Fall

Some wonderful grant news!

We are delighted to announce a new grant supporting our research from the National Institute of Justice

We are extremely grateful for NIJ's ongoing support of our research!

Please help be part of our research!

The Walsh Lab is looking for participants to be part of a study on exploring facial development and variation.
If you are interested in this study, please go to this link to find out more information and sign up! We cannot do the work we do without you!

Summer

A huge gratulations to our newest Dr.

Well done to Noah on successfully defending his thesis titled "Exploring the effects of ancestry on inference and identity using bioinformatics"

On to fun times as a Post-Doc for Noah at Pitt!

Spring

Great start to the year!

Well done Frankie and Noah on your first (but not last) paper together.
Exploring regional aspects of 3D facial variation within European individuals

2022

Summer Conference Catch up!

ISFG Washington DC

Great conference, research and people! Delighted to get a picture of students past and present!

Noah presenting his poster, Frankie doing her talk, very proud of both!

Gordon Research Conference

Such great research (and fun!) at the Gordon Research Conference in Vermont, not to mention the "band"

Spring Grant News!!

Delighted to receive NIH R15 grant support to explore human craniofacial morphology!

Jag Team and graduation congrats!

2021

Fall Semester

What a great team to work with!

Graduations

Massive congrats to Clare for defending her MS thesis over the summer, you will be sorely missed around the lab! Onto bigger and better things by making a difference in the world and helping others!

2020

Graduations & Grants

What a year its been so far for many reasons, good and bad, but we move forward and work hard! Keep safe everyone!

Massive congrats to Racquel for successfuly completing & defending her MS thesis in this difficult time, well done Racquel!

Grants Update: We're very excited to receive funding from NIH through collaborations with University of Pittsburgh, KU Leuven, Stanford University & Penn State University. Heres to unearthing more information on facial morphology over the next few years!

2019

Graduations & Publications

Massive congrats to Ryan for all the hard work over the last few years and for successfuly defending his PhD thesis.

Fall Semester!

Some fun pics celebrating new publications and new lab members!

Spring Presentations & Awards

Big congrats to Bailey, Clarissa & Paige for winning awards at the honors convocation.

Ryan presenting 'Odyssey - a semi-automated pipeline for phasing, imputation and analyses of genome-wide genetic data'.

Bailey presented her work on HIrisPlex-S and its design for Massive Parallel Sequencing usage on the MiSeq and Ion Torrent at the AAFS conference in Baltimore this February.

2018

Fall Conferences & Holidays

Merry Christmas from the Walsh Lab!

Ryan and Noah presented work on iris color GWAS with pipeline automation, and PMI (Post Mortem Interval) prediction from RNAseq data, at ASHG (American Society of Human Genetics) this fall. They also enjoyed catching up with colleagues from our collaborator groups - PSU and KU Leuven

They also enjoyed catching up with colleagues from our collaborator groups - PSU and KU Leuven

Fall Grants & Graduations

Stephanie sucessfully defended her MS thesis this fall. Her research explored Irish surname history, a topic close to this labs heart!

The lab were delighted to receive word of our NIJ grant award for 2019. Work that will be done in collaboration with Mark Shriver at Penn State University. This will allow both teams to push the boundaries with regards understanding facial morphology and its possible prediction - an exciting new chapter for the lab!

Spring Awards & Graduations

Mirna Ghemrawi sucessfully defended her MS thesis this summer. Best of luck during your PhD at FIU!

MS student Krystal Breslin received the award for the most 'Outstanding Masters Student in Research' from the School of Science. Fantastic job, well done and good luck in your future scientific career!

Spring Conferences

PhD Candidate Ryan Eller presented at the PITTCON conference and expo in Orlando, Florida. He presented his work on genotype-phenotype association.

Stephanie Farmer travelled to Bydgoszcz, Poland and presented her work on investigating Viking ancestry in Irish surnames at the Haploid marker conference in May this year.

Mirna Ghemrawi travelled to Dubai and presented her work on 'DNA phenotyping within the Lebanese population' at the Emirates International Forensic Conference & Exhibition in April this year.

Spring Grants

At the start of the Spring 2018 semester, MS candidate Noah Herrick was awarded internal funding from the Research Support Funds Grant (RSFG) program through the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research. The RSFG will fund one of Noah’s research goals: gathering preliminary measurements of facial soft tissue thickness through collaborations with the IU School of Dentistry and Medical School.

2017

Celebrate Science

Another year to Celebrate Science! On October 7th our lab took part in Celebrate Science Indiana at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. Celebrate Science Indiana is an event to get children and their parents involved in science. Our table had a “Who Stole Teddy” case that allowed children to solve a mock case with the help of DNA phenotyping. This event also allowed us to spread the word on what our lab was working on. It was a fantastic event that we look forward to being a part of every year!

