News

June 2025

Huge congratulations to Fatema Riaz — a High School Youth Researcher Summer Program participant — on winning GOLD at the Canada-Wide Science Fair Competition! 🥇🎉

Dylan served on the organizing committee for RiboWest 2025, held at the University of Lethbridge. 

Lauren attended the conference and had a great time catching up with Dylan and met an amazing group of RNA scientists in Canada. She gave a talk presenting her exciting new work on Diamond-Blackfan Anemia (DBA). 

Lauren received the Doctoral Student Presentation Travel Award by University of Arkansas (UARK) Graduate School and International Education and UARK Graduate and Professional Student Congress Travel Award.  Huge congratulations,  Lauren! 🎉

 She had a the opportunity to judge some posters as well. She took some time to enjoy the stunning lakes of Banff National Park. 

May 2025

Divya was at RNA Society meeting in San Diego, CA. 

She presented a poster on her work with DBA and enjoyed some whale watching. She had an amazing time networking with experts in the area of her work and future research interests.  

She received multiple awards for attending this conference: AARTI nomination for RNA society student membership,  RNA Society Research Presentation Fellowship, Doctoral Student Presentation Travel Award by University of Arkansas (UARK) Graduate School and International Education and UARK Graduate and Professional Student Congress Travel Award.  Huge congratulations,  Divya! 🎉

We had the End-of-Semester Lab dinner and celebrated graduation 🎓 of our undergraduates, Allie and Seth. We will miss their presence in the lab!

April 2025

Divya  receives GPSC's  Tiffany Marcantonio Research Grant and presented at GPSC Spring Research Symposium. Congratulations to her !

Allie presented her poster at Spring 2025 Honors Day Poster Symposium in CHBC.

Allie also won an award in poster presentation at (LSAMP) Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation Symposium at UAMS, Little Rock, AR. Congratulations to her!! 

Seth and Allie defended their undergraduate honors research thesis ! 🎉

Congratulations to Dylan on receiving an NSERC grant - "Structural Dynamics of Ribosomes during Translation"

Dylan's proposal for access to Pacific Northwest Center for Cryo-EM (PNCC) microscopes towards ribosome - antibiotic complexes was awarded for the second time! Congratulations 🎉🔬

Divya, Samuel and Lauren had a great time judging projects at the 11th Annual Arkansas STEM  Festival organized by LISA Academy and held at the University of Arkansas. 

March 2025

Lauren defends her Chemistry and Biochemistry 2nd year research proposal and passed her Department Candidacy requirement of Cumes. Yay!!!! 🎉

Samuel, Lauren, Divya and Anu had fun judging posters by students across middle school and high school at the Northwest Regional Science and Engineering Fair ! It is always a rewarding experience to be able to encourage the young minds pursuing STEM. 

February 2025

Dylan, Samuel and Anu were at Biophysical Society meeting in Los Angeles, CA and had a lot of fun in plenty of science networking moments. Samuel and Anu had a lot of fun sharing their latest research. Anu got to volunteer at the conference and she looks forward to such volunteering opportunities in the future! 

Samuel received the UARK Collis Geren travel award and Anu was awarded the BPS travel award.  They also received two additional travel awards : Doctoral Student Presentation Travel Award by University of Arkansas (UARK) Graduate School and International Education and UARK Graduate and Professional Student Congress Travel Award . Congratulations to both!! 🎉 Samuel got to catch up with his old friend and  Anu enjoyed a bit of Pacific Ocean at the historic Santa Monica Pier.

Seth got accepted in Medical School at UAMS, Little Rock, AR, United States. Congratulations !!! 🩺

Anu and Cody Brazel (From our neighbors  - Sakon Lab) organized a short CryoEM grid preparation demo and gave an intro to the 3D reconstruction pipeline as part of the ACS Local Chemistry Olympiad High School Tour in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Arkansas. It was such a joy to see the students excited and inspired by the science they can do!

November 2024

Girodat Lab participated at Arkansas INBRE in several ways. Seth presented his research poster. Divya and Samuel served as poster judges, engaging with undergraduate researchers from across the state. Anu assisted in the CryoEM workshop, with Dylan leading the session virtually and Cody Brazel coordinating in person.

Divya, Samuel, Lauren and Anu presented their research at AIMRC Annual Symposium. 

September 2024

Lauren published "A cost-effective enzyme kinetics and inhibition model for biochemistry education and research" in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education, based on her undergraduate research under the supervision of Dr. Djamali Muhoza at her alma mater, University of Arkansas at Monticello. 🎉 Congratulations to all the authors — and to Lauren for being part of such a fun paper!

