News from 2019 | Everhart Lab

Congratulations to Dr. Srikanth Kodati, who successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation this fall, entitled “Diversity and pathogenicity of Rhizoctonia spp. from different plant hosts in Nebraska”. It has been such a wonderful year working with you on these projects.

Congratulations to Ms. Gulcin Ercan on successfully defending her M.S. thesis co-advised with Dr. Julie Peterson in the Department of Entomology. Wishing you all the best, Gulcin, on the next phase of your career.

After 5 years at the University of Nebraska, I will be starting this fall semester as an associate professor in the Department of Plant Pathology. Special thanks is due to all of the people who I have worked with over the years, this is a huge milestone and I appreciate all of the people who I have collaborated with and interacted along the way.
Several of the Everhart Lab members traveled to the APS Meeting in Cleveland, OH to present our research. Karen was selected to present two talks, including one in the I.E. Melhus Symposium. Margarita presented two posters. Nikita presented two posters and co-taught our Intro R workshop. Srikanth presented a poster of his research. Thomas presented a poster of previous work in my lab and even Edgar had a poster at the meeting. In general, we made our visit to Ohio very productive, forming new relationships, extending our networks, and identifying future potential collaborations.
Congratulations to Karen! She received the third place oral presentation from the North Central Division of APS and was the only student from our department selected for the NC-APS travel award. Way to go!
A big welcome to new Everhart Lab member, Sergio Gabriel-Peralta! Sergio received his bachelor’s in Mexico and his master’s at UNL studying plant viruses. He joins the lab after having been awarded a prestigious CONNACYT fellowship from the Mexican government. Welcome, Sergio!

Congratulations, Julianne, for successfully defending your dissertation! I heard lots of great comments about the quality of your presentation.
Julianne was awarded the Corteva Award to attend the Society of Nematology (SON) Meeting in Raleigh, NC this month. She gave an oral presentation of her research on nematodes in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and presented a poster of her work on deciphering ecological features within cryptic species, Mesocriconema xenoplax.
The beginning of this month was the conclusion of a summer course that I taught on professional development called Success in the Sciences. This has become a highly rated course and so I will be teaching it again this fall.
In other news, Asha Mane is joiing the Everhart Lab this month. Asha received her bachelor’s and master’s in India and is interested in cutting-edge research in plant pathology. She also comes to us after having several years of lab experience. We will be working together this fall to develop her project plans. Welcome, Asha!

I traveled with Complex Biosystems students, Kimberly Stanke and Ashley Stengel, to Idaho to present a poster and for them to give talks at the North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture meeting in Twin Falls, ID. Congratulations on two very excellent presentations on pedagogy!

We have two new people joining the Everhart Lab this month, Srikanth Kodati and Gulcin Ercan. Both students previously worked with Dr. Tony Adesemoye who left UNL for an industry position this month. Srikanth will move to Lincoln later this spring and Gulcin will finish her master’s in North Platte, under direct supervision of her co-advisor, Dr. Julie Peterson. Welcome, Sri and Gulcin!

The Everhart Lab hosted Dr. Lucky Mehra, epidemiologist and instructor from Kansas State University to give a seminar and co-teach the Intro to R workshop during the spring break to more than 60 students, staff, and faculty.
Nikita and I traveled to Knoxville, TN to the University of Tennessee for a joint collaborative visit with Drs. Denita Hadziabdic and Meg Staton. We kicked off a week-long visit by teaching our Intro R workshop and then later, Nikita worked with the Staton lab to learn de novo genome assembly and I worked one-on-one in a data analysis project with Denita.
Good news! I returned from Tennessee to find out that my application for tenure and promotion were officially approved at all of the levels from the department to the Vice Chancellor. When my appointment starts in the fall, it will be as Associate Professor.

The UNL Teaching and Learning Symposium was held this month at the Nebraska Innovation Campus. As part of the event, I co-taught a workshop on active learning techniques that were used in my professional development course. The great thing was that I got to co-teach this with two graduate students who co-developed the course, Kimberly Stanke and Ashley Stengel. I think we did a great job and had fun!

Biochemistry undergraduate, Cristian Wolkup-Gil, has joined our lab to gain research experience. He’s writing proposals for a UCARE project and an IANR Undergraduate Research Award to conduct a project on fungicide sensitivity of Sclerotinia sclerotiorum from dry bean fields in the U.S. = The project that I started as part of my USDA-NIFA Postdoctoral fellowship on Phytophthora ramorum was published in mBio this month.
As part of my application for tenure, I delivered a seminar in the Department of Plant Pathology this month that highlighted my research and its impact.