Giraldez Lab News!

November 2025

  • Former postdocs Scott Youlten, Liyun Miao, and Valerie Tornini have published their work about the fate of embryonic cells lacking key reprogramming factors in Cell Reports. Congratulations Scott, Liyun, Val, and team!
  • Goodbye Haochen Wang! He’s moving on to a postdoc in the Liu Lab at Yale University.

October 2025

  • Goodbye Odelya Kaufman! She is moving on to an Assistant Professor position at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center.
  • Postdoc Srikar Krishna gave a plenary talk at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) Annual Meeting 2025 in Boston. He was awarded the Postdoctoral Trainee Research Excellence Award by the ASHG.
  • Postdoc Srikar Krishna received the Best Poster Award at the 3rd NYC RNA Symposium, held at the Rockefeller University in NYC.

September 2025

  • Goodbye Liyun Miao! She’s off to start her own lab at Florida State University.
  • Annual Giraldez Lab Retreat!

July 2025

  • New postdoc César Meléndez Ramírez joined the lab. Welcome César!
  • Postdocs Curtis Boswell and Caroline Hoppe’s work on Genetically Encoded Affinity Reagents (GEARs) in now out at Nature Communications. Congratulations Curtis, Carol, and team!

June 2025

  • Grad student Haejeong Lee gave an oral presentation at the Annual Meeting of the RNA Society in San Diego. She was awarded the Travel Award from Yale RNA Center and the RNA Society Research Presentation Fellowship.
  • Postdoc Alice Sherrard gave an oral presentation during the Hilde Mangold Symposium at the Society for Developmental Biology Annual Meeting in Puerto Rico.

May 2025

  • New postdoc Betsy Gilbert joined the lab. Welcome Betsy!
  • Grad Student Haejeong Lee gave an oral presentation at the Microsymposium on RNA Biology in Vienna, Austria.
  • Goodbye Ethan Strayer! He’s off to a postdoc at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

March 2025

  • Ethan Strayer defended his PhD thesis. Congratulations Dr. Strayer!

January 2025


December 2024

  • Grad student Ethan Strayer’s paper describing NaP-TRAP, a novel assay for measuring translation, is now available at Nature Communications. Congrats to Ethan and all co-authors!

November 2024

  • A review about the maternal-to-zygotic transition (“MZT”) by postdocs Mina Kojima and Caroline Hoppe is published in Nature Reviews Genetics.

October 2024

  • Postdoc Alice Sherrard gave an oral presentation at Stowers Research Conferences: Developmental and Cell Biology.
  • Second year graduate student Ayushi Hegde passed her qualifying exam.

September 2024

  • Annual Giraldez Lab Retreat – three full days of science and lab bonding!

August 2024

  • Postdoc Curtis Boswell gave an oral presentation at the International Zebrafish Conference in Kyoto, Japan.

July 2024

  • Goodbye Valerie Tornini! She’s off to start her own lab at UCLA.

June 2024

  • Postdoc Srikar Krishna gave an oral presentation at the RNA Society Annual International Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland.
  • PhD student Damir Musaev won a poster presentation prize at the RNA Society Conference.

May 2024

  • Postdoc Valerie Tornini was selected to participate in the prestigious Linton-Poodry SACNAS Leadership Institute.
  • Scott Youlten, Liyun Miao, and Valerie Tornini’s work investigating the developmental fate of zebrafish embryonic cells mutant for pioneer factors Nanog, Pou5f3, and Sox19b is now available as a preprint.
  • PhD student Ethan Strayer gave a presentation during the May session of the virtual Maternal-to-Zygotic Transition symposium.
  • PhD student Haejeong Lee gave an oral presentation at the 2nd Workshop on Codon Usage in Edinburgh, Scotland.

April 2024

  • Srikar Krishna was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from the American Cancer Society.
  • Damir Musaev and Maria Benitez defended their PhD theses. Congratulations Dr. Musaev and Dr. Benitez!
  • Our lab’s paper describing ORF-mediated decay is published in Cell Reports. Congrats to Damir and all other co-authors!
  • PhD student Ethan Strayer was named a fellow of the Joan and Tom Steitz RNA Fellows Program.

March 2024

  • Gal Jaschek was awarded a Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds (BIF) PhD fellowship.
  • Ayushi Hegde officially joined the lab as a graduate student.

February 2024

  • Postgraduate assistant Miguel Ángel Delgado Toscano was accepted to the EMBL International PhD Programme.
  • Goodbye Mark Pownall! He’s off to start his own lab as part of the UCSF Sandler Fellows Program.

January 2024

  • Postdoc Caroline Hoppe was a selected participant at the Global Young Scientist Summit 2024 in Singapore.

November 2023

  • Ella Callahan joins our lab as a postgraduate assistant.
  • Curtis Boswell and Caroline Hoppe’s work on GEARs (Genetically Encoded Affinity Reagents) is now available as a preprint.
  • Fiona Sievers was awarded a Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds (BIF) PhD fellowship.
  • Second year graduate students Fiona Sievers and Gal Jaschek passed their qualifying exams.
  • Ethan Strayer’s new preprint describing NaP-TRAP, a novel assay for measuring translation, is now available. This work was done in collaboration with lab alum Jean-Denis Beaudoin, now assistant professor at UConn.

October 2023

  • Postdoc Valerie Tornini is named a 2023 STAT Wunderkind.
  • Postdoc Caroline Hoppe received the Best Poster Award at the EMBL Symposium “Seeing is Believing”.

September 2023


August 2023

  • All lab members participated in the annual Giraldez Lab Retreat – three full days of science and fun!
  • Goodbye Charles Vejnar! He’s off to a position at Vertex Pharmaceuticals.
  • Postdoc Alice Sherrard awarded a K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award from NICHD.
  • Postdoc Valerie Tornini named a finalist for the 2023 Blavatnik Regional Awards for Young Scientists.

July 2023

  • Postdoc Valerie Tornini named a finalist for Proteintech’s Best Postdoc Mentor Award 2023.
  • Our lab’s paper describing Chromatin Expansion Microscopy (ChromExM) is published in Science. Congrats to Mark, Liyun, and all other co-authors!