Shusei Hamamichi
Shu, the senior Ph.D. student in the Shack and "sensei" to all, is a native of Japan but spent many of his formative years in Virginia, where he was a double major in Biology and Russian at James Madison University. Following a stint as a research fellow at Teikyo University back in Japan, Shu hopped back to this continent as a graduate student at Midwestern State University (in the foreign country known as Texas), where he was an award-winning teaching assistant. Shu is currently finding new ways of giving worms dystonia and Parkinson's, but not all at once (or maybe?!)!
Pan Chen
Pan "The Man" Chen, is a doctoral student from Xiamen University in China. This avid basketball fan is our point guard in running the Work Shack offense against human movement disorders. He may be a few inches shorter than Yao Ming, but fortunately the worms he is playing against are too! Pan is learning the ways of life at Alabama and is figuring out how to translate "Roll Tide!" into Chinese.
Adam "Ace" Harrington
Adam Harrington is a 3rd year doctoral candidate in Molecular and Cellular Biology. This fine young Irish lad comes from the bayou country of Louisiana, where the men are men and the nutria are scared. Adam came to the Shack pre-trained in worm genetics from the fine lab of Dr. Chris Gissendanner at the University of Louisiana-Monroe, where he was an award winning Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Intern. An avid outdoorsman, "Ace" (see Deuce below) is rapidly becoming a full-time worm hunter these days...with Parkinson's and dystonia genes set in his sights. His mentor is really trying to ignore the fact that he is a fan of that ugly baseball team in Boston that has only won once in the past 90 years. It might take just as long to get a degree!
Michelle Tucci
Our belle, Michelle, is a 3rd year graduate student and aspiring biomedical researcher. A former maroon-blooded Mississippi State Bulldog from Starkville, this new Bama Girl is learning to embrace a slightly different shade of red (Crimson!) these days. This top honors MSU biochemistry and molecular biology graduate is destined to provide some added "culture" to the Shack, not to mention novel insights into human brain diseases. Part-time teacher, full-time worm master, Michelle is also finding new ways to investigate the behavior of worms-on-drugs, while keeping Alabama's youth on the right path to their future.
Bwarenaba Kautu
Bwarenaba is unequivocally the most interesting Shacker! This dedicated young scientist is a native of the beautiful South Pacific island Republic of Kiribati from where he represents the very first person in his country to obtain a B.S. degree in the mainland United States. He received that Biology degree as a undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin River Falls, where as an eager young researcher he taught himself how to work with C. elegans. As a new graduate student, Bwarenaba has indeed heard "the Call of the Worm" and has traded Micronesia for a microscope....not to mention climbing up coconut trees for a living (literally!) for the search for genes that may cause a susceptibility to epilepsy. Ko na mauri! Tekeraoi Bwarenaba! (look it up and learn some Kiribatese!)
AJ Burdette
