Congrats to our former graduate student, Dr. Ayse Sahan, who has been selected as the recipient of the 2026 Roland K. Robins Outstanding Pharmacology Thesis Award for her thesis, "Illuminating the Spatiotemporal Regulation of Metabolic Signaling." Congratulations, Ayse! 🎉

Double the celebration this July! 🎂💍Happy birthday to postdoc Jing Ling, and congratulations to postdoc Anneliese Gest on her wedding! Wishing you all happiness, good health, and beautiful moments ahead. ✨

Congrats to postdoc Nick Bergkamp (center) on completing the Rock ‘n’ Roll San Diego Marathon in 3:28:51!

Congrats to graduate student Rosie Zhou, who was awarded the Graduate and Professional Student Association’s Outstanding Community Leader award! We’re so proud of her work and her accomplishments. Congrats, Rosie!

Happy birthday to the April and May Zhang Lab birthdays! We celebrated Nick, and then Rosie, Su Hyun, and Max with cake and song in our latest group meetings! 🎂

Led by grad student Xinchang He and in collaboration with @michellefrei17.bsky.social and @yaochen20.bsky.social we developed a new series of chemigenetic FRET-based biosensors by pairing fluorescent protein donors with HaloTag–far-red dyes, providing enhanced dynamic range over FP-based designs.

Happy birthday to graduate student Yingqi! Another year, another #dragonknife and cake! 🎂

Congratulations to graduate student Rosie Zhou and postdoc Nick Bergkamp on winning poster prizes at last month’s Roger Tsien Cell Signaling Symposium! It was a great day with lots of amazing science, and nice to have our trainees’ work highlighted.

Just before the holidays we celebrated project scientist Ben Li, who is moving on to a new position at Zymo Research. Congratulations and good luck in your future endeavors, Ben!

At our annual holiday party we wished a happy birthday to graduate student Evan Wen! Happy birthday and happy holidays, Evan! #dragonknife

We recently said farewell to Ryan Weeks, who defended his thesis a few months ago and is now moving on from the lab to do a postdoc in Mia Myong-Hee Sung’s lab at the NIH (irp.nih.gov/pi/myong-hee...)! We'll miss him but we're proud to see him take his next scientific steps. Congrats, Dr. Weeks!

Congratulations to graduate student Evan Wen on receiving and NIH F31 Fellowship Award for his project “Spatial diversity of GPCR-mediated ERK signaling and its role in cardiovascular disease”!

Check out this recent paper from the lab, which sheds light on the physiological role of RIa phase separation, including its impact on insulin secretion! journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... This work was led by project scientist Skott and former grad student Julia, part of our phase separation team!

Last week we celebrated Wei, @weilin1113.bsky.social, who has left the Zhang lab to start his independent career at Jiangnan University, focused on glycobiology. Wei has led numerous projects including the kinase integrator, KINACT. We’re proud of his work here and excited to see his next steps!

Congratulations to Leah Bae, who successfully defended her master’s thesis last week! We’re very proud of her achievements in the lab and are excited for her next steps!

Congratulations to Dr Ayse Sahan! Ayse defended her thesis this summer, and just finished up in the lab to move to her next adventure: a postdoc at UChicago! We miss Ayse already, but we’re very proud of what she’s accomplished here and excited to see her future work! #DragonKnife #PhDone

Last week we said “au revoir” to Prof. Xavier Nicol, who joined us for his sabbatical over the last year. It’s been great to have him for discussions and ideas, and we’re excited to keep working with him on collaborations!

Congratulations to Dr Emily Pool, who defended her thesis last week! She’s been an incredible asset to the lab, from her precision, to her mentorship, to the subject of her work, phase separation of PKA regulatory subunits. We’re so excited to see what she does next! Congrats, Dr. Pool!

Three cakes! 🎂🎂🎂 The Zhang lab is full of May birthdays! Happy birthday to grad students Rosie and Max, and to postdoc Su-Hyun. (And belated birthdays to postdocs Nick and Ben, not part of today’s triple cake event, but celebrated nonetheless) #dragonknife

Congratulations to graduate student Rosie Zhou, who won the Shu and KC Chien Best Poster in Bioengineering award at the annual Jacobs School of Engineering Research Expo for her poster “Visualizing Protein Communication in Human Cells to Improve Cancer Treatment” @jacobsschool.bsky.social

Congratulations to two members of the lab on receiving fellowships and prizes! We're very proud of them, and these awards will support their work on signaling in heart disease and lung cancer, respectively. Details in the thread for each of their projects. 🧵

Last week we celebrated 3 lab birthdays! Happy birthday to grad students Qian and Pal, and Project Scientist Scott! #DragonKnife

On Friday we had our lab farewell party for postdoc @chrisqs.bsky.social, with lunch, cake, and lab sweater and mug! #DragonKnife Qi is moving on to a position in Dr. Diane Simeone’s lab at Moores Cancer Center. We’ve loved working with Qi, and are excited to see what he does going forward!

Two members of the lab, @ammgest.bsky.social and @anne-lyons-bioe.bsky.social will be at the Biophysical Society Meeting #bps2025 02/15 -02/19! Check out their posters on 02/18 from 1:45 to 2:45!