Searle Lab

Sara and Misa are from Europe and were at Cornell University as guest researchers in the Searle Lab for three months. Both quickly became a part of the Searle lab and the EEB department. In collaboration with experts from other labs, they got their hands on eDNA and RADSeq related lab work and also got to do some exciting fieldwork on the Cayuga lake. They also attended many seminars and presented their research topics in lab meetings. Luckily, they were also able to find plenty of time to enjoy life in Ithaca, especially when out hiking and at local festivals.

Sara and Misa also couldn’t miss Halloween and participated in the EEB door contest. They let their fantasy and creativity loose and decorated the office door with small scary mammals.

Hi all—my name is Emily Kowalski! I am a May 2021 graduate of CALS, having earned a degree in Biology and Society, with a minor in Business for the Life Sciences. I was fortunate  enough to have been a member of the Searle Lab from Spring 2019 until my graduation. During my time with the lab, I specifically worked on the AGRIVOLE project alongside Avery Voehl, under Professor Searle (Ithaca, NY) and Joana Paupério (Porto, Portugal). In this position I conducted literary research on olive groves and their preservation in Portugal, as well as developed surveys on vole intrusion within the context of local olive groves for Portuguese olive growers. I really cherished my time as a member of the Searle Lab particularly due to the mentorship that I felt from Professor Searle.

I enjoyed being a part of a truly global project and collaborating with individuals across the world. I was challenged by the scientific papers we read and digested as a lab. I particularly looked forward to our weekly lab meetings, whether they be in Corson Hall, or over Zoom during the height of the pandemic. Each of the skills and lessons that I developed under Professor Searle and in my time at Cornell have shaped my goals and the type of work that I have been able to be a part of since my graduation.

Shortly after leaving Ithaca I moved to Boston to begin my role as a research assistant in the Department of Rheumatology, Inflammation, and Immunity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. I am currently working under Dr. Jeffrey Sparks, a clinical researcher and rheumatologist. Our team’s primary interests include understanding the relationship between lung health and rheumatoid arthritis, COVID-19 and systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases (SARDs), and immune-related adverse events (IRAEs) in patients initiating immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs). In this position, I spend a lot of time in a patient-facing setting where I am able to lead many of the study visits. Our study visits often include measures such as consenting patients, completing blood draws, conducting pulmonary function tests, CT scans, and survey administration. I also examine electronic health records to conduct in-depth chart reviews for retrospective projects. Similar to the Searle Lab, we value team meetings in which each project has a designated day of the week and time for discussion.

In the nearly two years at this position, I have been able to first author a literary review titled “A Roadmap for Investigating Preclinical Autoimmunity Using Patient-Oriented and Epidemiologic Study Designs: Example of Rheumatoid Arthritis”, and have been granted co-authorship on additional papers, both, with translational  and clinical scientists at the Brigham, and beyond. I have also valued seeing the cycle of research come full circle: beginning with a hypothesis, moving to grant writing, protocol drafting, institutional review board planning, recruiting patients, conducting visits, collecting and analyzing data, and drawing conclusions- learning is truly lifelong! In the future, I hope to pursue a career in medicine, where I can work in a primarily clinical position.

Outside of work, I really enjoy spending my time outdoors and with other people! I love to ski, and take walks along the Charles River esplanade. Though I am a New Yorker through and through, I can sometimes be caught at Fenway or TD Garden cheering on the local Boston sports teams (or NY teams when they’re in town)! My favorite restaurant in Ithaca is Gola Osteria, and Beacon Hill is my favorite neighborhood in Boston! Fun fact: Boston & Ithaca nearly share the same degree of latitude, differing only by 0.0839°N, or about 5 miles!

After graduating from Cornell, Jeremy Pustilnik went to work with the U.S. Geological Survey on the tip of the Arctic Circle of Alaska, where he conducted surveys of the waterfowl populations nesting in the area, including nest checks of geese to understand population demography, fitting geolocators on shorebirds to study migration patterns, and placing false nests to investigate predation. After he left the USGS, he finished up some research projects at Cornell including revising and publishing his undergraduate honors thesis he had completed with the Searle lab in the journal Urban Ecosystems (Pustilnik et al. 2021), and he started his own company EEB Aviation LLC for using survey-grade drones to assist with ecological projects. He will also finally be starting graduate school at the School of the Environment at Yale in the fall.

Nicolas presented part of his dissertation research at the PEQG conference and the Evolution meeting in summer 2022, and he graduated from Cornell in August. He then moved across the country and started a postdoc job in Peter Sudmant’s lab at UC Berkeley, where he is working on the rapid diversification of rockfish species in the Northeast Pacific Ocean and the evolution of structural variation in various study systems.

