Spring 2025 Seminar Series – Cocoa T. Dixon, PhD
2025-04-07 12:30 - 13:30 (America/New_York) | G202 MBRB, 111 Mason Farm Rd, Chapel Hill
Cocoa T. Dixon, PhD

Associate Department Head, Life Sciences

Wake Technical Community College

Talk focus

Beyond the lecture hall: shaping a career in community college teaching

Faculty host

Natasha Snider, PhD

More about the speaker
Dr. Dixon is a passionate and innovative educator deeply committed to promoting and enhancing student success in higher education. With nearly two decades of teaching and training experience across diverse educational settings, she has a proven track record in leading curriculum development, instructional enhancement, and fostering holistic student success.
Currently, serving as the Associate Department Head of Life Sciences at Wake Technical Community College, Dr. Dixon oversees a wide range of responsibilities including faculty recruitment, development, and performance management. In addition to her administrative responsibilities, she plays a pivotal role in fostering professional growth across the institution, driving strategic initiatives that contribute to the holistic development of both students and faculty.
Dr. Dixon holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Shaw University, a Master of Science in Biology from North Carolina Central University, a post-graduate certificate in Public Health Concepts from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership, Policy, and Human Development from North Carolina State University.

Spring 2025 Seminar Series – Sergiu Pasca, MD
2025-04-14 12:30 - 13:30 | G202 MBRB, 111 Mason Farm Rd, Chapel Hill
Sergiu Pasca, MD

Kenneth T. Norris, Jr. Professor, Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences

Stanford University

Research focus

Understanding human brain assembly and the molecular mechanisms that lead to neuropsychiatric disease using neural organoids

Faculty host

Grégory Scherrer, PharmD, PhD

More about the speaker
Trained as a physician in Romania, Dr. Sergiu Pasca, came for postdoctoral training at Stanford in 2009 where he developed some of the initial in vitro models of disease by deriving neurons from skin cells taken from patients with genetic brain disorders. His lab has afterwards introduced the use of instructive signals for reproducibly deriving self-organizing 3D cellular structures known as regionalized neural organoids or spheroids. To gain access to complex cellular interactions in the human brain, his research group also pioneered a modular system to study human neural circuits in preparations named assembloids.

Monday - FUSION: Jack Bennett, Lauren Griffith, & Shenice Harrison
2025-04-21 12:30 - 13:30 | G202 MBRB, 111 Mason Farm Rd, Chapel Hill
Jack Bennett (Cook lab)

Intracellular pH can be manipulated by inhibiting ion transporters, and these changes can be measured by flow cytometry
pH manipulations may alter cell cycle progression, arresting cells in the G1 phase of the cell cycle

Lauren Griffith (Williams lab)

Explore how integrin-β1 and its adaptor protein Talin loss-of function affects oriented cell divisions and telophase correction in fixed tissue and live imaging
Explore how integrin-β1 and its adaptor protein Talin loss-of function impacts basal cell delamination

Shenice Harrison (Edwards lab)

Impaired myristoylation disrupts sarcomere organization and reduces sarcomere length in embryonic cardiomyocytes
Optimizing a metabolic labeling strategy to identify the myristoylated cardiac proteins required for proper sarcomere assembly

Monday – FUSION: Michelle LaBella & Mady Chlebowski
2025-04-28 12:30 - 13:30 | G202 MBRB, 111 Mason Farm Rd, Chapel Hill
Michelle LaBella (Yeh lab)

TNIK is required to restrain tumor invasion in PDAC

Clear difference in mechanism when compared to colorectal/lung cancer

TNIK is a newly identified regulator of PLAT, tPA expression and ECM modulation through fibrin degradation
New mechanism for PDAC invasion and metastasis, may be what restrains classical tumors

Mady Chlebowski (Shiau & Chen labs)

Distinct neuroimmune and other cell-cell interactions may serve as early signatures of neurodegeneration prior to overt morphological cell death
This holds promise for early detection or intervention of neurodegenerative diseases

Monday: FUSION - Anna Beeson & Vickie Williams
2025-05-05 12:30 - 13:30 | G202 MBRB, 111 Mason Farm Rd, Chapel Hill
Anna Beeson (Caron lab)

Adrenomedullin robustly increases both mouse fertility and pinopode formation
Alternative model systems are allowing us to interrogate pinopode formation in novel ways

Vickie Williams (Cohen lab)

Dimerization fluorescent proteins are a useful tool that can show increased ER-LD contacts under conditions of lipid droplet biogenesis
Dimerization-dependent fluorescent proteins can modulate LD size when used to induce ER-LD contact sites

Rising Stars Program Seminar - Kendall Lough, PhD
2025-05-27 12:00 - 13:00
Kendall Lough, PhD

