Insights from a Career at an Institutional Core Facility
	Dr. Vicki Huff, PhD Director, Advanced Technology Genomics Core (ATGC) Professor, Department of Genetics MD Anderson Cancer Center   Tuesday Oct.8th, 2024 Noon-1:00pm A405
Dr. Vicki Huff is Professor in the Department of Genetics and Director of the MD Anderson Advanced Technology Genomics Core (ATGC). She received her Ph.D in Human Genetics from the University of Michigan, and did her postdoctoral work in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. She then established her independent research program on the genetics of Wilms tumor, a childhood kidney tumor, as an Assistant Professor at MD Anderson. In addition to heading up her lab, in 2011 she became Director of the Advanced Technology Genomics Core which is MD Anderson’s Cancer Center Support Grant genomics facility. Besides developing mouse models for WT1 gene-associated human phenotypes, Dr. Huff has employed a wide variety of genomic approaches in her research program, including whole genomic sequencing, RNA-Seq, RPPA, and optical mapping in order to identify and study the effects of disease-causing DNA variants and to identify clinically-relevant biomarkers for patients.

 

Investigators at research institutions rely on institutional core facilities to carry out cutting-edge analyses that require highly specialized technical skills and expensive equipment – resources that are not feasible to have in individual research laboratories. The Advanced Technology Genomics Core (ATGC) Facility at MD Anderson Cancer Center is one example of such an institutional core facility. The ATGC provides investigators with a wide range of sequencing (e.g., whole genome, RNA, exon) and genomic analysis (single cell analyses, spatial gene expression, optical mapping, etc) services using a variety of platforms (e.g., Illumina, Bionano, G4, 10X Genomics, Oxford Nanopore)

Working in an institutional core facility such as the ATGC is one career path that enables people interested in science and laboratory work to learn about and contribute valuable data to many research projects, to keep abreast of new technologic developments, and to develop a stable career path in science.

This seminar will provide students with an idea of what a career working in one institutional core facility – the ATGC – is like: what genomic technologies are being used; how data generated in the ATGC is critical for the many research programs MD Anderson investigators are carrying out to understand, cure, and prevent cancer; and what ATGC members think about their role in MD Anderson’s mission to “Make Cancer History”.

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Plant population responses to environmental change
	Tom Miller, Ph.D. Associate Professor Biosciences Department Rice University   Thursday October 10th, 2024 4:00-5:00pm   A405

 

Dr. Miller earned his B.A. degree in Biology at Colgate University and his Ph.D. in Ecology at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is an Associate Professor of the Biosciences Department at Rice University.  His research addresses fundamental questions regarding population dynamics and the population-level consequences of inter-specific interactions, mostly in plant and insect systems. His work spans population, community, and evolutionary ecology, including the spread of biological invasions, the dynamics of consumer-resource and host-symbiont interactions, and the evolution of life histories. 

All natural populations experience fluctuations in their environment through space and time. This has never been more true: increased climatic fluctuations and spatial heterogeneity are hallmarks of ongoing anthropogenic global change. This talk will explore how plant populations respond to spatial and temporal environmental variability. In the spatial dimension, environmental variation causes some locations to be more suitable for population viability than others. Over large spatial scales, the boundary between suitable and unsuitable habitat defines species range limits. I will present experimental work examining the drivers of range limitation in a grass species endemic to the southern Great Plains. In the temporal dimension, environmental variation can impose a penalty on fitness in stochastic environments through nonlinear averaging (bad times are more harmful than good times are helpful). I will present work exploring how interactions with microbial symbionts may buffer host populations against negative effects of fluctuations in the environment. Integrating over time and space, I will discuss challenges and opportunities for forecasting population responses to environmental change.