Congratulations to Ryan Emenecker for being selected for the 2021 John E. Majors Fellowship Award

Ryan went to the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities for undergrad where he completed a double major in Plant Biology and Genetics, Cell Biology, & Development. Ryan joined the Plant and Microbial Biosciences program in the Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis in 2017. Ryan joined the lab of Dr. Lucia Strader for his thesis work. Upon the Strader Lab moving to Duke in 2020, Ryan became co-advised by Dr. Alex Holehouse. Ryan’s thesis work covered a wide-range of areas including plant hormone crosstalk, biomolecular condensates in plants, and the role of protein disorder in condensate formation. Ryan finished his Ph.D. in December 2021. In January 2022, Ryan started a postdoc in the Holehouse Lab where he carries out research on developing a tool for the rational design of protein intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs), understanding the role of transcription factor IDRs in directing promoter occupancy specificity, and developing a directed evolution platform for studying IDR evolution in general and in the context of biomolecular condensates.

In addition to Ryan’s own research project, Ryan has entirely and single-handedly set up and runs the Holehouse wet lab. In the first year of running the wet lab, he has trained and mentored three rotation graduate students, all of whom successfully transitioned to running independent experimental projects during their rotations.