It has been an eventful semester, with new additions to the lab one after another. And now, I am very excited to announce the launch of the official Ye Lab Website!

Let's catch up first with a brief summary of the first semester in the Ye lab. The lab officially started in the Department of Genetics at the University of Georgia on August 1, 2018. Starting in September, I (Kaixiong) am officially affiliated with the Institute of Bioinformatics (IOB). This is very exciting, because I am joining an excellent group of bioinformatics researchers, and also I am now able to recruit graduate students through the Bioinformatics PhD program. That is, graduate students in the Ye lab can choose to get their PhD either in Genetics or Bioinformatics. Getting to know researchers on campus and in the local community has been an exhilarating experience. I was invited to give a talk at Georgia Tech on November 1 and felt very fortunate getting to know the local community of human evolutionary geneticists.

In terms of personnel, we have a total of 2 visiting students/scholars, 4 rotation graduate students, and 4 undergraduate students working in the lab this semester. Although there are not graduate students joining the lab this year, I have been very impressed by the great quality of students at UGA. I am looking forward to recruiting two graduate students with matched research interest and background from the 2019 cohort. We will have one computational genomics postdoc joining the lab in spring 2019, and we are still actively searching for one postdoc in (experimental) human genetics and one lab technician.

In the upcoming spring semester, I will start co-teaching a course in Human Genetics (GENE 4500/6500). This is an upper-lever undergrad and graduate course. I am very glad with this opportunity to teach a course that is closely related to my research. I am also working on the first major manuscript and grant proposal from the Ye lab!

I am looking forward to a happy and productive 2019 for the Ye lab.