Jan 21, 2026 - Our Starbirdaire goes international!
Jan 21, 2026 - Taking over San Antonio
This past November 2025 the Starbird lab had the pleasure of sending some of our members to the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students in San Antonio, TX. Seen in the picture are Alexia Horton (former summer student), Nicole Fournier (our research technician) , Lesley Canseco (our post-bac student) all of whom gave spectacular presentations on their various projects. These wonderful ladies have been working hard and we are proud to be showcasing them. Keep on the lookout for more exciting updates regarding these stellar scientists.
I would also like to give a brief shout-out to Summer Truong who is part of our good friend Tigist Tamir's lab. She did an excellent job presenting as well. You can learn more about Summer's work and the research being done in the Tamir lab HERE
Jan 21, 2026 - News news news!
We have a lot of updates for you today! The Starbird lab has been movin and groovin these past couple months. Here's what you missed since our last update:
- Skylar gave a talk for the Pathobiology and Translational Sciences Seminar and of course she did fabulous.
- Lesley and Camila both received travel awards to attend the 2026 Biophysical Society conference in San Francisco happening in February 2026!
- Skylar received a travel award from the Black in Biophysics (funded via Pfizer) to attend the 2026 Biophysical Society conference in San Francisco happening in February 2026.
- Johnna was featured on a podcast called Too Cultured where she discussed science and science policy. Heres the link to check it out: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1CqUjVZtwJUk9IMWdo4Jbs?si=JVQSB_bURNy9pxb-Lc3UVQ
- The board for the Science Policy and Advocacy Group (to which Johnna is the president) received funding from their donors to go to the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences conference in Phoenix, AZ this year. Congrats!
Nov 06, 2025 - She’s crushing it!
This fall semester the Starbird Lab had the pleasure of hosting Maria Celeste Lopez Vasquez as a rotation student. She worked with Dr. Starbird on the isolation and expression of a new protein of interest called Feimin, with specificity for the receptor Mer (part of the subfamily of RTKs called TAM receptors), that has been linked to processes like cell survival, migration, differentiation, and the phagocytosis of apoptotic cells. The identification of this new ligand brings up questions like: (1) does Feimin, being a highly disordered protein, bind to Mer in the absence of PtdSer (a phospholipid both Gas6 and Protein S must recognize and bind to for activation of the TAMs); (2) what is the conformational state that allows Feimin to bind to Mer; and (3) what specific role(s) does Feimin play when binding and activating Mer?
Maria was a superstar this rotation and took on a project with a lot of risks. We are super proud of the work she did and can't wait to see what other cool things she gets up to!
Nov 06, 2025 - Undergrad appreciation post
Just wanted to shout out our new undergrads, Amere Tucker and Mo'asia Bagley, and say how much we appreciate the work you guys do. These lovely ladies joined our lab at the the beginning of the semester 2025 and they have been a huge help around the lab. The girls have been mostly doing maintenance work at the moment to get them familiar with the lab items, equipment and layout. Super proud of how quickly they've picked up on lab techniques. We'll be transition to more wet work at the bench soon! Stay tuned to hear about their progress.
#LoveourUndergrads
Nov 06, 2025 - Fall crafts with the Starbirdaires 🍁
The Starbirdaires hit the town to do a couple of fun fall activities! We had lunch at a cafe for some cute bistro style sandwiches before heading to Klaystation in Raleigh for pottery painting. What a great way to round out this season with a bunch of awesome people!
Aug 06, 2025 - Oh she’s cool!
Big shout out to our summer undergrad, Alexia Horton, for doing such a good job on her project. Alexia is part of the CUREP program which matches undergraduate students from nearby universities to labs here at UNC. Alexia is a rising senior at North Carolina Central University studying Biology. For the last few weeks Alexia has been working with our awesome graduate student, Skylar Grimsley, on a variant of ABCA7 called T319A. She learned about the properties of ABCA7 as a lipid transport protein, it's connection to Alzheimer's disease and the impact that changing an amino acid has on a protein's function. Super proud of you, Alexia!
Learn more about CUREP and how to get connected to labs doing interesting science:
https://our.unc.edu/find/opportunities/
https://unclineberger.org/curep/
Jul 16, 2025 - Check this out! We got a postdoc
Great news! We got ourselves a new postdoc. We are very excited for Dr. Steven J. Moran to bring his knowledge and expertise in molecular virology and immunology to our lab. He will be working on RNA virus spread through TAM receptor tyrosine kinases. How cool is that?! Best of luck Steven 🙂
Jan 14, 2025 - Incoming: New Keypoint Fellow Class!
Dr. Chrystal Starbird was recently selected to join the 2025 class of Keystone Fellows, and appointed to the editorial advisory board for ACS Bio and Med Chem Au and as Chair of the Board for the Life Science Editors Foundation. Check out these stellar people in the link provided!
(https://keypoint.keystonesymposia.org/home/keypoint-newsletter-introducing-the-new-fellows-class-of-2025)
Jan 14, 2025 - We kicked butt at ASCB!
The Starbird Lab attends ASCB! Skylar, Nicole, Johnna, and Camila presented their work, in addition to Dr. Starbird presenting research at two sessions, sitting on two panels, and completing activities associated with her role on the MAC Committee. We were also fortune enough to have our undergraduates tag along. What an awesome experience for our lab. A big round of applause to all of you for being such killer scientists 👏