CGIBD Postdoctoral Fellow

Department of Pathology and Lab Medicine

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Talk title

Exciting contact: gut-brain circuits in early physiology and behavior

This seminar will be held virtually over Zoom. Link below
https://zoom.us/j/95576307638?pwd=[REDACTED]
About the speaker
Dr. Kendall Lough is a CGIBD Basic Science Fellow with a background in cell and developmental biology in various tissue systems, including the embryonic epidermal, oral, and gastrointestinal epithelia. His research focuses on understanding how molecular pathways drive cell identity and behavior, tissue morphogenesis, and organ function. He has made research discoveries at the intersection of cell fate specification and epidermal differentiation, the genetics of palate formation, and the developmental origins of the gut-brain axis. Currently, he seeks to define the mechanisms governing early gut-brain communication and its contribution to animal physiology and disease. He is particularly interested in the interface between sensory enteroendocrine cells and their neural or glial partners and defining the molecular and cellular mechanisms that coordinate communication between cells in the gut and brain.
About the Rising Stars Program
The UNC SOM’s Rising Stars Program’s main goal is to broaden participation among faculty members in the basic sciences. This professional development workshop series provides training to postdoctoral fellows to help them excel during the faculty interview process by exposing admitted fellows to the same components that they will experience during the faculty job interview process. This includes mock job talks, chalk talks, and multiple one-on-one faculty interviews. Participants will also attend workshops on the faculty environment and negotiating hiring packages. This program is sponsored by the Vice Dean for Research at UNC SOM, the Office of Faculty Affairs and Leadership Development, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Gilliam Awards.
Please note, applications to the Rising Stars Program are neither an application for employment at UNC nor an interview for a faculty position. Learn more about the program here.

Spring 2025 Seminar Series – I. Robert Nabi, PhD
2025-06-02 12:30 - 13:30 | G202 MBRB, 111 Mason Farm Rd, Chapel Hill
I. Robert Nabi, PhD

Professor

Cellular & Physiological Sciences

The University of British Columbia

Talk Title

Nanoscopy powered by machine learning: novel insight into subcellular structure

About the speaker
Dr. Ivan Robert Nabi earned his PhD in cancer metastasis from the Weizman Institute of Science. He is currently a professor in cellular and physiological sciences at The University of British Columbia. His research team investigates the cell biology of cancer. The expression of cellular domains, ranging from cell polarity to organelle biogenesis to membrane microdomain organization, play important roles in cell function. Dr. Nabi’s research team has elucidated the significance of various cellular domains in receptor function and cell motility. Some of their key discoveries include developing network analysis of dSTORM super-resolution microscopy to define the molecular architecture of caveolae and scaffolds and defining the role of Gp78 (also known as autocrine motility factor receptor (AMFR)), a cancer-associated receptor and E3 ubiquitin ligase in endoplasmic reticulum (ER) associated degradation, in ER-mitochondria interaction and mitophagy.

CBPalooza
2025-08-14 15:00 - 17:00 | Genetic Medicine Building Lawn, 120 Mason Farm Rd, Chapel Hill, NC, 27514, United States
Kick off the Fall semester with the Cell Biology and Physiology (CBP) Department! Join us in welcoming the incoming BBSP PhD students and CBP biomedical master’s students on August 14th. This event is open to the broad CBP community and begins at 3:00 pm on the lawn outside the Genetic Medicine Building. Thank you to the CBP Student Executive Committee for organizing this event!

Monday - FUSION:Keith Breau & Pierre N’Guetta
2025-08-18 12:30 - 13:30 | G202 MBRB, 111 Mason Farm Rd, Chapel Hill
Keith Breau (Magness and Elston labs)

Using a reaction-diffusion model to simulate planar cell polarity in an epithelial cell layer
Demonstrating a role for planar cell polarity in regulating intestinal epithelial migration

Pierre N’Guetta (O’Brien lab)

Total renal denervation in mice leads to a decrease in number of nephron developed
Denervated kidneys exhibit impaired balance between self-renewal and differentiation of progenitor populations

Monday - FUSION: Max Hockenberry & Christina So
2025-08-25 12:30 - 13:30 | G202 MBRB, 111 Mason Farm Rd, Chapel Hill
Max Hockenberry (Bear and Legant labs)

We have developed an imaging based approach to directly visualize the motion of single molecules of actin and the arp2/3 complex in living cells.
We have used this approach and preliminary data to assess how molecules of these proteins get to the front of the cell for incorporation in polymerizing actin networks at the leading edge.

Christina So (Neher lab)

ANGPTL3 and ANGPTL8 are both lipoprotein inhibitors that form a complex in the cell prior to secretion. When not in complex, ANGPTL8 gets trafficked to lysosomes, and it is unknown how ANGPTL3 diverts ANGPTL8 from lysosomes.
