Check out my piece at The Conversation that highlights some exciting recent advances in the field of circadian biology, including Michael Young's discovery of a prevalent mutation in the clock gene cryptochrome 1 (cry1) that leads to a "night owl" phenotype in humans. We're excited about this finding because it builds on some recent work by Alicia Michael, Jenny Fribourgh, and Chelsea Gustafson in the lab that discovered how the CRY1 protein binds to its clock protein target

Thanks to the Biophysical Society for their recognition as the 2018 Margaret Oakley Dayhoff Awardee! This award honors the memory of Margaret Dayhoff, a former society president, in recognition for the early stages of a career in biophysical research. The award reception will be held at the Society's 62nd Annual Meeting in San Francisco in February, 2018. What an honor!

Thanks to the steering committee of the 2018 University of California Chemical Symposium for their invitation to be a Keynote Speaker for the meeting, which takes place from March 22-26 2018. The UC Chemical Symposium brings together graduate students and postdocs from all ten University of California campuses for three days of talks, poster sessions, workshops and social activities. The program is curated by and for students and posted and this year marks the third annual ga

Congratulations to Laura-Ana Cuciureanu for her winning logo art submission for the 2018 SRBR meeting, representing some of the top model organisms for studying circadian rhythms. Thanks to everyone on the logo selection committee for their help here: Brian Zoltowski, Jennifer Hurley, Charo Robles, David Dolozel, and Shuji Akiyama.

Thanks to Susan Golden and the HHMI BioClock Studio at UC San Diego for this fun interview. My student interviewer, Rahil Hamza, and the rest of the production crew did a fantastic job.

The Science Communcation Program at UC Santa Cruz has produced professional science writers since 1981. Our lab was recently featured in a Science Notes profile by student Yasemin Saplakoglu, as well as this fun video (with Ula Chrobak). Thanks, Yasemin!

Congratulations to the recipients of this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Michael Rosbash and Jeffrey Hall (Brandeis University), and Michael Young (Rockefeller University) "for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm". Their groundbreaking work to dissect the genetic network underlying circadian timekeeping in Drosophila melanogaster set the stage for what we know about circadian rhythms in plants, fungi, and animals. See my s

Thanks to George (Cowell '71, history and Russian literature) and Rafe Kraw for sponsoring an exciting new lecture series on science and technology at the UC Santa Cruz Silicon Valley Campus. I spoke last Wednesday about our work on circadian rhythms to a near full house of engaged, science-interested citizens -- pretty amazing considering that Game 7 of the World Series was on! Thanks again to George and Rafe for the opportunity to share our work with the local community.

Congrats to Alicia Michael and Nicole Parsley for their work on our collaborative project with Fitnat Yildiz's lab at UCSC -- our paper was published recently in Elife (2017;6:e26163). The complex architecture of V.cholerae found in biofilms contributes to infectivity and antibiotic resistance. Understanding how biofilm architecture is regulated by factors secreted from the bacterium (proteins & polysaccharides) brings us a step closer to treating this endemic disease. The