Lab News

July 2022: The Farris lab enjoyed a baseball game as our goodbye outing to our lab manager, Daniela, as she prepares to start her PhD at the University of Pittsburgh. The game concluded with an amazing fireworks show.

Pictured (from left): Katy Pannoni, Abby Craig, McKenzie Proffit, Shannon Farris (back), Daniela Gil (front), Mikel Cawley (back), Mayd Alsalman (front), and Quentin Fischer

June 2022: Ice-cream is a great way to end the week. The Farris lab enjoyed ice-cream at Blue Cow to reset at the end of the week as we say goodbye to Niesha Savory, who graduated with a B.S. in Clinical Neuroscience, and celebrate our graduate students passing their Qualification Exam!

MAY 2022: The Farris lab had a dinner get-together, courtesy of Shannon, because how can we not with all the news this month!

Our lab undergrads graduated! While we are sad to see some of them leave, we are excited for their next steps.

Our med student, Dinesh Lal, graduated this month! Congratulations Dinesh!

This month the Farris Lab team also grew as we welcomed our new neuroSURF students: Abby Craig and McKenzie Proffit!

Pictured (from left): Mayd Alsalman, Nikki Jean, Niesha Savory, and Fallon Curry
Grace Mun
Niesha Savory

APRIL 2022: The month of April has been an eventful and happy month here at the Farris Lab!

Our lab manager, Daniela Gil, accepted an offer to pursue her PhD at the University of Pittsburgh! And, our lab undergrad, Niesha Savory, was accepted into the Pennsylvania State University’s MD/PhD program! We are very proud of them both!

To top it all off, we are excited to welcome our graduate students who decided to join the Farris Lab this month: Mikel Cawley and Renessa Tarannum!

Daniela Gil in Pittsburgh Swag
Pictured (from left): Renessa Tarannum and Mikel Cawley

JANUARY 2022: We are happy to welcome Mayd Alsalman who joined the Farris Lab this month as a research assistant! Mayd is currently an undergraduate student at Virginia Tech, and she will continue being a part of our team after graduation.

SEPT 2021: We’ve had an eventful couple of few months here at the Farris Lab! First things first, we’ve had a few changes of staff as our lab manager Logan went off to grad school and our summer students finished up their program and went back to school (We miss you all!). But we’re happy to welcome Dr. Quentin Fischer as our new resident electrophysiology wiz, and undergrad Grace Mun! Head over to the Our Team page to get to get to know them.

This week has been a fun one, as we’ve had a few things to celebrate: Undergrad Niesha’s 21st birthday, post-doc appreciation week for Katy, and the sweet feeling of a string of successful experiments and grant submissions! We went out for a delicious lunch courtesy of Shannon, and had amazing weather to top it all off (it’s finally starting to feel like fall!).

Pictured (from left): Shannon Farris, Grace Mun, Daniela Gil, Katy Pannoni, and Niesha Savory

JUNE 2021: Our lab’s first official outing since the lifting of COVID restrictions in Virginia! The weather was perfect as the Farris Lab went to a Salem Red Sox game for Pride at the Park and debuted our swanky new lab shirts, designed by undergrad extraordinaire Niesha! The Red Sox may not have won, but our research assistant Daniela sure did as she caught the only free shirt of the night!

Pictured (from left): Rianna Zacharias, Fallon Curry, Niesha Savory, Shannon Farris, Daniela Gil, Katy Pannoni, and Logan Campbell
Daniela celebrating her catch

APRIL 2021: To celebrate the warm weather and the end of a fun lab rotation cycle with 2 very cool grad students, Mary King and Shah Rukh, the Farris Lab had a lab picnic!

Pictured (from left): Logan Campbell, Dinesh Lal, Katy Pannoni, Shannon Farris, Niesha Savory (holding Shoop PhDogg), Daniela Gil (holding Ollie), and rotating grad students Mary King and Shah Rukh

MARCH 2021: Lots of good news to share this month! First and foremost: Starting this fall, our exceptional lab manager Logan will be pursuing a doctorate degree in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Virginia! Logan has been a staple of the Farris Lab since the very beginning and while we are sad to see him go, we’re incredibly proud of his accomplishment. We look forward to your success, Logan!

This past weekend, 4 of our members, Niesha Savory, Joun Park, Dinesh Lal, and Daniela Gil, presented posters at a conference for the Central Virginia Chapter of the Society for Neuroscience (CVCSN). The conference featured over 60 impressive posters from labs across various universities and spanned a wide range of topics within the field. Despite the tough competition, we’re very happy to announce that Niesha and Joun won awards for outstanding poster presentations in the undergraduate and postdoctoral categories! Congrats Niesha and Joun!

FEBRUARY 2021: Our amazing undergrad Niesha has been given some well deserved recognition by Virginia Tech News! Click the link below to learn about her incredible journey! 

Early career researcher

https://vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2021/02/undergrad-fralinbiomedical-02032012.html

Check out Shannon give the cameras a sneak peak behind the scenes of our lab in this edition of the FBRI’s Research Spotlight! Wondering what’s a quick and easy way of explaining to your friends and family all the cool research we do? Shannon’s here to tell you all about it! 

JULY 2020: It’s been awhile since our last update but this week has been a good one! Recent VT grad Daniela Gil joined the lab as a research assistant–welcome Daniela! Rising M3 VTCSOM student Dinesh Lal crushed his STEP 1 exam–top 25%! And last, but certainly not least, VT undergrad extraordinaire Niesha Savory received her US citizenship certificate!

Late July 2019: The Farris and Swanger labs went to the Salem Red Sox game for bark in the park! We got  skunked (literally)!

Pictured (from left) are: Dinesh Lal, Logan Campbell with Arthur the Pug, Niesha Savory, Shannon Farris, Katy Pannoni, and Senah Stevens.

July 2019: The Farris lab braved the summer thunderstorm during the FBRI annual picnic. This summer we also welcomed two neuroSURF students, Niesha Savory and Senah Stevens, both Hokies!

Pictured (from left) are: Logan Campbell, Shannon Farris, Mackenzie Topolski, Katy Pannoni, Niesha Savory, and Senah Stevens.

February 2019: The lab has doubled in size! Welcome Dr. Katy Pannoni from Davis, CA and TBMH rotation student Keith Baugh. We had out first lab lunch at Beamer’s 25 and we forgot to take a picture 🙁

December 2018: Logan Campbell started as a research assistant. Welcome Logan!

October 2018: Doors open Oct 1, 2018!  We are on the first floor of 2 riverside cir (R1033-R0139), come say hi!