On November 9th, the Ploss lab threw a farewell party for Dr. Jenna Gaska; a former graduate student who has accepted a position as a medical writer at Nucleus Global! We celebrated Jenna’s success and tenure in the Ploss Lab with Jenna-themed trivia, many gifts, delicious food, and piano sing-alongs.
We will greatly miss Jenna; a talented scientist who was always willing to help others in the lab, made everyone laugh with her delightful sense of humor, and went out of her way to organize social events that brought the lab together. Jenna, we wish you all the best with your future endeavors!
On December 5th, Alex presented a lecture titled “Hitting viruses where it hurts:New insights in replicative mechanisms of hepatitis B and C viruses” in the Department of Infectious Diseases at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
On December 1st, we welcomed our newest post-doc to the lab; Dr. Saori Suzuki! Saori joins the Ploss Lab with an extensive background in virology: she completed her dissertation work at Kyoto University (Japan) on the development of vaccines against hepatitis C virus, followed by postdoctoral positions at Shiga University of Medical Science (Japan) and University of Pennsylvania researching influenza and respiratory viruses. Here in the Ploss Lab, she will be investigating restriction factors in hepatitis C virus replication. Saori came to the United States recently, and she is excited to experience and learn more about American culture. We are thrilled to have you in the lab Saori, and to celebrate many American holidays together!
On November 1st, Ila presented her research in a poster titled “Isocotoin is a potent inhibitor of hepatitis E virus replication” at 3rd Annual Regional Academic Drug Discovery Day, held at Princeton University. This day-long event featured speakers and presenters from industry, academia, and government, who shared exciting drug discovery-related work happening in the tri-state area. Ila greatly enjoyed meeting others working on therapeutic development during the poster session, as well as the excellent talks.
