2024-2025 Year In Review

Science is political, and can be used for good and for evil. We must continue to fight for science as a positive force for humanity and the planet.

This has been a roller coaster of a year. And I've gotta start out by recognizing that science is...tense... in the US right now, and we are definitely all a bit on edge. I've been angry at the villanization of science, but it has been strangely comforting to see science be featured so clearly in the political sphere. Science is often treated as an "apolitical," but science IS political. Science has been used for evil, for oppression, for war, to uphold narratives that shouldn't be upheld. And while I appreciate that science is finally being recognized as political in the mainstream, I am distraught by the political ideals which are being upheld and the ones being villainized, and am fearful of the implications that this will have in scientific fields for years to come. But, I will continue to fight for justice in science and beyond. Highly recommended reading for more about the inherent politics within science can be found here: https://scienceforthepeople.org/

But community is everything, which is one of the main reasons I chose JMU. We've created a good support system to make the best of things. In spite of everything, this has been a big year for Caesar lab, featuring new research students, national conference travel, departmental awards, a marriage, and a baby! Not to mention all of the cool science happening with this amazing community!

2024 was a hectic semester, with several students applying for graduate schools and me preparing for my maternity leave. I was invited to participate at the American Council For Medicinally Active Plants (ACMAP) conference in October, but I was too pregnant to go! Luckily, I was able to send my amazing students Shyleigh and Lyn to the conference where they got to learn about the chemistry of medicinal plants, metabolomics, and ethnobotany. They absolutely killed it in their poster presentations, taking home first AND second place prizes for the poster competition, and bringing home some cash! I look forward to attending ACMAP 2026 at Penn State and getting to know this community better!

Just a few weeks later, my beautiful baby boy was welcomed into the world! I'm trying not to share pictures of him online (he can make his own internet presence himself when he feels so inclined), so you'll just have to trust me that he is CUTE. I was on maternity leave from November - May (though I still met with research students and kept lab work going during this time, thanks in no small part to my amazing lab community!) This time was truly a gift, giving me the time to slow down and remember where my priorities really are. Life is short and precious, and I am so very grateful for my sweet family!

While I was on maternity leave, we welcomed our newest member, Diya Chand, to the group! We also took new group photos before the mass exodus of students from the lab (so many seniors this year!)

The Caesar lab, featuring "Otis, the pansexual bat," our new mascot! (From left to right, Top: Elijah, Carly, Evelyn, Lexie, Dr. Caesar, and Mary; Bottom: Diya, Shyleigh, Frances, and Frank.

Obligatory outdoor photo under the pine trees (inspired by the original from 2023!), featuring pinecones, awkward kneeling, Frank in Elijah's arms again! From left to right: Elijah, Frank, Diya, Lexie, Carly, Evelyn, Shyleigh, and Mary, with Frances and me at the bottom!

Elijah and Aubrie post wedding ceremony!!

In 2025, the year started off with some more amazingness--Elijah got married to the incredible Aubrie! Ophelia and I had the pleasure of attending the wedding and it was beautiful. Elijah was absolutely beaming ear-to-ear the whole time. And now having met Aubrie, I can see why! I'm so happy for these two, and know they're going to have an awesome life together. After graduation, he moved to England to start his new life as a married man!

Frances (left) and Elijah (right) on a rooftop in Pittsburg at NCUR!

Of course, some more awesome science happened too. We co-cultured more fungi, tried to isolate new molecules, and upregulated some biosynthetic pathways in our bat-associated bacteria. Frances led the charge on getting funding for her and Elijah to attend the National Conference for Undergraduate Research (NCUR) in Pittsburg through JMU's Office of Student Awards, Initiatives, and Research (STAIR), and the two of them represented Caesar lab in April! They had a blast, networked with other scientists, and got more practice communicating their awesome research to the broader community. Next year NCUR will be even closer--in Richmond, VA--so hopefully we can have more students attend.

Shyleigh representing Caesar lab at the ACS VA local chapter meeting!

Last but not least, we had a fantastic showing at the Spring Symposium (with 3 posters and one oral presentation), and many of our amazing seniors were honored with awards through the Chemistry Department! Evelyn won the ACS Undergraduate Award in Environmental Chemistry, Frances won the Degesch America Award, and Shyleigh won the ACS Award for the Virginia Local Section. As part of Shyleigh's award, she attended the Local ACS meeting to present her work on some interesting results from fungi gathered from Grand Caverns! Growing some of these fungi together instead of in isolation really changes their chemistry. We will be following up on some of these results next Fall and hopefully identify some of the co-culture induced metabolites!

I'm so proud of all of my students for their hard work, and feel yet again incredibly lucky to be part of their journeys. Thanks to them, I was also fortunate enough to win JMU's Provost Award for Research Excellence in Research and Scholarship, and while I was the one recognized, it is absolutely a community effort, possible only through continued collaboration and hard work by my students! This year will be particularly bittersweet with FOUR of my students moving on to bigger and better things (five actually, including Lexie, who has been sticking around the Chemistry Department since she graduated in 2024), many of whom were OG Caesar lab members who helped build the foundation of the lab. I will miss them dearly, but they will always be part of the Caesar lab family!