Ian received the Margalith Galun Award for the best poster presented by a graduate student at the Ninth International Association for Lichenology (IAL9) conference. This meeting occurs only once every four years. The title of his poster was “Bolivian lecanoroid lichens exhibit photobiont interactions structured by elevation, mycobiont phylogeny, and substrate.”
Category: News
2021-6-25: Congratulations to Carlos Pardo De la Hoz!
Carlos was one of the ten graduate students selected to compete for the Ernst Mayr Award at the Evolution 2021 meeting. As a third-year graduate student, he was the youngest competitor, some of whom had already defended their doctoral dissertation. The title of his talk in the Mayr Award symposium was “Ancient radiation explains most phylogenetic conflicts among core genes from nostocalean cyanobacteria”.
2021-5-14: Congratulations to Ian Medeiros!
Ian was one of the recipients of the Graduate Student Research Awards given each year by The Society of Systematic Biologists (SSB) to assist graduate students conducting research in systematics. This award will fund Ian’s research on endophytic and endolichenic Eurotiomycetes.
2021-5-13: Congratulations Associate Professor Ryoko Oono!
Congratulations to Ryoko Oono for obtaining tenure at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Ryoko conducted postdoctoral research in the Lutzoni lab on fungal endophytes before obtaining a tenure-track position at UCSB.
2020-10: Nicolas Magain, Assistant Professor at the University of Liège
Congratulations to Dr. Nicolas Magain for obtaining an Assistant Professor position in the Evolution and Conservation Biology unit of the University of Liège in Belgium. Nicolas spent most of his Ph.D. in the Lutzoni lab and continued his phylogenetic revision of the genus Peltigera and to address macroevolutionary questions using Peltigera–Nostoc as a model system during his postdoctoral research in the Lutzoni Lab at Duke University. You can find more information about his current research in his newly established lab at this website.
2020-10: Ko-Hsuan Chen, Assistant Research Fellow at Academia Sinica
Congratulations to Dr. Ko-Hsuan Chen for obtaining an Assistant Research Fellow position at the Biodiversity Research Center of Academia Sinica in Taiwan. Ko-Hsuan completed her Ph.D. in the Lutzoni lab in 2017 focussing on fungal endophytes in the Class Eurotiomycetes and her pioneering metatranscriptomic study of fungal endophytes in the model moss system Dicranum scoparium. You can find more information about her current research in her newly established lab at this website.
2020-9: “How to Land a Lab” Workshop (This Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 5 and 6 at 1:00pm)
Dr. François Lutzoni will be hosting undergraduate research workshops for students interested in joining research labs at Duke. This workshop will cover: finding a lab, what to look for in a lab, how to approach a principal investigator, and navigating through interviews. These are two identical workshops offered at different times.
Register at: https://undergraduateresearch.duke.edu/land-a-lab-workshop
2020-08: Welcome Shannon Skarha – New Ph.D. Student in the Lutzoni lab
We are excited to welcome Shannon Skarha to the Lutzoni lab as a first-year Ph.D. student in the Duke Biology department. Shannon previously worked at the Missouri Botanical Garden, where she was a lab specialist in the conservation genetics program.
2019-11: Lutzoni Lab hosts lichen workshop for North Carolina School of Math and Science students
The Lutzoni lab (Dr. Scott LaGreca, Dr. François Lutzoni, Ian Medeiros, and Carlos Pardo De la Hoz) hosted a two-day lichen workshop for 15 junior and senior high school students from the North Carolina School of Science and Math (NCSSM) in Durham. On the first day, students learned the different lichen growth forms and basic morphological structures within a teaching lab setting, and then went on a field trip to the Eno River State Park to look at lichens. The trip was a great opportunity to highlight the ecological characteristics of different groups of lichens. On the second day, we taught how to use a dichotomous key, and together we identified three lichen specimens at the species level. Many of the students had the opportunity to collect their own specimens on the school campus and we helped them identify them as well. We were thoroughly impressed with their abilities and pleased to learn that the workshop inspired them to pursue three research projects centered on lichens at NCSSM. We thank Dr. Erin Quinlan at NCSSM for her support in organizing this workshop. We look forward to continued interaction with NCSSM students and faculty in the future. This outreach activity was funded in part by the National Science Foundation grants DEB 1541548 and 1929994 to François Lutzoni and Jolanta Miadlikowska.
2019-01: Lutzoni Lab welcomes Edyta Mazur, visiting student from Poland
Edyta will spend the spring semester in the Lutzoni Lab to learn methods in molecular systematics for her Ph.D. research on Lecanora.