Once upon a time, I had a cool web site that featured the research being done in my laboratory along with highlights of the courses I was teaching. Web sites were relatively new items then and I was very excited to have a colorful site with photos, features, and links to class materials and publications.
Then I took a detour into administration for almost 11 years, first as director of a new interdisciplinary program and then as Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences. With the help of graduate students and postdocs, I was able to keep my research program alive and well. Unfortunately, the definition of “well” did not include keeping the website current. I made some tweaks now and then but, as time wore on, “then” became more common than “now.” When I left administration, the web site was so outdated that I removed the links to it from my emails and departmental page. I intended to rebuild it at some point, but I never seemed to arrive at “some point.”
11 Years Later
The return of the Travis Lab Page is almost entirely due to my students and postdocs, who pitched in with ideas, enthusiasm, and their own materials. We are all indebted to Ben Pluer for the heavy lifting of building and launching the web site.
We’ll use this space to write about what we’re doing and what is exciting. But for now I’ll write that it’s nice to be back. Oh, and in the interim, a lot of wonderful people have worked in the lab without being featured on a viable Travis lab site. The graduate students who took doctoral degrees in those years include Mia Adreani, Nate Jue, Alex Landy, Katie McGhee, Matt Schrader, and Alexa Warwick. The postdocs who worked in the lab while the website was outdated or missing included J. J. Apodaca, Zach Culumber, Dave Ferrell, Becca Hale, Pam Macrae, and Matt Schrader. And we’ve had many terrific undergraduates working in the lab, among whom were James Brown, Brighton Campbell, Gabriella Dean, Virginia Fourqurean, Robin Landy, Katie Leatherbury, Samantha Levell, Lauren Luscuskie, Christian Martinez, Melanie Medwell, Ivonne Mendiota, Chris Menz, Brian O’Connell, and Troy Simon. The lab was kept functioning by managers Rachel Poole and Christine Webber.
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