Ana Lyons, PhD
Postdoctoral Scholar
Neurology
School of Medicine
• Working as an NSF PRFB Postdoctoral Fellow in Saul Kato's lab, to establish tardigrades as a model in systems-level neuroscience.
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- Developing methods in transgenics, behavioral assays, and whole-brain, whole-body live imaging in tardigrades, with the aim to undercover foundational circuits underlying cognition and multi-limbed movement.
- 15+ years experience advancing tardigrades as an emerging model system.
- Ph.D. focused on the "Mechanisms of cold tolerance in tardigrades (Hypsibius exemplaris)," developing high-throughput phenotypic assays and comparative proteomics methods (Advisor: Caroline Williams)—as well as fieldwork in McMurdo Station, Antarctica. Mechanisms of cold tolerance and the biophysics of ice-formation in tardigrades remains an active area of research interest.
- A Relay School of Education ('15) grad and a TFA alum with a strong passion for making STEM education more accessible. Advocate for inclusion of scientists & community members with disabilities.
Awards
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- NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology (PRFB), University of California, San Francisco, 2022-2024
- Best poster presentation award, 15th International Symposium on Tardigrada, 2022
- Research Fellow, BARD US-Israel Agricultural Research & Development Fund, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Robert H. Smith Faculty (Ido Braslavsky Lab), 2022
- Best student presentation award, 8th International Symposium on the Environmental Physiology of Ectotherms and Plants (ISEPEP) 2019, 2019
- NSF Advanced Training Program for Antarctic Research, McMurdo Research Station, 2018
- Best poster presentation award, UC Berkeley Comp Bio Retreat, 2018
- NSF Graduate Research Fellowships Program (GRFP), University of California, Berkeley, 2015-2018
- DAAD Study Scholarship Graduate Research Fellow, University of Stuttgart, Germany (mentored by Ralph Schill), 2012-2013
Education & Training
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- Ph.D. Integrative Biology University of California, Berkeley 07/2022
- MAT Secondary Science Education Relay Graduate School of Education 06/2015
- B.S. Biology, Philosophy Massachusetts Institute of Technology 05/2012
Interests
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- non-model organisms
- behavior
- thermal physiology
- neuroscience
- proteomics
- cognition
- genome engineering
- K12 STEM education
- tardigrades
- microscopy
- cold tolerance
- accessibility in academia
Websites
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- Google Scholar (scholar.google.com)
- Focolab (saulkato.com)
- Personal Website (aml.bio)
Publications (3)
Top publication keywords:
Evolution, MolecularFrameshift MutationYeastsStress, PhysiologicalGenomeGene Regulatory NetworksDrosophila melanogasterMutant Chimeric ProteinsChimeraModels, GeneticGene DuplicationGene FusionComputational BiologyGenes, InsectGene Expression Profiling
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Inference and Evolutionary Analysis of Genome-Scale Regulatory Networks in Large Phylogenies.
Cell systems 2017 Koch C, Konieczka J, Delorey T, Lyons A, Socha A, Davis K, Knaack SA, Thompson D, O'Shea EK, Regev A, Roy S -
Tardigrada of Michigan, Northern USA, with the description of Minibiotus jonesorum sp. n. (Eutardigrada: Macrobiotidae)
Journal of Zoological Systematics and Evolutionary Research 2011 Harry A. Meyer, Ana M. Lyons, Diane R. Nelson, Juliana G. Hinton -
Adaptive impact of the chimeric gene Quetzalcoatl in Drosophila melanogaster.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2010 Rogers RL, Bedford T, Lyons AM, Hartl DL