It has been a pleasure to bring some new faces into the lab over the past months. Olivia Speare – now Olivia Benski – has transitioned from an undergrad to a technician working on our EPSCoR project with Tomislav. Monica Pedroni has joined us a second lab technician, and has been working with Sergey on both our NSF Dimensions of Biodiversity project and our DOE Biosystems one. Cole Garrett and Drew Johnson are both doing undergrad research in the lab, Cole with Sergey looking at PHB accumulation and Drew with Tomislav looking at evolution of growth on methoxylated aromatics. Giovanna Girolami has joined us as an UG tech making media, doing sterilization, etc. And since the last such post, we have had Mete Yuksel, Hannah Ringel, and Maria Elizarraras join the lab and then move on to other opportunities.