The Hehnly Lab wants to extend our congratulations to Yiling Lan (Ph.D. candidate) and Yan Wu (Postdoctoral Researcher) for their excellent presentations at the BioInspired Institute Symposium last Friday.
Both presented posters showcasing their ongoing work in developmental cell biology.
Yiling also gave an oral presentation in the Development and Disease focus group, highlighting emerging evidence on how the centrosome—particularly the potential interaction between Cenexin and Pericentrin—contributes to early embryogenesis.
Yan presented her progress on the role of cell division in Kupffer’s Vesicle (KV) morphogenesis, with a focus on how the KV disengages from the enveloping layer (EVL).
The Department of Biology and Hehnly Lab were delighted to host Dr. Dorothy Lerit from Emory University for a seminar on October 24, 2025. Dr. Lerit, an expert in centrosome and RNA biology, presented her talk titled “The RNA-binding protein Orb2 regulates brain growth in Drosophila.”
We are thrilled to celebrate Favour Ononiwu’s successful defense of her Ph.D. dissertation last Friday. Favour joined our program during the challenging days of the COVID-19 pandemic and has overcome many hurdles on her way to this milestone. Her perseverance, creativity, and scientific rigor have left a mark on our lab and on the field of developmental cell biology.
She talked about her recent work titled “Functionally Essential and Structurally Diverse: Insights into the Zebrafish Left-Right Organizer’s Cilia via Optogenetic IFT88 Perturbation and Array Tomography”that sheds new light on how cilia contribute to the development of the zebrafish Left-Right Organizer (LRO), known as the Kupffer’s Vesicle (KV).
We are excited to see where her career takes her next, knowing she will continue to advance science with creativity and determination.
This summer, our lab welcomed three talented undergraduate researchers who made impressive contributions to our studies on cytoskeletal and cell junction dynamics in early development.
Shahina Alibekova, a SOURCE Scholar from Syracuse University, worked under the guidance of graduate student Yiling Lan to investigate centrosome dynamics in early embryos.
Athena Allred (Arizona) and Carys Timpson (Cambridge) worked with Dr. Heidi Hehnly and postdoctoral fellow Yan Wu to study tight junction assembly during left-right organizer development and its relationship to cytoskeletal dynamics. Their joint work culminated in a co-authored poster presentation.
Athena was supported through our NSF-REU award for Microscopy.
Shahina received funding from the Syracuse University SOURCE program.
Carys joined us as a visiting undergraduate scholar from Cambridge University.
Congratulations to Athena, Carys, and Shahina for a productive and successful summer of research!
