Honors student Ellen Tomlinson presented her results on the nucleolar vacuole at the Biology Honors Symposium.
Congratulations and thank you to Mariana
Undergraduate student Mariana Djafarian successfully completed an Independent Research Project, in which she established two new assays in the lab to monitor lipid accumulation in aging worms. Great work, and thank you! Good luck in your next adventure!
Congratulations and Official Welcome to Lilli!
Biophysics rotation student Lilli Wolfart earned a CGS-M scholarship from NSERC, and will officially join the Weber and Vera labs for her PhD! Congratulations, Lilli! We’re very excited for you to join us!
Timelapse movie of a nucleolus - with dynamic vacuole! - in the C. elegans adult intestine.
Goodbye Brendon, Hello Lilli!
Weber lab hits the ice (and poutine) to say a fond farewell to Brendon and welcome to Lilli!
Brendon will start a postdoc in the Pascual lab at NYU studying the ecology of malaria, and Lilli Wolfart joins the lab for her 3rd rotation in the Biophysics PhD program. Good luck, Dr. McGuinness; we’ll miss you! And hello, Lilli; we’re excited to have you!
Lucas presents at QLS Research Day
Congratulations to PhD student Lucas Philipp on a fantastic talk at QLS Research Day!
Check out his preprint for more details: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.24.634729v2
Annual Review available online in advance of publication
Congratulations to PhD candidate Lydia Hodgins and Weber lab alum Dr. Baljyot Parmar on their review article! Together with Rodrigo Reyes, we discuss how finite-size effects may affect the behavior of bacterial condensates, specific examples (and cellular functions) of endogenous condensates, and the various tools available to study them in live cells. Check it out here!
Weber lab wraps up 2025
2025 was a big year for the Weber lab - multiple publications, a successful thesis defense, and some bitter-sweet turnover. Congratulations and Happy Holidays to all! (Mmm, chocolate…)
Congratulations, Dr. McGuinness!
Brendon successfully defended his doctoral thesis, Trait plasticity and the maintenance of biodiversity. Nice to have so many family and friends come to support and celebrate his accomplishment. Congratulations, Brendon!
Omid's EU labeling method posted to bioRxiv
Congratulations to postdoc Dr. Omid Gholamalamdari for developing a technique to label nascent transcripts in the worm intestine! This method allows us to measure pre-rRNA transcriptional activity and location in the C. elegans nucleolus.
Check out the preprint: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.09.08.675001 and protocol: dx.doi.org/10.17504/protocols.io.rm7vzqr38vx1/v1
Brendon gives a fantastic PhD exit seminar
Congratulations to PhD student Brendon McGuinness for a beautiful talk describing his thesis work on “Trait plasticity and the maintenance of biodiversity”.
Collaborative project with Lishi Mohapatra (RIT) now out in PNAS!
Congratulations to Nishant, Rabeya, Jané, and Lishi on a fun collaboration! Their model of active transcription-templated condensate assembly explains the rapid kinetics of nucleolar assembly in early embryos, and predicts the scaling of time to assembly with nuclear volume. Check out the paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2411964122!
Omid presents at CSMB
Congratulations to postdoc Omid Gholamalamdari for a fantastic talk at the Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences 2025 Annual Conference! He presented his work on the role of intrinsically disordered regions in nucleolus subcompartmentalization and function.
Steph visits the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics
Steph is co-coordinating the KITP program on Physical Principles Shaping Biomolecular Condensates, together with Jerelle Joseph, David Zwicker, and Frank Jülicher.
Lydia gives a flash talk and poster at BSC
Congratulations to PhD student Lydia Hodgins for presenting her work from her rotation with the Vera lab at the Biophysical Society of Canada!
Goodbye Peng (and Baljyot), Hello Sahil
First lab BBQ with the new Weber grill. Wonderful to welcome back old friends, and say hi to new ones.
Brendon and Lucas present at QLS Research Day
Congratulations, Peng and Sara!
Weber Lab lets out our Rage to celebrate Peng’s PhD and Sara’s MSc. Congratulations, and thanks for all the hard work!
Lucas posts his first preprint
Congratulations to PhD student Lucas Philipp, who used Hi-C data to reconstruct 3D polymer conformations of dinoflagellate chromosomes. Check out his preprint on bioRxiv!
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.24.634729v1
Baljyot graduates, Peng defends!
Big week in the Weber lab. Congratulations to Baljyot for receiving his diploma, and Peng for defending his thesis! Thank you both for all of your hard work, and good luck on your next adventure!
Peng delivers a fantastic PhD seminar
PhD student Peng A presents his thesis work to the department!
