| Faculty Advisor |
Michael Herman
|
|---|---|
| Contact Email | mherman5@unl.edu |
| Website | |
| Advisor College: |
Arts and Sciences
|
| Potential Student Tasks |
Responsibilities include reading relevant research and review papers, conducting experiments, collecting and analyzing data alongside graduate students and the adviser, as well as general lab maintenance and preparing materials for experiments. Trainees attend weekly lab meetings and present their progress twice a semester. |
| Student Qualifications |
Curious about biology and how living systems function. Aptitude for and interest in hands on work in the lab. Ability to function as a responsible and respectful team member. |
| Training, Mentoring, and Workplace Community |
As an undergraduate researcher in our lab, you will receive mentorship and instruction from myself, graduate students and senior undergraduate students. We work as a team that values diversity and the contributions of all members. We meet weekly as a group to update progress and troubleshoot experiments together. Most students in the lab apply for and receive funding for their project either through UCARE or INBRE programs. We help you with those applications and mentor you through the process as well as other research presentation. Secondary contact: Sara Hopkins, shopkins6@huskers.unl.edu |
| Available Positions |
1
|
The main goal of our lab is to link responses of living systems to environmental change at the genetic level. The question is, which genes are most important for how organisms respond to the environment.
We study nematodes (roundworms) because they play important roles in various habitats where numerous factors serve to shape their communities. We have focused on the interactions of nematodes that eat bacteria (called "bacterivorous nematodes"), important members of the soil decomposition food web, with bacteria, which serve not only as food sources but also as potential pathogens. We use both field-based and laboratory approaches to understand the gene functions involved in the formation and maintenance of dynamic soil nematode communities in changing environments. This work involves field collection of nematode and laboratory experiments to discover gene functions.