[IIGB_All] Latest at IIGB and metabolomics core

[Katayoon Dehesh]

Spring greetings to you all,
I am writing to briefly inform you about the latest changes at IIGB and at the metabolomics core.

As you may recall a month ago Ms. Aimee moved to the medical school.  We are in the process of finding a replacement, and I believe that we might have a candidate.  I will inform you as soon as the last steps are finalized.

You may also recall that Jay Kirkwood our metabolomics coordinator had to abruptly leave to attend to an urgent family matter.   We have had a number of targeted searches and finally we offered the position to Dr. Amancio de Souza, a powerful and knowledgeable metabolomics person who accepted our offer.  However, Amancio is a Brazilian national and we are currently waiting for the completion of his visa application.
  Hopefully he can join us by the end of April.
Meanwhile, however we are dealing with the departure of Ms. Alyssa Vollaro, who is in charge of sample prep and analyses at the metabolomics core.  Recently, Ms. Alyssa was approached by the private industry with an offer that she could not refuse and we could not match.  As such, she will be sadly leaving us on April 23rd.  We have initiated the hiring process for a replacement.
In lieu of these departures, I am writing to ask for your patience, since our core personnel is at the bare minimum, although everybody is trying very hard.  In addition, our efforts toward expanding our metabolomics core to include metabolomics imaging is currently on hold till we reassemble our team.

Lastly, I would like to draw your attention to the IIGB symposium on Friday April 23rd, 12-3:00.
The three speakers cover the Kingdoms of life reflecting the diversity of our IIGB disciplines, namely Steven Henikoff form Fred Hodgkinson,  our own Adler Dillman, and Amen Husbands our UCR home grown plant biologist now at Ohio State.

Be powerful

Katie

Katayoon (Katie) Dehesh
Director, Institute for Integrative Genome Biology, Distinguished Professor 
Ernst and Helen Leibacher Endowed Chair in Botany and Plant Sciences
University of California, Riverside, CA 92521
Phone: (951) 827-6370
http://iigb.ucr.edu 
http://kdehesh-lab.ucr.edu