News

Congratulations to Gayani Ranasinghe for successfully defending her thesis! Gayani and another newly minted PhD, Toni Banifasi from the Schlebach lab (Purdue), determined how Alphavirus spike protein biogenesis, PRF, and translocon components work together during infections. Nice to have the local Sri Lankan community come out to celebrate with her afterwards.

Summer was good in our lab.

We had two summer students, Ella and Juli, working on the capsid project with Matthew. Sorry no pics, PI too slow.

Ciara ran the Virology section of the Jim Holland RISE program on her own and received very positive comments.

Ellie presented some of her research at the IU Summer Research Symposium.

Ciara’s paper is out on ChemRxiv and Gayani’s paper has been submitted to JBC. Both are collaborations, which is always fun.

Zoe (Biotech, MS) got a job and began in August.

Trying out some new formatting for this page, still deciding.

Congrats to (drum roll please)

Allison for receiving the Albert Reusink Outstanding Associate Instructor Teaching Award in Biology

Gayani for receiving the Mahler-Wenkert-Heiser Fellowship

Allison, Gayani, and Ciara for receiving the Taylor Fellowship for the upcoming year

Nice to see their hard work being noticed and rewarded.

Great way to end the week: Zoe presented her MS work at the Biotech poster session on Thursday and Melody defended her Undergraduate Honors Thesis on Friday.

Proud of both of them and how much they have done while in the lab.

Melody Sutter, a senior in the lab, will be attending UC Berkeley to pursue a Masters in Public Health degree. Congrats to Melody, very proud of her.

Check out our People page and read about Matthew Kong, a microbiology PhD student who has joined the lab.

Welcome!

Allison and Gayani and Tuli attended the Midwest Viro meeting at UK (Lexington) in September. Great seeing old friends, making new ones. And super fun watching trainees network and catch up with people they had met at other meetings.

Allison and Gayani presented posters.

We have two outstanding teachers in the lab. In addition to Gayani receiving and AI award (see news below), Ciara received the Walter Konetzka Fellowship which is given to those who show “commitment to teaching and research.” Congrats!

She received “Best AI Award” for 2024-2025!

We had a blast hosting two students through the Jim Holland SSRP summer program. For five days, Ciara worked with Cecilia and Gayani worked with Kallan. Cecilia and Kallan both presented posters showcasing their results from the week.

Happy they chose our lab to work in 🙂

Graduation is near….you can tell as all the X499 students presented posters on their research. Megan was no exception. She was BUSY during the entire session. Hopefully people appreciated her work.

Gayani passed her prelims! We now have three PhD candidates in the lab. Congratulations to Allison, Ciara, and Gayani.

Congratulations to Ciara for successfully passing her preliminary exam. Happened in November, slow to post, apologies!

Tuli received the College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Mentor award (1 of 2 given), and the ASM Alice C. Evans Award for Advancement of Women; recognizes outstanding contributions toward the full participation and advancement of women in the microbial sciences.

In February 2025, Tuli was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.

Many, many thanks to the people who nominated her and supported her.

Allison is an official PhD candidate. She passed her prelims! Congrats!

Well, we sure have been delinquent in updating this website. Not sure why….maybe we’ve been super busy 🙂
Here’s our news, as best as we can remember.

Fall 2023:
Former Lab Alums Haley and Shefah had BABIES!

Spring 2024:
Sonya Grewal worked with Dr. Ramsey (Texas A & M) during her senior year. She presented her work at the Honors College Poster session. Great success.

Sonya, Maya, and Erin have all graduated and moved on to bigger things. Sonya is attending Medical School, Maya has a job at Eli Lilly, and Erin is going to be Dr-Dr as she is in an MD/PhD program. Smart ladies, proud to have had them in the lab.

Summer 2024:
We had the priviledge of working with the Jim Holland Program again this year. Two days of virology experiments with 10 rising HS seniors.

Allison, Ciara, Gayani and Tuli attended ASV in Columbus, Ohio. Allison, Ciara, and Gayani all presented posters–first conference posters.

So much happened this summer and all so quickly.
–Megan Westrick, an undergraduate, joined the lab. She received funding from IU Advanced Summer Research Program and the Department of Chemistry. She got A LOT of good data for her poster.
–Jon graduated with his MS in Biotechnology. He is currently working in Jay Lennon’s lab at IU.
–Ben is headed north to University of Michigan where he is joining the PIBS (Program in Biomedical Sciences) PhD program.
–We worked with the Jim Holland Summer Program. Nine rising high school seniors had 1.5 days of hands-on virology. Absolute blast!!
–Wes and Tuli attended ASV, Wes presented!
–Tuli became an editor for Mini Reviews and GEMS with Journal of Virology. Contact her if you have ideas or want to read about something in particular.

Pictures are coming but until they do, check out @TuliLab to see all these cool things.

Congrats to Erin, new member of Phi Beta Kappa!

Kudos to Jon Gomez for doing a great job at the Biotech Poster Session.
First of hopefully many poster presentations.

Ciara Richardson, a Biochemistry graduate student, joined the lab. Learn more about her on our “People” page. Excited to have her on board.