A belated congratulations to the former lab members Alice Lee and Lixing Yang, who have left to start their own laboratories in January! Alice has gone on to the Division of Genetics and Genomics at Boston Children's Hospital and will be appointed as an asssistant professor at Harvard Medical School. Lixing has moved to the Biological Sciences Division at the University of Chicago as an assistant professor (his departmental page; his new lab). They were courted by multiple institutions but Boston Children's and Chicago were the lucky winners!
While in the Park lab, they became experts in whole-genome analysis, publishing landmark papers in somatic retrotranspotion in cancer and the brain (Alice) and in complex structural variations (Lixing). Both had received K grants from NIH, Alice getting her K01 grant from the National Institute of Aging on "The role of somatic mutation in neurodegenerative disease" and Lixing receiving his K22 grant on "Structural variations and their impact in human cancer" from the National Cancer Institute.
In addition to their academic work, they contributed greatly to the social aspects of the lab, organizing hiking trips and dinner outings, mentoring junior members, and helping to set the collaborative and friendly environment in the lab.
Lixing and Alice, we wish you the best!
Pictured: Lixing in front of the biological sciences building of U. Chicago