Raguso Lab News - 2024
May 2024: Undergraduate Jonathan Chai presents his research project on the effects of floral humidity on pollen viability and germinability in squash flowers at the SIPS honors research symposium. Congratulations Jonathan on your upcoming graduation!
April 2024: Rob traveled to the Mt. Cuba Center, near Wilmington, Delaware, to teach his annual workshop on wine tasting and Trillium flower sniffing. 16 participants mapped odorants on Prof. Ann Noble's wine aroma wheel and discovered just how different trillium fragrances can be.
April 2024: Recent graduate (Dr.) Ajinkya Dahake (top row, third from left in photo) has received the prestigious Schmidt Science Postdoctoral Fellowship! Read about it here. |
April 2024: Recent postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Gordon Smith, has accepted a new job as Assistant Professor of Instruction at Northwestern University, with a courtesy appointment at the Chicago Botanic Garden!
March 2024: PhD student Kirsten Keleher wins the NBB Paul Fellowship, which will allow her to spend fall 2024 on leave, for her first field season in South Africa. Congratulations Kirsten!
Raguso Lab News - 2023
December, 2023: Rob traveled to Buenos Aires, Argentina to give a plenary talk at the biennial meeting of the Latin American Association for Chemical Ecology (ALAEQ). The meeting was organized by former Raguso lab postdoc, Dr. Maria Sol Balbuena, who also (along with former Raguso lab PhD student Callum Kingwell, image at left) organized symposia on chemical features of pollinator behavior and endocrinological impacts on chemical communication in social insects, respectively.
October, 2023: Rob presented a plenary talk (in Spanish) at a symposium honoring the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the Instituto de Neuroetologia at the Universidad de Veracruz, Xalapa, Mexico. The scientific talks were complemented by folkloric music and dancing (Son Jarocho) and an exhibition of art inspired by the diversity of nervous systems across the animal world.
September 2023: Rob visited the University of Aberdeen, Scotland to teach a mini-workshop on the collection and analysis of chemical data.
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August 2023: Former Raguso Lab postdoc, Elliot Gardner, begins his new job as Assistant
Professor of Biology at Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland Ohio!
August 2023: Former Raguso Lab postdoc, Elliot Gardner, begins his new job as Assistant
Professor of Biology at Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland Ohio!
August 2023: Former Raguso Lab postdoc and manager, Deidra Jacobsen, begins her new position as Assistant Professor of Biology and Director of the Conservatory at the Hamilton campus of Miami University of Ohio!
August 2023: Former Raguso Lab postdoc Shayla Salzman begins her new job as
Assistant Professor of Entomology at the University of Georgia!
She'll be that much closer to Zamia cycad populations in Florida...
June 25, 2023: Recent graduate Avi Simon has his first-first-author paper, "Behavior and feeding preference of two beetle pollinators of Zamia integrifolia (Cycadales): Rhopalotria slossoni (Curculionoidea: Belidae) and Pharaxanotha floridana (Cucujoidea: Erotylidae)", accepted for publication in the journal "Florida Entomologist". Congrats Avi and Shayla Salzman for making it happen!
August, 2023: Former Raguso Lab postdoc Gordon Smith begins his new position as Visiting Assistant Professor at Williams College!
Congratulations Gordon, we're coming to Williamstown for the Fall Foliage!
August 2023: Former Raguso Lab PhD student Ajinkya Dahake begins his
new postdoctoral position at Princeton University!
June 22, 2023: Ajinkya Dahake doctoral thesis defense!
Congratulations to Dr. Datura!
May 15, 2023: Ajinkya Dahake wins the 2023 Capranica Prize from the
International Society of Neuroethology!
https://www.neuroethology.org/Awards/CapranicaPrize
new postdoctoral position at Princeton University!
June 22, 2023: Ajinkya Dahake doctoral thesis defense!
Congratulations to Dr. Datura!
May 15, 2023: Ajinkya Dahake wins the 2023 Capranica Prize from the
International Society of Neuroethology!
https://www.neuroethology.org/Awards/CapranicaPrize
June 7, 2023: Former visiting scientist/postdoc Maria Sol Balbuena officially begins her new CONICET position in Agronomy at the Universidad de Buenos Aires.
¡Felicidades Sol, maestra del túnel de viento!
June 5, 2023: Rob's essay "Hidden worlds within flowers" is published in a Current Biology special feature on Plant Interactions.
Read it here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2023.04.054
May 27, 2023: Claire Makino Duan graduates from Cornell.
We'll miss you, Claire - best wishes on the next stage of your career path, working in a lab at MIT!
May 19, 2023: Cornell Chronicle press coverage on our recent cycad paper in Current Biology: interviews with Shayla, Ajinkya and EAG superhero, Will Kandalaft!
https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2023/05/pollinators-are-attracted-humidity-not-just-scent
https://cals.cornell.edu/news/2023/05/will-kandalaft-21-speaking-language-insects
https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2023/05/pollinators-are-attracted-humidity-not-just-scent
https://cals.cornell.edu/news/2023/05/will-kandalaft-21-speaking-language-insects
May 8, 2023: Shayla Salzman's COVER ARTICLE on cycad humidity as a pollinator attractant is published in Current Biology.
Read it here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2023.03.021
March 18-25: Rob participated in a workshop on Andean Páramo
ecology and biodiversity at the Universidad de Bogotá and at
Chingaza National Park, Colombia.
ecology and biodiversity at the Universidad de Bogotá and at
Chingaza National Park, Colombia.
February 12, 2023: Cornell Daily Sun press coverage on our recent paper on Datura floral humidity and hawkmoth foraging preferences, published in Nature Communications.
Interview with Ajinkya here:
https://cornellsun.com/2023/02/12/new-findings-on-humidity-gradients-suggests-a-potential-role-in-signaling-for-pollinators/
Interview with Ajinkya here:
https://cornellsun.com/2023/02/12/new-findings-on-humidity-gradients-suggests-a-potential-role-in-signaling-for-pollinators/
Raguso Lab News - 2022
December 15, 2022: Ajinkya's paper, "A signal-like role for floral humidity in a nocturnal pollination system" is published in Nature Communications!
Special thanks to Piyush Jain and Caleb Vogt for their collaborative spirit, and to Jack Bradbury and Sandy Vehrencamp for helping us to navigate 3 rounds of revisions!
Read it here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-35353-8
September 2022: We hosted Liedson Carneiro and Carlos Martel for 2 intense weeks of GC-MS analyses associated with an NSF-funded project with Gerardo Arceo-Gomez, of Eastern Tennessee State University. Gerardo and Carlos are proud graduates of the 2010 OTS course on plant-animal interactions taught at La Selva, Costa Rica by members of our Cornell Chemical Ecology group.
September, 2022: Charlotte Coates visits
Cornell from the University of Guelph, Ontario, to present data on her MS thesis on the micrometeorology of squash flowers, a collaborative project with Cornell. Her stay coincided with visits by Krissa Skogen (Clemson), Haley Carter (Chicago Botanic Garden) and Sol Balbuena (Univ. of Buenos Aires, Argentina). Update: Charlotte defended her MS thesis in December, 2023!
Cornell from the University of Guelph, Ontario, to present data on her MS thesis on the micrometeorology of squash flowers, a collaborative project with Cornell. Her stay coincided with visits by Krissa Skogen (Clemson), Haley Carter (Chicago Botanic Garden) and Sol Balbuena (Univ. of Buenos Aires, Argentina). Update: Charlotte defended her MS thesis in December, 2023!