It is always with a mixture of joy and sadness that we celebrate our graduates - joy at all they have accomplished, and at the incredible careers that await them, and sadness that they will be leaving us to pursue these incredible opportunities.
We begin by celebrating Dr. Fangyu Wang, who completed her thesis work on “The Role of the Lysine Deacetylase Sirtuin 1 in Regulating RNA Stability and the Production of a Secretome that Promotes Breast Cancer”, and has accepted a position at Mass General with Dr. William Kaelin, winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Fangyu conducted her studies in the Molecular Medicine side of our laboratory, and was really heavily involved in our extracellular vesicle research, and helped to really perfect a lot of our isolation and characterization protocols.
We also wish to celebrate Dr. Feng Shi, who recently presented his thesis work “The Structural Basis for Allosteric Regulation of Protein Assembly in Cancer Progression and Circadian Rythms”, and Dr. Cody Aplin for his work “Biochemical and Structural Characterization of GPCR Associated Enzymes”. Feng Shi was a dually appointed student, mentored in both the Cerione and Crane laboratories in the Department of Chemistry, and has accepted a position at Stanford University with Dr. Brian Kobilka, who in 2012 shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Cody has chosen to pursue a career in industry, and is now working at Bio-Techne in Minneapolis, helping them in their mission to develop and supply reagents, diagnostics, and analytical instrumentation. Cody and Feng Shi worked to really introduce Cryo-EM approaches to the Cerione laboratory, and between the two of them solved a number of very important protein structures.
Congratulations to these no-longer students, and best of luck as you build your careers!