2026 Sept

New semester, new group photo! The Min lab is officially 1 year old and we are grooowwwing!

2026 Aug

In Spring 2026, Minya became the instructor of a Gen Ed course IB 103 (Introduction to Plant Sciences). As it was her first time teaching this course, she thought well might as well just re-do it in a way that she enjoys it. So she completely redesigned every single content of the lectures and the labs. It was a hellish semester of absolutely 0 breaks and late nights everyday. However, it’s completely worth it! She had a blast teaching, had amazing students, and her redesigned course became a proposal “Reimagining Introduction to Plant Biology for a Changing World”, which got $45,000 award from Curiosity to Impact Fund from the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences! This fund will help to continue developing this course and purchase many very nice new microscopes for the class (Wifi enabled and touch screens baby)! Special shout out to the teaching team that made this redesign possible as well: very grateful for Tanja Hofmann, Hannah Murray, Noah Volin, Blaine Martin, Allanis Vera Barron, and particularly Neil Pearse from the Siebel Center for Design (yes we combined art and design with plant biology!).

Also thanks to Ty Noel and Megan Hubbert for their press coverage!

Read more:

2026 Aug

Minya, Sam and Angelique attended the Botany 2026 conference and had a blast! Minya ran a workshop, Sam and Angelique presented their work (both did a fantastic job!!), and huge congrats to Angelique who also won the Katherine Esau Award! The Katherine Esau Award is the most prestigious student award given by the Developmental and Structural Section of the Botanical Society of America (BSA). The award was established in honor of Dr. Katherine Esau, an influential plant anatomists of the 20th century. Not to brag (lol yes bragging) Minya was also a Esau recipient in 2018! And we appreciate Yudi very much staying in town and taking care of everything in the lab and the greenhouse!!!

Botany conferences are really the best because nothing beats being surrounded by plant people! Speaking of plant people, our lab also made it to the official MV of the AMAZING presidential address by Dr. Chris Martine! Plant people FTW!

2026 May

We celebrated the end of semester by having a very nice walk in the beautiful Busey Woods and a very fun BBQ with our friends in the Crystal Lake Park!

2026 April

Oh my goodness the lab is swamped with good news these few weeks!!

Minya is teaching IB 103 Intro to Plant Biology and was interviewed by the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences and the Siebel Center of Design, because she redesigned the course and established a collaboration with the design center that allows students to do a final art/alternative medium project with complete creative freedom.

Angelique was awarded The Block Grant from the Graduate College that will cover her entire summer funding, as well as the Harold C. & Sonja L. Research Award from the School of Integrative Biology and the Bill Dhal Graduate Student Research Award from the Botanical Society of America that will cover part of her research funding.

Sam was selected to be the Illinois Summer Research Program (ISRP) Research Team Leader in the Access and Engagement Office in the Graduate College for the summer.

Our incoming PhD student Jonathan Chai just received the NSF GRFP as well!

And the whole lab is gearing up to attend our beloved Botany2026 at Tucson together. It has been a veryyyyy busy but exciting and productive semester!

2026 April - New lab photos just dropped!

2026 March

Congratulations to Angelique for winning the ROOT & SHOOT travel grant which will provide $3000 for her AND Minya to attend the Botany2026 conference this summer!!!!

2026 Feb - SLAYYYYYYYY

2026 Jan -

Happy New Year!! Let’s hope for a year of exciting science from the Min lab! We are grateful for Yudi for taking care of our plants during the Christmas break, and now our greenhouse rooms is exploding with plants! Also we got the exciting news that Angelique was awarded the ASPB Recognition Travel Award that will provide a "full ride" fellowship to attend ASPB's annual meeting in Ottawa, Canada, this year - Congratulations Angelique!!!

Sam and Angelique presented in multiple symposium this month and killed it every time!!!

2025 Nov -

We had fun bowling with our friends from Marks & Punyasena & McGrath labs! We also discovered that our undergrad Emma is actually a bowling genus, who literally carried the team - a third of our total score was done by Emma lol! Also shout out to Yudi, who did bowling for the first time in her life, yet managed to throw out a high speed curve ball (thanks to a youtube tutorial on site??).

2025 Sept -

First experiment - check!

First sowing - check!

First lab meeting - check!

First lab photo - check!

Our starter pack is also assembled:

left to right- Emma, Sam, Minya, Yudi, Angelique

2025 July -

Minya came back from one of her fav conferences, Botany2025, which was in Palm Spring CA this year. She co-hosted a workshop “Design Principles for Figure Making” with Dr. Kasey Pham, co-hosted a Listening Session as a member of the Early Career Professional Development Committee, judged talks as a member of the Katherine Esau Award Committee (she was a Esau Award recipient in 2018 too!), served as a panelist on the Belonging in Botany session, learned a lot of cool science, caught up with long time friends and colleagues and made new ones, enjoyed the pool and California sunshine, aaaaaaaaaand also caught Covid. (I guess this was a relatively eventful conference lol)

2025 July -

Congratulations to Sam on finishing the 8-week fully funded Summer Predoctoral Program AND winning 3rd place Graduate Research Talk at the Illinois Summer Research Symposium!

2025 June -

Full lab renovation almost done!!!! Let the magic BEGIN.