Congrats to Our First Doctoral Candidates!

A HUGE congratulations to Mike Aimino and Alison DePew for rocking their comprehensive exams and becomes the labs first doctoral candidates! Both wrote truly excellent grants and defended their general knowledge and their proposals admirably in front of a faculty panel last Friday. Naturally, we celebrated them immediately afterwards with cake and champagne! This is a huge milestone and we can’t wait to see what wonderful science they do next.

Congrats to Alison and Mike for becoming doctoral candidates!

Farewell to Lucas Restrepo!

Lucas and Tim with Lucas’ goodbye gift from the lab - a metal print of his first major result!

We said goodbye this week to our long-time technician / lab manager, Lucas Restrepo. Lucas was the first member of the lab, joining shortly after Tim arrived at Jefferson, in March of 2017. He worked very hard on establishing the lab infrastructure, our culture, and on pushing back the frontiers of knowledge about synaptic maturation. Though it’s always hard to say goodbye to one of our mainstays, Lucas is off to be a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, so we know success is in his future! Our immense thanks to Lucas for everything he’s done for our lab. We’ll miss him! Good luck in grad school!

We sent off Lucas in style with a group lunch at El Vez in Center City!

Summer 2019 in the Mosca Lab

Summer has been a busy time in the Mosca Lab! We started in June with three (!) summer students. Katie Helf joined us as a member of the Jefferson Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) from Rowan University. She worked to optimize new protocols for expansion microscopy to study active zone formation. Megan Furch joined us from Haverford College and spent 8 weeks working to define new genes involved in synaptic development in the olfactory system and to test some new tools we’ve built for synapse labeling. Finally, Ben Greer joined us as a high school student and cloned all the things! It was an amazing summer having these three scholars to join us.

Katie Helf, Summer 2019

Ben Greer, Summer 2019

Megan Furch, Summer 2019

We braved the 98 degree Philadelphia heat to get our annual summer picture of the entire lab! Look at those smiling faces and those keen minds! 10 people strong this summer!

Is the Year Really Almost Halfway Done?!

Our apologies for being so delinquent with blog posts for this year! It has been busy! But let’s correct a few of those things!

The Mosca Lab has been hard at work! In March, Tim and Lucas attended the 60th Annual Drosophila Research Conference in Dallas, TX. Lucas presented his research on synaptic maturation and gamma-secretase to rave reviews and deep questions about synaptic function. He did spectacularly and even got a photo with the infamous Genesee Scientific fly vials!

Since the last update, we added THREE (!) new members to the lab! We’re terribly excited to have them around. Libby Moese (left) is a Master’s Student here at Jefferson. She comes to us from Miami University with a keen interest in neurodevelopment. She’ll be studying synapse formation in the CNS and maturation. Dr. Stephen Tymanskyj (middle) joins the lab as a joint postdoc between our lab and his continued outstanding work in Le Ma’s lab here at Jefferson. Steve has a wealth of live imaging and neuroscience experience and will be building a toolkit for synapse imaging. Finally, Dr. Michael Parisi (right) joins us as a Senior Research Investigator. Mike has over 20 years of Drosophila experience and will be joining us to build tools for synaptic imaging, screen genes involved in neurodevelopment, and generally push back the frontiers of knowledge. It’s our pleasure to welcome all of them to the lab!

Stay tuned for more updates! We’ll be better, we swear. To keep you intrigued, there might be some big funding news in the coming months. Stay tuned!

Birthdays and Rotons and Meetings, Oh My!

It’s been a busy Fall for the Mosca Lab!

At the beginning of September, we welcomed Layla Ghaffari as our new rotation student. Layla is a first-year Neuroscience graduate student and she comes to us from the Barrow Institute where she worked in the lab of Rita Sattler on ALS. She is keenly interested in imaging, neurodevelopment, and understanding synaptic biology and will be working on modes of synapse formation in the CNS. Welcome, Layla!

We also celebrated our very first birthday! On September 24th, 2017, we moved into our newly renovated space and one year later, we’re roaring ahead! We’ve got lab members, active projects, and a great space to continue pushing back the frontiers of knowledge. We celebrated with white board art, great science, and pizza. We can’t wait to see what the next year will bring.

Finally, at the end of September, Tim traveled to the 2018 Cold Spring Harbor Molecular Mechanisms of Neuronal Connectivity meeting. It was an amazing meeting for synapse formation, axon guidance, and plasticity. Also, we were honored to have the chance to present our new story on proteases involved in synaptic maturation. This is a completely new story that started in our lab and we hope to share it with the whole world very soon.

Layla Ghaffari, our new Rotation Student.

The Mosca Lab’s first birthday! We’re on our way to being a toddler!

Tim speaks at the 2018 Cold Spring Harbor: Molecular Mechanisms of Neuronal Connectivity meeting on a brand new project (completely from our lab) on synaptic maturation!

A Busy Summer!

We've been hard at work this summer with new rotation students, summer students, and returning grad students! But we did get the time to take a summer photo. Here is the lab outside our building, doing our best to withstand the 97 degree heat with all smiles.

The 59th Drosophila Research Conference

Nearly 1500 Drosophilosophers descended upon the great city of Philadelphia last week to attend the 59th Annual Drosophila Research Conference, sponsored by the Genetics Society of America. A great time was had by all: our lab attended as observers and admirers of science. Many wonderful stories were told and scientific facts were shared. Thanks to the GSA for such a great meeting and a hearty to hello to all of our old and new friends met at the meeting!

Mike and Alison couldn't resist getting a photo with the life-size vials from Genesee! No word yet on whether humans prefer molasses-media or dextrose-based media. Stay tuned!

New Rotons and New MEMBERS!

March was an exciting month for the Mosca Lab! Shortly after a delectable Pi Day, our two rotation students, Alison DePew (left) and Mike Aimino (right) officially joined the lab as graduate students! What made them finally decide? Could it have been the pies? Perhaps the Snuggies? Either way, we're excited to have them and can't wait to show you what frontiers of knowledge their theses will push back!

At the beginning of April, we had two NEW rotation students join the lab. Mike Warkala from GGCB and Nicholas Pizzi from CBRM are spending Spring II with us. They're a wonderful addition to our growing lab and will be studying critically fascinating questions about synaptic development. Welcome Nic and Mike!

Tim is a 2018 Alfred P. Sloan Fellow!

This week, Tim was named as one of the 2018 Alfred P. Sloan fellows in Neuroscience. 126 fellows were chosen (including 16 neuroscientists) from over 800+ applicants. The Sloan Foundation identifies early-career scientists who are distinguished among the best in their field currently and supports them with two years of funding for their research. We are deeply, deeply honored by this award and will do our absolute best to live up to it! This money will be funding our efforts to understand how neurons in a circuit integrate information and coordinate their synaptic organization. Congratulations to Tim and to Jefferson for this honor!

E-A-G-L-E-S, EAGLES!

Lab work can happen every day, but history only happens once. The Mosca Lab joined millions of Philadelphians from all over the world to celebrate the Eagles, SUPER BOWL CHAMPIONS! We braved the cold to enjoy the parade as the Eagles returned home triumphantly!