Spring Awards

On April 1st, Charanya, and Katherine received awards through the School of Science! Charanya received the Outstanding Masters Students Research Award while Katherine won the award for Forensic Science Outstanding Academy Achievement. Congrats y'all!

Science Night at Forest Dale Elementary

On January 12th, Charanya, Wesli, Stephanie, and Krystal attended Forest Dale Elementary's Science Night. The booth that the Walsh Lab had at this event featured the "Who Stole Teddy" mystery to help engage elementary age children in Forensic Science. The event had a great turn out of over 170 kids and will definitely be something that our lab attends again!

2016

Lab Christmas Party

The Lab also got to sit down for our annual Christmas pitch in and secret santa!

November Grants

Tis the season to be thankful. The Walsh lab was able to gain 2 grants this month. The first was a $500 travel fellowship awarded from IUPUI to Krystal Breslin for reinbursment for travel expenses to scientific conferences. The other was a grant renewal for Ryan Eller for approximately $38.5K for further development of a tool that predicts human facial morphology from DNA.

The Walsh Lab at ISHI (International Symposium on Human Identification)

On September 26 the Walsh Lab travelled to the Twin Cities to attend the 27th Annual International Symposium on Human Identification. We got to meet many nice presenters, scienstists, and others who were in attendance. Here's looking forward to next year when the 28th Annual ISHI goes sleepless in Seattle.

Celebrate Science

In October 6th our lab took part in Celebrate Science Indiana at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. Charanya, Krystal, Wesli, Mirna, and Lydia represented our lab at this event. Celebrate Science Indiana is an event to get children and their parents involved in science. Our table had a “Who Stole Teddy” case that allowed children to solve a mock case with the help of DNA phenotyping. This event also allowed us to spread the word on what our lab was working on. It was a fantastic event that we look forward to being a part of next year!

The Walsh Lab at TwinsFest

On August 6 and 7th the Walsh lab attended TwinsFest in Twinsberg Ohio. With the help of our friends over at Penn State University we were able to to collect several hundred samples from some of the nicest identical twins. It was a pleasure working with Dr. Shriver and his Penn State crew, and we're excited to start analyzing such interesting data.

2015

Preparing Future Faculty and Professionals

The Walsh lab is proud to announce that Charanya Muraildharan was awarded second place in the 3 Minute Presentation Contest. For this contest, Charanya had to explain her research to a non-specialist audience. This contest emphasized the importance of being able to present research in an understandable fashion no matter who the audience may be. Charanya presented her Beard Pigmentation Study. She was awarded $150 for her presentation. Way to go Charanya!

Graduate Research Fellowship

The Walsh lab has some very exciting news! Ryan Eller, PhD student, was awarded a Graduate Research Fellowship by the National Institute of Justice! This prestigious grant will provide support for up to 3 years totaling approximately $120,000. Ryan’s research will attempt to identify novel genes associated with craniofacial morphology and eye pigmentation. These genes will then be correlated with physical appearance measurements to help create a prediction model that will have an application in forensics along with a variety of other fields.

ISHI

From October 12-15th Krystal attended the International Symposium on Human Identification in Dallas Texas. She represented the Walsh Lab and did a poster presentation on our work with HP-S, the Hirisplex system with the additional prediction of skin color (this paper is coming very soon). Krystal was awarded this trip for winning the Illumina Lego competition earlier this year.

Krystal also blogged about her experience at ISHI. Check it out below!

Krystal's Blog

Celebrate Science Indiana

On October 6th our lab took part in Celebrate Science Indiana at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. Megan, Krystal, and Charanya (all pictured below) represented our lab at this event. Celebrate Science Indiana is an event to get children and their parents involved in science. Our table had a “Who Stole Teddy” case that allowed children to solve a mock case with the help of DNA phenotyping. This event also allowed us to spread the word on what our lab was working on. It was a fantastic event that we look forward to being a part of in years to come!

And the Winner Is ...

We are proud to announce that our Research Assistant, Krystal Breslin, is one of three grand prize winners for the NGS is Awesome Lego Build Contest.

This contest was put on by Illumina in order to discuss what exactly makes Next Generation Sequencing so awesome. For this contest, Krystal had to design some sort of Lego art using the Lego Miseq that Illumina provided. She also had to describe why “Next Generation Sequencing is the best thing since sliced bread”. Krystal designed a Lego scene titled “Guardians of the Genome”. The superheroes, each corresponding to a DNA base, use their Miseq to fight off a variety of aliments facing the human race. These villains include Disease, Crime, and Microbes, just to name a few. The scene shows a long night of work for the Guardians of the Genome on their quest to save the world!

In winning this contest, Krystal receives an all-expense paid trip to the 2015 ISHI conference in Dallas, Texas, where she will be presenting a poster on our recent work with the HIRISPLEX reaction. Way to go Krystal