June 2022
Leavitt Lab gathered for an end-of-year BBQ to celebrate the term's achievements and the upcoming departures of several valued lab members.
Congratulations to Laura and Beverly on their new jobs starting this summer and congratulations to our graduating '22s Lucy and Öykü!
We're also proud to share that Carrie received this year's Earth Sciences Department Gift Award, Öykü received the EARS Dept. John A. Ebers 1961 Memorial Award, and Amanda received the EARS Dept. Earle S. Lenker 1956 Undergraduate Award. Excellent job, all!
May 2022
Leavitt Lab's graduating undergrads have made major achievements during the month of May!
Lucy successfully defended her Biology Senior Thesis titled, "Phylogenetic and experimental evaluation of an aerobic methane production enzyme."
Öykü also presented her thesis work titled, "Barium in Seawater: Global Distribution Relationship to Silicate, and Barite Saturation State," at the EARS Senior Thesis Night. Her poster presentation on the same research won 2nd place in Sigma Xi's Christopher G. Reed Science Competition at this year's Wetterhahn Science Symposium.
Thank you both for your hard work and congratulations!
May 2022
Josie was selected as a 2022 Switzer Fellow through the Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation! Congratulations, Josie!
May 2022
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Laura successfully defended her M.S. thesis titled "Archaeal membrane lipid cyclization genes in terrestrial thermal springs." Her thesis research was also awarded a Neukom Prize for Outstanding Graduate Research in Computational Science. Congratulations, Laura!
April 2022
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The majority of the Leavitt Lab attended and presented their research at the 2022 NE Geobiology Symposium hosted at MIT. Jiawen gave a research talk, and Jeemin, Carrie, Laura, Josie, Öykü, and Amanda presented posters. Great job all!
March 2022
Leavitt Lab's Ph.D. student Carrie Harris passed her qualifying exams after presenting her EARS Summer Research Defense titled "Controls on lipid H-isotopic composition in a model thermoacidophilic archaeon." Congratulations Carrie!
December 2021
Jeemin presented her research at AGU in a talk titled "Factors controlling the H isotope composition of lipids from thermophilic archaea." Excellent job, Jeemin!
October 2021
Alison moved on from our lab to a staff scientist position at NOAA/CIRES in Colorado. We thank her for all of her work in the lab (especially for constructing the vacuum line!) and wish Alison well at her new position.
September 2021
Leavitt Lab is happy to officially welcome our new graduate students: Ph.D. student Jiawen Li (following his MS at UCLA), and M.S. students Josie Benson (co-advised with Sarah Slotznik), and V. Nathan (moving north from the Pearson lab)!
We are also excited to welcome undergraduates back into the lab. Lucy Langenberg '22 will be doing her Biology senior thesis work investigating aerobic methane production from methylamine, co-advised by Wil and Olga Zhaxybayeva . Öykü Mete '22 will be continuing her WHOI Summer Student Fellowship research on marine barium modeling for her EARS senior thesis, co-advised by Wil and Tristan Horner (WHOI). And last but not least, Rowan Gregoire '23 will working in the lab with the archaeon Archaeoglobus fulgidus.
August 2021
With sponsorship from the Dartmouth Society of Fellows, Jeemin hosted our collaborators Dr. Ann Pearson (Harvard) and Dr. Sebastian Kopf (CU Boulder) for a two-day seminar series at Dartmouth where they presented talks about the isotopic geochemistry of molecular biomarkers.
June 2021
Leavitt Lab would like to congratulate our two graduating undergrads, Carter and Theo! Both have been valued labmates over the past several years. Carter will be serving as the safety officer for the EARS Fall 2021 Stretch and Theo will be starting graduate school at Princeton University. We wish you both the best!
Additional congratulations to undergraduate student Öykü Mete '22 for receiving a 2021 Summer Student Fellowship at WHOI where she will work with Tristan Horner!
Finally, we are also excited to announce that we will be welcoming three new graduate students to the lab this starting this summer!