The big news in the lab recently is that Áki Láruson defended his Ph.D. dissertation "Genomics of the globally distributed echinoid genus Tripneustes".

From left to right in the lab photo taken right after his defense is me (Floyd Reed), Michael Wallstrom, Áki Láruson, and Maria Costantini. People outside of Hawaiʻi might be surprised by all the things around Áki's neck. Here it is customary to give a Lei to someone after a big event and if several people give you Leis they can pile up as in this example. Note that at least two of the Lei's have a sea urchin theme.

Áki's graduation ceremony is on May 12th. He plans to stay in Hawaiʻi over the summer finishing up analysis of exon capture data. He then has an NSF funded postdoc at Northeastern's Marine Science Center in Boston starting this fall.