the hibbett lab

at Clark University


Lab News

Updated June '08

Going-away party for Brandon,
Memorial Day '08 More photos

May
Congratulations to Jason Slot, who has just received a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biological Informatics. Jason will take the fellowship to Antonis Rokas' lab at Vanderbilt. Jason's research interests in David Hibbett's laboratory at Clark involved investigating the evolution of nitrate assimilation genes in fungi. He is completing his doctoral work this summer. Read more about Jason

David Hibbett has been appointed an Honorary Fellow of the Mycological Society of America, a scientific society dedicated to advancing the science of mycology — the study of fungi of all kinds including mushrooms, molds, truffles, yeasts, lichens, plant pathogens and medically important fungi. Read more about MSA

David Hibbett gave a talk on automated phylogenetic taxonomy at the 4th Annual "Plant" Biology Symposium at Harvard. The symposium was all about phylogenetics.

Tom Heider Chuck Ha Alex Andersen Dan Menard J.P. Burke
Mor lives! Tom Heider, Chuck Ha and Alex Andersen will work this summer on the mor project. Tom is a biology/computer science major at Holy Cross College, Chuck is a CS major at Clark and Alex is a Clark biology junior. Tom worked on mor during the 2007-08 academic year with Clark undergraduates Dan Menard and J.P. Burke, who are moving on to greener pastures. Many thanks to Dan and J.P. for their efforts. Read more about mor

April
David gave a seminar in the Department of Botany at Miami University, Oxford Ohio. Miami University is home to Nik Money, mycological author and biomechanist extraordinaire.

March
Congratulations to Brandon Matheny, who has accepted a new position as assistant professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Brandon has worked as a post-doc in the Hibbett lab since August 2003, primarily acquiring and analyzing data for the Assembling the Fungal Tree of Life projects (AFTOL1 and AFTOL2). These results cast new light on evolutionary relationships of fungi, including mushroom-forming fungi. Brandon will depart this summer for Tennessee, where he will pursue research in mushroom systematics and evolution of Agaricales and mycorrhizal fungi. Read more about Brandon's work

September
AFTOL grant: National Science Foundation Systematics and Population Biology/Assembling the Tree of Life (David S. Hibbett, PI; P. Brandon Matheny, Co-PI; M. Cathie Aime, Sub-award PI). Title: Collaborative Research: AFTOL: Resolving the Evolutionary History of the Fungi. Funding period September 15, 2007-August 31, 2011. DEB-0732968. $590,000.