Face to Face with Chancellor May

Dr. Gold was this month’s guest on Face to Face With Chancellor May. A big thank you to the Chancellor for inviting me on. It’s a great opportunity to learn more about the work being done in the lab, and I even got to ask the Chancellor a few questions about . You can watch it here.

Read more

Tessa Joins the CIDER Summer Program

Congratulations to Tessa for being accepted into the CIDER summer program!  This four-week intensive course will take place at UC Berkeley, with a focus on the physical and chemical conditions that allowed life to gain a foothold on Earth. You can learn more about the program here.

Read more

Paóla’s White Coat Ceremony

Our ex-lab tech Paóla received her “white coat” from UC San Francisco today! This ceremony inducts each new class of dental students. Paóla’s ceremony comes a year late because of the pandemic, but it was worth the wait. Congratulations Paóla!

Read more

Award: Sea Grant Fellowship for Hannah

Congratulations to Hannah for receiving a California Sea Grant Graduate Research Fellowship! This prestigious NOAA-funded program covers two years of work for her project “Applying Indigenous Knowledge and Genetic Data to Evaluate Clam Garden Restoration Potential in Northern California.”

Read more

New Paper: How bacteria shape shell growth in oysters

Our latest paper is out! Lead by ex-postdoc Roxanne Banker, this is the first publication where all the work was done in the Gold Lab at UC Davis. We wanted to understand how the loss of sulfate reducing bacteria impacts the growth of oyster shells, and the results….were much odder than expected. You can read the paper for free at the PLOS ONE website.

Read more

Award: NSF CAMP Scholarship for Liyu

Congratulations to Liyu, who has just been selected as a scholar for the National Science Foundation’s CAMP (California Alliance for Minority Participation) program! We’re thrilled to host Liyu in the lab and cannot wait to see what she accomplishes.

Read more

Goodbye Paóla!

Today we bid a fond farewell to Paóla Benefo. Paóla was the very first member of the Gold Lab, joining him after the two met at Caltech. The whole lab will sorely miss her, but we offer the warmest congratulations for starting dental school at UC San Francisco! Becoming a dentist has been a long-time dream for Paóla, and we couldn’t be prouder that she is attending this prestigious program. We wish her the best of luck and know she will build a leading, inclusive dental practice in California, Ghana, or wherever her travels take her.

Read more
NSF Logo

NSF CAREER Grant Funded!

We have received confirmation that the proposal “An Evolutionary Framework for the Molecular Fossil Record” has been funded through a National Science Foundation CAREER Award! This generous grant allows us to expand our research on the interpretation of chemical “biomarkers” preserved in ancient rocks. The study of these biomarkers is critical for natural resource exploration, identifying sources of pollution, reconstructing the history of life on Earth, and even when looking for signs of life on Mars. While scientists are very good at identifying the biosignatures contained in rocks, there is a lot of disagreement when it comes to determining what sort of organism made each compound. Our project uses the latest tools in genetics to identify what groups of living […]

Read more

890 million year old sea sponges?

A fossil discovered in northwestern Canada could rewrite the early history of animal life — but some palaeontologists are not convinced it’s real. What does Dr. Gold think of this sure-to-be controversial fossil find? Check out the recent news coverage in the journal Nature to find out.

Read more

What can jellyfish teach scientists about aging?

Dr. Gold was recently invited to talk about this at Oxford University’s LivingLongerBetter seminar series. The talk was, of course, virtual. But the positive side is that the talk was easy to record! You can watch it at YouTube.

Read more