This semester, the Carter lab hosted four students from the Charlotte Early Engineering College as they worked on a mock start-up. They worked in the lab culturing various common fungi on plastic and media to investigate plastic degradation. Congrats to Nathan, Sidney, Max, and Kylie on a winning presentation at their Senior Expo showing off their Fungi Fusion prototype!
The Carter Lab participated in the annual Research Meet & Greet hosted by the graduate students of the Department of Biological Sciences. Undergrads from around campus were invited to connect with labs and learn more about research on campus. We loved connecting with new potential lab members and other interested students!
And kudos to the grad students for their hard work in hosting this event!
It is bittersweet to see undergraduate Tim wrap up his time in the lab. Having worked with us summer and fall of 2023 on motility and competition projects, he is moving on to a part-time job in a physical therapy clinic. As glad as we are for this opportunity that will help him achieve his goal of becoming a physical therapist, we’ll miss his great questions and thoughtful perspective!
We’re already finding that the fun of an academic lab is that as one person rotates out, another comes in. So we are excited to welcome new undergraduate researcher Paola Diaz-Matamoros who will be working with Dallas on our novel interactions with Fusarium spp. project.
Almost all lab members got together to enjoy lunch at the close of the fall semester and celebrate the first year of the Carter Lab. We toasted to Alison’s B.Sc. graduation and Ruth’s M.Sc. graduation – both are continuing in the lab next semester as M.Sc. and Ph.D. students, respectively. Though Tim couldn’t make it, he was still there in spirit (and photoshop).
The Carter Lab showed up in full force for our first Biological Sciences Research Symposium with 3 students presenting small-format posters focused on the methods for their projects. Bhuwan and Dallas both got perfect scores from their science communication judges!
A new undergraduate researcher has joined the lab – Aylha Pferschy. She is a senior in biological sciences and will be working on basic culturing and phenotyping of a novel bacterial-fungal symbiosis as part of a collaboration with USDA ARS.
