Dr. Mitalipova, Maya left UGA to become the Director of the Human Embryonic Stem Cell Laboratory at the Whitehead Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Good luck Maya, you will be missed!

 

Allison was raised in the small town of Tehachapi, CA where she grew up alongside the pigs she raised for fair through 4-H and FFA.  After high school she attended California State University, Chico where she minored in Chemistry and majored in Animal Science with an emphasis in Livestock Reproduction.  Grad school took her across the country to the University of Georgia where she worked and played in the laboratory of Steve Stice.  While there she studied Livestock Cloning (cattle and hogs) and completed her Masters Thesis on the demethylation of DNA and reprogramming the genome in donor cells.  While in the Sice Lab she was exposed to the intricacies of human embryonic stem cells and upon graduating Allison worked in Dr. Stice's lab on various projects involving Neural Projenitor Cells.  Currently, Allison is working as a Research Scientist at the University of Washington in the laboratory of Randy Moon who is a leading researcher of the Wnt/b-Catenin pathway.   Allison manages the lab's hESC facility where she maintains the lines, assits others with hESC experiments, and enjoys working independently on her own projects.

Dr. Sezen Arat went back to her country to become the director of Animal Biotechnology Strategic Business Unit in GEBI of Marmara Research Center. She is also the coordinator of National Gen Bank of Animal Genetic Resources in her country. She works on Animal Reproduction and Genetic. Dr. Sezen Arat, a veterinarian and reproductive disease specialist, spent two years as a visiting scientist in Stice’s lab learning the cloning process and developing technology to enhance genetic engineering. While at UGA, Arat helped develop some of the efficiency that led to cloning those first eight calves. She also contributed to developing technology that uses a marker gene — one that produces a green fluorescent protein — to verify that specific altered genes were passed on to cloned offspring. The procedure is a critical step in the long-term effort to develop transgenic livestock with, for example, disease resistance.

Kurinji Pandiyan is currently a second year graduate student with the Human Genetics program at the Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine. Her thesis work is under the mentorship of Stephen Baylin, Virginia and DK Ludwig Professor of Oncology, and is focused on understanding the epigenetic processes behind normal differentiation of progenitor cells, reprogramming of fully differentiated cells and the link between these processes and cancer development. Kurinji is far from the stage when she can report advances about marriage or kids...but she will do so if this happens!