Today, we hosted Dr. Devaleena Pradhan as our BIO-MBB seminar speaker. It was wonderful to reconnect and hear about all the cool and inspirational science, teaching, and outreach she has been doing throughout her career. We are grateful to the College of the Environment and the Biology Department for sponsoring this event!
11.06.2024
10.30.2024
Happy birthday, Imani! Thanks for your hard work in the lab!
10.08.2024
We were excited to welcome Dr. Angela Freeman to Wesleyan as our Biology/MBB seminar speaker! Dr. Freeman gave a wonderful talk about her research on the social behavior in non-traditional mammalian model species, and graced our Comparative Animal Behavior class with a Q&A. We had so much fun learning from her about reversible patency in Southern giant pouched rats, and nona-peptide regulation of social behavior in Eastern flying squirrels!
08.06.2024
Girls in Science
Alex, Sebin , and Ni taught 4-6th grade girls about the neurobiology of smell and taste as part of Wesleyan’s Girls in Science summer camp. This is our second summer working with GIS, and we loved seeing how excited and engaged the girls were. Activities included using yarn to explore the “labeled line” organization of the olfactory system, and a miracle berry taste altering experiment to explore the nature of perception.
07.26.2024
Congratulations to Zoe and Hudson on completing a productive summer of undergraduate research!
Zoe and Hudson both presented great posters at the summer research symposium
End of summer lab breakfast at Brew Bakers
Hudson giving an excellent oral presentation
Congratulations, Class of 2024!
05.26.2024
It is very bittersweet to officially send off our graduates today! Wishing them all the best on their journeys ahead.
05.15.2024
Derek Jann ‘24
Evie Curtis ‘24
Brianna Mark ‘24
Just like that, Spring 2024 semester is over, and we celebrated with a lab dinner at La Casa Mania. Our seniors Derek Jann, Evie Curtis, and Brianna Mark received squirrel socks as their send-off gifts. While it is sad to see Derek and Evie leave the lab for greener pastures, we are truly grateful for their hard work and contributions. They will be missed and we wish them good luck in their future endeavors! We are fortunate to keep Brianna for a 5th year as an BA/MA student!
Pictured (from left): Sebin, Alex, Evie, Brianna, Sunny, Ni, Derek, Rose, Zoe, and Silvia.
What a full circle moment: Andy Bass and Midge Marchaterre visited Wesleyan! Andy gave a wonderful talk, and we all had a nice dinner to celebrate.
04.17.2024
Sebin Park, Alex Porczak, Laverne Melón, Andy Bass, Ni, Helen Treloar
02.06.2024
We are excited that our new paper, “Neural control of fluid homeostasis is engaged below 10C in hibernation”, is out on Current Biology today. Evie Curtis (Biology '24), pictured above, performed data analysis for fiber photometry and is a co-author on this paper. This project was completed under the mentorship of Dr. Elena Gracheva and Dr. Slav Bagriantsev at Yale, where Prof Feng did her postdoc. Maddy Junkins (Wesleyan ‘16), the co-first author on the paper and a graduate student in the Gracheva lab, completed her senior thesis under the mentorship of Professor John Kirn. We are grateful to this team, including co-authors Lyle Murphy and Dana Merriman, as well as to Gracheva lab members such as Sarah Mohr and Viktor Feketa who helped out with various aspects. This work was supported by generous sponsors, including the Warren Alpert Foundation. Like most scientific projects, this one took a lot of hard work, collaboration, trial and error learning, patience, and resilience from everyone involved. We are very happy it is finally published!
12.08.2023
We were fortunate to host Dr. Marianna Leonzino for an open lab meeting! Dr. Leonzino delivered a wonderful talk about lipid transfer proteins in the cell, and how they contribute to neuronal health and disease. We also celebrated Evie and Alex’s December birthdays with delicious cakes from Roly Poly Bakery, a local Polish bakery in New Britain introduced to us by Alex. Finally, we celebrated Bavly’s early graduation. While we are sad to see Bavly leave the lab, we are so excited for him to start his medical school journey, and wish him the best on his MCATs and applications.
11.20.2023
We held the inaugural Feng Lab Datagiving lab meeting, where we shared gratitude over food and data. We certainly have much to be grateful for this year: starting a new lab with a team of fantastic undergrads and grads, wonderful colleagues and mentors, and the safe arrival of our first colony of squirrels who are happily hibernating in their new hibernaculum. We give thanks to the people who keep our lab running smoothly, even during emergencies, including our amazing animal care team: Pete Shatos, Sera Brown, Angela Stachelek, and Dr. Dan Schwartz; the building/architect/construction team: Angela Wong, Jimmy Keenan, Mike Conte, Mike Emonds, Camille Keeler, Horace Chambers, to name a few.
09.27.2023
We were very honored to host Dr. Matt Fuxjager at Wes to give a talk on his exciting research. Dr. Fuxjager’s lab studies how hormones regulate a diversity of vertebrate social signals, including the acrobatic courtship display of manakins, drumming behavior of woodpeckers, and foot-waving displays of frogs. Dr. Fuxjager also graced our Comparative Animal Behavior class for a fun Q&A session. The students had already read some of his work and wrote an assignment on a paper of their choosing.
09.04.2023
The new semester has begun, and we are welcoming two rotation graduate students to the lab: Alex Porczak and Sebin Park! They are already making great progress: brainstorming over the lab cache of snacks.
07.28.23
And that’s a wrap, our first summer research session is done! We celebrated by having a lab dinner at an Asian Cajun fusion restaurant in Middletown.
07.27.23
Summer Poster Sesssion was a success! Congratulations to Bri Taylor for winning 3rd Place Poster Prize!! Congratulations to Derek Jann, Evie Curtis for presenting wonderful posters!
07.13.23
The team learned how to implant temperature transponders! Great job everyone!
06.30.23
What a month it has been!
Our first colony of squirrels has arrived safe and sound and we are officially USDA certified!
The students have been busy exploring the literature, brainstorming experiments, and testing antibodies for immunohistochemistry.
05.30.23
Summer research has officially started!
Derek and Bri Taylor are doing research as Center for Integrative Sciences summer research fellows.
Evie is doing research as a Quantitative Analysis Center summer research fellow.
Molly and Brianna Mark are doing part time summer research.
Areen Sathe is joining us as a high school junior research fellow through the Wes-MHS program.
And just like that, our first semester at Wesleyan is over! Bavly, Derek, Brianna, Bri, and Evie (not pictured) each delivered a great presentation on their projects and future directions. We are excited to start summer research!
05.10.2023
05.02.2023
Unboxing and training day for our Echo Revolve microscope! Thanks to Echo’s Nicolette Henning for getting us started and the Melón lab for joining.
Bri, Bavly, Derek, and Brianna (not pictured) have started immunohistochemistry experiments over the past few weeks!
4.27.2023
3.13.2023
Feng Lab Renovations are Complete!
From Left: Angela S, Camille K, Ni F, Dan S, Angela W, Liang Y, Pete S
The Feng Lab at Wesleyan will officially open in January 2023!
Interested graduate students should apply here
11.07.22
Renovation is underway! Exciting progress has been made in the main lab and vivarium spaces. We are so grateful to the design, engineering, animal care, and construction teams for their hard work!