The School of Biology held a departmental retreat at Unicoi State Park on September 11-12. 123 members of the School attended, including graduate students, postdocs, and faculty.

The theme of the retreat was "Biologists in Wonderland: Shrinking or growing to ask questions at a different scale." An important aim of the retreat, as represented by this theme, was to inspire attendees to think of questions that transcend typical boundaries of scale.

The events included a keynote address by Dr. Julia Kubanek, seminars by faculty and graduate students, and a poster session. Hilary Smith (Snell Lab) received the Best Oral Presentation Award, and Elena Antonova (Hammer Lab) received the Best Poster Award; Drew Sieg (Kubanek Lab) and Chengwei Luo (Konstantinidis Lab) were runners up for the Best Poster Award. In addition, graduate students Doug Rasher (Hay Lab) and Eddie Loh (Streelman Lab) were presented with the Research Excellence Award at the retreat in recognition of their strong publication records.

Many thanks to the retreat committee - Soojin Yi, Lin Jiang and Rachel Penczykowski - for organizing a successful retreat!