Ben successfully defended his dissertation on comparative salamander physiology in November 2021! With his new preferred name, “Doc Johnson,” he and his family moved to the San Diego area. There, he spends his free time paddle boarding and questing for the area’s local herpetofauna on behalf of his son, Mateo.

Ben is now working as a bioinformatics programmer in the laboratory of Dr. Abraham Palmer at the UC San Diego School of Medicine, where he focuses on genotyping and trait prediction methods for genome-wide association studies examining addiction behaviors in rats. Ironically, Ben had to depart the Searle lab before finally pursuing mammalian genetics!

In early 2022, I published one of my thesis chapters, entitled “Consequences of coupled barriers to gene flow for the build‐up of genomic differentiation” in the journal Evolution. This was a major project involving extensive collaboration and effort between Jeremy, Steve B, and myself at Cornell and Erik Dopman and Genny Kozak at Tufts and UMass – Dartmouth, respectively. I was very excited to see this come out.

In the spring of 2022, I was fortunate to be able to work as a teaching assistant aboard the Grand Daphne for the Biology Scholar’s Program trip to the Galápagos Islands. This was the trip of a lifetime, and I’ll never take for granted the chance to see in person the symbolic birthplace of the field evolutionary biology while observing countless birds, fish, sea lions, turtles, and flora. The students and instructors were incredible companions, and I have many fond memories I’ll cherish.

Thanks to the support of the Searle Lab, my committee members, and many friends, I successfully defended my PhD thesis in May 2022. I was grateful for the chance to travel back to Ithaca from my current residence in Minneapolis for an in person seminar, defense, and celebration.

Over the summer, I spent time with family and friends in Minnesota while revising my dissertation and planning for my next steps. I decided that I wanted to pursue a career outside of traditional academic tracks, which led me to my current position, working as a research scientist and bioinformatician with the Minnesota Department of Health in the Public Health & Infectious Diseases Laboratory.

My work here consists of building and maintaining genomics pipelines for various pathogens – sars-cov2, Streptococcus, Candida, and influenza, to name a few. I also engage with members of other state public health laboratories to share and develop resources for performing genomic analyses of threats to public health. As I grow into this new role, I’m hopeful of developing collaborative research projects to further our understanding of the genomics of human pathogens so we can respond to and contain future outbreaks and pandemics.

I’m grateful to have maintained academic collaborators from my time in graduate school, and I was thrilled to publish in late 2022 a paper that came out of a collaboration with Jeremy and Joana Paupério titled “Characterizing Mitochondrial Capture in an Iberian Shrew.” My dissertation work had forced Jeremy to learn more than he probably wished to about moth pheromones, so it was particularly fun to dip my toe into his subject area. I am currently working to finalize a few more publications stemming work during my graduate studies.

In my spare time, I enjoy exploring the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul (especially their thriving restaurant and brewery scene), going for hikes, rock climbing, gardening, and cooking meals.

Jeremy became a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2020 for “his distinguished contributions in the field of evolutionary biology and for the promotion of science through teaching, international work, media activities and science-based natural history.” In June 2021, he finished his 3-year period as Chair of EEB. Here’s a selfie he took in front of Corson taken just before he finished up.

Ben, Nick, Henry and Jon were all involved in a publication about teaching speciation. The full citation is:

Genova LA, Johnson BB, Castelli FR, Arcila Hernández LM, Chang van Oordt DA, Demery A-J, Fletcher NK, Goud EM, Holmes KD, Houtz JL, Howard MM, Hughes JJ, Jensen KH, Kunerth HD, Law EP, Lombardi E, Mazo-Vargas A, McDonald CA, Mittan CS, Ryan TA, Tracy AM, Uehling JJ, Weiss AK, Smith MK. 2020. What is speciation, how does it occur, and why is it important for conservation? CourseSource. https://doi.org/10.24918/cs.2020.28

Despite working from home for the majority of the past year, Henry gave virtual symposium talks at the Cornell E&EB graduate student symposium (January 2021), the Society for the Study of Evolution annual meeting (June 2021), and the Great Lakes Annual Meeting (July 2021).

Henry also found plenty of time to enjoy life in the Finger Lakes, especially when out hiking and enjoying the products of the local growers and crafters.

Ben’s first chapter in his thesis has been published!

Johnson, B.B., Searle, J.B. & Sparks, J.P., 2021. Genome size influences adaptive plasticity of water loss, but not metabolic rates in lungless salamanders. Journal of Experimental Biology, 224, jeb242196.