Welcome to the Diering Lab!

At the 2024 UNC-Duke Alzheimer’s disease research center’s annual symposium, SLAM-DUNC, Diering lab member Kylie Joyce presented a poster titled “Early Onset and Progressive Sleep Disruption in Alzheimer’s Model Mice.” After careful consideration amongst all basic science posters presented, the judges chose Kylie’s poster as the “1st Place in Basic Science Outstanding Poster Presentation.” This was an amazing way to tell the Alzheimer’s disease community of researchers about the exciting research happening in the Diering lab!

On August 26th, 2024, Dr. Diering gave a faculty lecture to the Cell Biology and Physiology department about the roles of sleep across the lifespan, ranging from development through the aging process. There was a spectacular turnout for this very informative presentation!

On June 11th, 2024, Diering lab member Sean Gay successfully defended his dissertation, titled “Elucidating the interplay between sleep, synapses, and brain development.” The lab is extremely proud of Sean’s accomplishment, and the progress he has made in the fields of sleep and neurodevelopment research. This fall, Dr. Gay will begin is post-doctoral training at Duke University in the lab of Dr. Scott Soderling.

Congratulations to Diering lab member Tekla Maisashvili, who recently successfully defended her honor’s thesis! She has worked very hard on her project, “Behavioral and Molecular Changes Following Acute Sleep Deprivation in Juvenile Wild-Type and Shank3 Het Mice”. Here we see Tekla at one of the poster sessions where she presented this excellent research. We will miss her very much when she graduates from UNC this week!

The Diering Lab took a break from lab meeting to (safely) view the solar eclipse on April 8th, 2024. The path of totality across the United States for this eclipse passed from Texas to New England, and we experienced ~80% totality here in Chapel Hill. The next total solar eclipse in the contiguous United States will not occur until 2044!

We did our best to think of a good caption. Instead, we have these:

Taking multitasking to the next bracket

We may wear white lab coats, but we bleed Carolina Blue

We keep the benches warm so the Tar Heels don’t have to

The Diering Lab racks up pipette tips while the Tar Heels rack up points

A+ dribbling on the court, none at the bench

Delighted to share an article showcasing our very own Dr. Shenee Martin’s research linking sleep and Alzheimer’s disease on Futurum Careers!

https://futurumcareers.com/the-links-between-sleep-and-alzheimers-disease

This article was produced by Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE). For more information, teaching resources, and course and career guides, see www.futurumcareers.com

The Diering Lab was well-represented at the Society for Neuroscience conference in Washington, D.C. in November 2023! It was an honor to learn about and contribute to the wide range of cutting-edge neuroscience research. Lab members presented three research posters (pictured: Dr. Shenee Martin/Kylie Joyce, Sean Gay, Sawyer Grizzard).

Members of the lab recently enjoyed live music at Carolina Inn for the Fridays on the Front Porch event – and also took this time to say farewell to our undergraduate summer intern, Daniel Araya. We want to thank Daniel for all of his hard work, and wish him the best as he enters his senior year!

On April 11th, 2023, our very own Shenée Martin successfully defended her dissertation titled “The consequences of sleep disruption in Alzheimer’s disease progression and treatment.” This is an enormous accomplishment both for the newly-minted Dr. Martin, as well as for the Diering Lab, as Shenée was one of the first to join the lab! We are all extremely proud of her, and have no doubt that Shenée will continue to do great things moving forward.