Past Members

Tony Lassaletta
Tony is now at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston.

Ben Halsey
 Ben is now in Vet School at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine.

Nick Kappas
 Fall 1998-Summer 2000
 During Nick's work in the Sible lab he was the primary author of the publication
 "Dissection of the XChk1 signaling pathway in Xenopus laevis embryos".
He is now a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill.  He is currently in his third year and is doing his Ph.D. work in Dr.
Victoria Bautch's lab.  Their lab is focused on studying how blood vessels
develop. One side of the lab uses the mouse model system to study the
initial patterning of blood vessels in the developing mouse embryo.  The
other side uses embryonic stem (ES) cells derived from mice to study
blood vessel develpment.  Nick's project involves using differentiated ES
cells that form blood vessels in vitro. These developing vessels can
then be analyzed via confocal microscopy and time-lapse imaging to study
such processes as vasculogenesis and angiogenesis.  The goal of his
research is to understand how endothelial cells (the building blocks of
blood vessels) coordinate the processes of cell division and
morphogenesis to form a blood vessel.
kappas@email.unc.edu

Billy Jean Kirk
 Summer 1999

Aleisha Lane
 Spring 2000

Jackie Merrill
 Jan-May 2001
 Jackie is now in grad school at University of Alabama.

Michaiah Parker
 Jan 2000-May 2001
 Michaiah got her M.S. in education at Virginia Tech, and is now teaching
 Chemistry and Biology at Virginia Beach High School.

Matt Petrus
 August 1999-May 2002
 Matt got his M.S. in the Sible Lab for his work "Mechanisms of Cell Cycle
 Remoding at the Midblastula Transition during the Development of Xenopus laevisEmbryos".
He is currently in a neuroscience laboratory at The Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) in San Diego.  The focus of their lab is to identify
  and characterize the molecular processes involved in the perception of pain, heat, and cold.  The Transient Receptor Potential (Trp) channel families of Trpv, Trpc, and Trpm, along with other potentially related genes, are believed to be composed of ion channels that are involved in sensory neuron development and function.  Matt is involved in the molecular characterization of the Trp genes and other related genes.  The research in the lab includes, but is not limited to, the cloning of the Trp genes, transfections of mammalian cells to investigate the function of a gene, northern blot analysis, and yeast 2 hybrid assays to investigate the interaction of proteins from various cDNA libraries with the Trps.  They
  hope their work will lead to a better understanding of how we percieve our environment and to the discovery of novel pain kilIers.
mpetrus@gnf.org

Patrick Rowe
 Spring 1999-2000.
Patrick is now working on his Ph.D. in Molecular Medicine at Wake Forest.

Pam Savage
 Spring 1999- May 2000
 Pam is currently working on a few different projects at  Univeristy of
 Massachusetts.  The main project that she is working on is identifying and
characterizing the initial adherence factor in EHEC as well as defining the role of
NWASP domains in actin signaling during an EHEC or EPEC (Enteropathogenic E. coli) infection.  She is in the department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology under Dr. John Leong, MD Ph.D.
Pamela.Savage@umassmed.edu

Wei Sha
 Jan 2000-August 2002
 Wei got her M.S. in the Sible Lab for her work "Experimental evidence for
hysteresis in the cell cycles of Xenopus laevis egg extracts".  She is now a Ph.D.
student at Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech.  Her experimental biology experience at the Sible Lab is definitely a big help for her current research, gene expression data analysis.  She is now learning the other part, mathematics and statistics.  Her goal is to become an expert in bioinformatics!
wsha@vt.edu

Matt Tormenti
 Jan 2000-May 2002.
 Matt is now a med stuedent at Pitt, and has research interest in stem cell therapuetics for nervous system trauma.
mjt11@pitt.edu

Cristinia Travers
 Jan-Aug 2001
 Christinia is now working in Industry.

(Alan) Todd Walls
 Fall 1998- Summer 1999

Katie Webb
 Summer 2000-2001

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