Report on 2020 Spacecraft-Associated Genome Analysis (SAGAn) workshop at NASA JPL

So this last week, we ran a workshop on bacterial genomics at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).  Who is “we”?  An amazing collaboration across several institutions.  The whole thing was initiated by Dr. Parag Vaishampayan (NASA-JPL), who contacted myself (UC Davis), Dr. Elinne Becket (Cal State San Marcos), and Dr. Kenisha Johnson (Alabama A&M) about …

Koala Poop Microbiome Class: Summary and Class Materials

As introduced a few months ago, our lab (with indispensable help again from Ashley Vater) taught a new research-based freshman seminar course.  The impetus for this course was one that we ran last year, testing if Swabs to Genomes was possible in a 10-week quarter.  Given the complexity and expense of the genome sequencing, we …

A serendipitous demonstration of the power of social media in the classroom

“Social media is a waste of time”, “You should be writing grants”, “Spend more time at the bench and less time on Twitter” I don’t really want to wade into this discussion too strongly… there are a number of great resources out there documenting the utility of social media in science and science communication (examples …