Bringing Fabulous Fungi to Science on the Rocks

Categories: Outreach

Graduate students Dallas and Bhuwan volunteered at Science on the Rocks, a science outreach event geared towards adults and hosted by the Discovery Place. They brought along with them some of our more charismatic fungi for people to see what fungi look like beyond Mario mushrooms and fairy rings. Our more colorful isolates were definitely the crowd favorites!!

Two women smiling clustered around a table with compound microscopes and various petri dishes.
Various people looking into microscopes and peering at petri dishes.

Asilomar Fungal Genetics Meeting

Categories: Conferences

Dr. Carter attended the Fungal Genetics meeting for the first time and what an incredible experience. She presented a poster on our recent preprint and came back to the lab with great new ideas and connections.

The Carter Lab heads to the APS Southern Division Meeting!

Categories: Conferences

During the last week of February 2024, Lauren, Dallas, and Bhuwan represented the Carter Lab at the Southern Division meeting of the American Phytopathological Society in Columbia, South Carolina. Dallas presented her search for endofungal bacteria in important plant pathogens. We are grateful for the USDA support for this project and for funding their participation in this meeting!

Three women with name badges standing together and smiling at the camera
A young, white woman in front of a scientific poster with various text and figures

Our first Meet & Greet!

Categories: Updates

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!

Two young women standing in front of a Carter Laboratory poster with images of fungi, the charlotte logo, and brief information about the lab.

And kudos to the grad students for their hard work in hosting this event!

New semester personnel changes

Categories: Updates

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.

First year of the lab comes to a close!

Categories: Updates

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).

Bhuwan, Dallas, and Alison present at the departmental research symposium

Categories: Updates

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!

Aylha Pferschy Joins the Lab!

Categories: Updates

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.

The Carter Lab attends NC ASM Chapter Meeting

Categories: Conferences

Alison Moore (undergraduate student), Lauren Carneal (technician), Dr. Carter, and Bhuwan Abbot (graduate student) attended the North Carolina American Society for Microbiology Chapter meeting in Durham, NC in November. Dr. Carter presented a talk in the Host-Microbe Interactions session on our new Btl protein preprint.