Aug 24, 2026
Alex Wins the 2026 Lawrence S. Dillon Award
Alex has been selected as the recipient of the 2026 Lawrence S. Dillon Distinguished Graduate Student Award from the Department of Biology. This award recognizes graduate students who have demonstrated outstanding excellence in both research and teaching.
Congratulations, Alex, on this well-deserved honor! We are proud of your accomplishments and grateful for your contributions to research, teaching, and the lab.
Jul 22, 2026
Alex and Adolfo’s preprints are out on bioRxiv
An exciting coincidence for the lab! Alex and Adolfo submitted their papers to the preprint server on the same day. Alex's paper addresses a longstanding puzzle known as "centromere paradox", which is about the contradiction that centromere and pericentromere DNA diverges rapidly but the function of centromere remains conserved. Her paper is available here.
Adolfo's paper addresses another puzzle about repetitive DNA. He looked into how tandem arrays in heteromorphic sex chromosomes persists despite the lack of recombination. His paper is here
Apr 30, 2026
Mahul wins Teaching Excellence Award
Mahul received the Early Career Teaching Excellence Award from the College of Arts and Sciences at Texas A&M University for designing and implementing an innovative upper-level Genomics course. The course introduces students to introductory and advanced topics in genomics and allows them to conduct their own genomics experiment.