Summer Orientation

We had our summer orientation session on Tuesday, May 18th. We (of course) served enchiladas. I am sure you are wondering where the photo-documentation of said enchiladas is....well, it didn't happen this time. BUT, by now you have a very good idea of what green chile enchiladas with chicken look like (see any previous post!). The enchiladas were from Si Senor this time, and there seemed to be a wider range of fruit fly rankings than usual. The average was 3.4 fruit flies (out of a possible 5), the range was from 2 to 4.5, the variance (based on my back of the napkin calculation) was 0.64, giving a standard deviation of 0.8. How about that for some Math Bio summary of the fruit fly rankings of Si Senor's enchiladas? In general, people liked the cheese quotient (high), but wished for a little more heat: "bam it up a notch".

We also had good fun mocking the delicious, Canadian and magnetized water (I'll let you guess which of those properties made us laugh the hardest. Shouldn't be too hard, eh?)

And of course we reviewed the summer schedule, expectations and logistics. Our three RE-1 students will be working in labs, attending workshops and journal clubs, doing lots of reading, and working on developing a formal plan/timeline for what they need to do (and when) for their next steps (graduate school, medical school etc.).

The last week of the summer will feature student presentations, the post-test (part of our assessment and evaluation plan) and the BBQ. So stay tuned for updates over the summer!

April 30th "Picnic"

We had planned an end-of-semester picnic in Presidio Park, but high winds and unseasonably cool temperatures kept us inside. But we still had a lovely time, with a great assortment of sandwiches, orzo salad and cream cheese pound cake (yummm) (see photo).

We presented Math Bio Graduation Cords to our two graduating seniors to wear as part of their regalia at graduation on May 8th, and wish them well in their future endeavors! We will miss them, but are happy that they are graduating, and know that they will do us proud.

We are looking forward to our summer program. We have three RE-1 students who will be doing their summer of intensive research. One will be doing a Wolbachia project, one will be working on a mosquito project, and one will be doing a stable isotope project. But more about that later- stay tuned for summer updates. We are planning to meet twice a month for journal clubs, workshops and research presentations (and of course, to enjoy enchiladas!)