honorable mention prize! The entire lab went to support our amazing fungi-lover. She covered the importance of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in food systems and their potential to reduce toxic metal exposure in crops. Way to go, Danielle!
Danielle hosted a weekend DIY fungi workshop titled "Skills for Low Tech Mushroom Cultivation." Participants learned simple ways to grow and make mushroom medicine, grow mushrooms in their garden, digest household waste with fungi, and work with fungi for remediation. The course involved a mix of lecture-style learning and a lot of hands-on- both indoor and outdoor skill building. Go Danielle! Macon and Devon Payne (Eric Boyd's lab MSU) spent the week in the lab of Greg Drushel at IUPUI in Indianapolis getting a crash course in electrochemical methods. Greg's lab has utilized these methods to characterize environmental redox chemistry in the field and at the bench, and with the generous training of Greg and his grad students John and Chase we're hoping to bring the technique to Riverside.
A few in our group attended the 2019 SSSA (Soils) Conference in San Antonio, TX. Sam, Alyssa, and Danielle presented some awesome research and mingled with soils people from all parts. From here, the boss lady Sam jet sets to Germany for a symposium! Meanwhile, back at home, Miranda and Claudia covered Sam's intro soils lecture. Claudia headed out to the field to collect some intact soil cores for her micro-sprinkler simulation experiment in the lab (with the help of Pete Homyak's suite of gas analyzers at UCR). At 32 weeks pregnant, she reached out to her mom to help her and Alyssa gather some samples. Science is definitely a family affair. |
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June 2022
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