Kick off to Summer 2022!

 TimIn the past couple of weeks we wrapped up our Spring 2022 semester! It was a bittersweet end to the semester as we said farewell to grad student Stephen Smith.  Stephen has been with us since 2019 and done so much great work and we will surely miss him!

But the sweet side is --- The Sparks Lab is growing by leaps and bounds!!!  
1) We welcomed two new PhD students to the lab last week, Irene Ikiriko and K. Thanduanlung!  
2)  We have a new staff researcher starting in mid-July!
3) We're currently interviewing for a new Postdoc.
4) We have an awesome team of undergraduates in lab this summer:
An engineering team of Joe Cristiano, Will Koenig, Anthony Jiang & Parker Grobe; and a biology team of Olivia Hazelwood, Miranda Farnum, & Talia Collier!
5) Thanks to a generous donor, we will also have two high school interns in the field later this summer! 

Stay tuned for project updates and (hopefully) a "Meet the Sparks Lab" series! Time always gets away from us when we try to make these things happen! 

We are also expected the return of visiting scholars this summer! We anticipate welcoming Christophe Pradal in early July to finish up our Thomas Jefferson Fund international exchange, and Amanda Rasmussen in late July to kick off our Royal Society international exchange. We are so grateful for these international collaborators and their ability to come visit us!

Our corn and sorghum is planted and already out of the ground... let the chaos begin!!!