It's Been a While... and We Have Lots to Celebrate!

It has been far too long since our last lab update, and we are excited to share some fantastic news from the Cuesta Lab!

Over the past several months, our trainees have earned a number of well-deserved recognitions. Congratulations to Susana Delgado-Ocaña, who received the Best Poster Award for her outstanding research presentation at the RUMP Annual Symposium. Susana was also awarded a Brain Health Institute (BHI) Travel Award to present a Flash Talk at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Body and Brain Physiology Meeting, an excellent recognition of the impact and quality of her work. Katie Castell also received a travel award from the Gut-Brain Axis Working Group to support the dissemination of her research at this meeting.

We are also proud of our undergraduate researchers for securing highly competitive summer research opportunities. Jacqui was selected for the prestigious Ludwig Princeton Summer Internship, while Zaid received support through the Wading In: SAS Summer Research Mentoring Program. Another major milestone this year was Svara Shah's successful defense of her Honors Thesis. Svara's hard work, scientific growth, and dedication throughout her undergraduate research journey culminated in an outstanding thesis defense. Congratulations to all of our students on these impressive achievements!

And perhaps our biggest milestone yet: the Cuesta Lab's first publication is now out in Gut Microbes! This work represents an important milestone for our growing lab, and we are especially proud of our co-first authors, Susana Delgado-Ocaña and Guadalupe Herrera, whose dedication and hard work made this publication possible.

Congratulations to everyone on these accomplishments. We look forward to sharing more exciting discoveries and milestones in the months ahead!