Divya, Anu, and Cody Brazel took a day trip to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, AR, to prepare CryoEM grids using the Vitrobot — courtesy of Dr. Enemark and Dr. Tudor, who kindly made their facility and equipment available.

It was a fun and productive day! Divya is especially excited to begin imaging her ribosomes for the DBA project.

October 2024

Divya passed her Cell and Molecular Biology PhD Candidacy! Congratulations 🎉

August 2024

Dylan publishes Alternate conformational trajectories in ribosome translocation at PLOS Computational Biology  with collaborators at University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, US. Congratulations to all the authors! 👏

We had a celebratory paper eating in November, with Dylan joining us virtually!

July 2024

Divya received a voucher for proteomics analysis from the IDeA National Resource for Quantitative Proteomics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, AR.  Congratulations! 

Divya have been awarded access to Pacific Northwest Center for Cryo-EM (PNCC) microscopes through successful approval of her proposal for her DBA project. 

Everyone having fun and getting a lot done with Summer-time research!

June 2024

Divya and Anu publish an invited review with Dylan in Current Opinion in Structural Biology:  Conformational changes of ribosomes during translation elongation resolved by molecular dynamics simulations. 🎉

We had a farewell party celebrating new beginnings for Dylan moving to University of Lethbridge, AB, Canada.

May 2024

We had a lot of fun at the End-of- Semester Lab Picnic celebrating graduation 🧑‍🎓 of or undergraduates, Ben, Curtis and Christian!  We will miss them a lot. 

Christian and Curtis got accepted into medical school. Congratulations!! 🧑‍⚕️

April 2024

Samuel defends his Chemistry and Biochemistry 2nd year research proposal. Congratulations, "Dr. Samuel"!! 🎉

Christian presented his poster at Spring 2024 Honors Day Poster Symposium in CHBC. 

Ben, Curtis and Allie presented at Undergraduate Research Symposium Poster Competition.  Ben and Curtis tied for second place for their posters. Congratulations !! 🎉

Dylan won a Robert C. and Sandra Connor Endowed Faculty Fellowship for the 2024-2025 academic year at University of Arkansas. Congratulations! 🎉

Anu’s application to attend the Pacific Northwest CryoEM Center’s (PNCC) Remote SerialEM Screening Training Workshop was accepted! She participated in the virtual training, gaining valuable experience in CryoEM screening and remote data collection using SerialEM. She is looking forward to the "super cool" ribosomes under the microscope!! 

March 2024

Divya and Anu had fun judging posters by students across middle school and high school at the Northwest Regional Science and Engineering Fair ! It is always a rewarding experience to be able to encourage the young minds pursuing STEM. 

February 2024

Dylan, Samuel and Anu were at Biophysical Society meeting in Philadelphia, PA and had a lot of fun in so many of science networking moments. Samuel and Anu enjoyed their first BPS meeting and found some time on the last day to explore the historic Battleship New Jersey. 

Anu won the UARK Collis Geren travel award. Congratulations! 🎉

Both Samuel and Anu received Doctoral Student Presentation Travel Award by University of Arkansas (UARK) Graduate School and International Education 🎉!

Seth joined the lab as honors undergraduate student! Welcome aboard! 

January 2024 

Girodat lab human cell culture room is ready to go!!! Lauren is having fun getting to set it up. 🔬

Divya and Dylan have received an allocation of several thousand GPU hours through the successful approval of their NSF ACCESS proposal for High-Performance GPU Resources on Bridges-2 at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. 

December 2023

Lauren joined the lab as PhD student (Chemistry and Biochemistry). Welcome 🪅🎊

November 2023

Dylan went to ACS regional at Oklahoma City. 

Divya presented poster with her recent work on DBA at the AIMRC Annual Symposium. Congratulations! 

Ben and Curtis presented their work at 2023 Arkansas INBRE Conference. Curtis received an honorable mention for his talk! Congratulations!!🎉

Anu volunteered at the conference, which is always fun to do!

Dylan conducted a CryoEM workshop for faculty and students at the conference with a cool demonstrations to explain the process of 3D reconstruction. 

October 2023

Samuel passed passed his Department Candidacy requirement of Cumes. Yay!!!! 🎉

August 2023

Allie joined the lab as honors undergraduate student! Welcome!!! 

May 2023

We had a End-of-Semester Lab party! 

Anu and Dylan have received an allocation of several thousand GPU hours through the successful approval of their NSF ACCESS proposal for High-Performance GPU Resources on Bridges-2 at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center.

April 2023

Anu defends her Chemistry and Biochemistry research proposal. Congratulations! 🎉

Girodat lab Akta FPLC is here! 

February 2023

Dylan is at Biophysical Society meeting in San Diego, CA. 

Ben, Curtis, Christian, Richard, and Kathy join the lab as undergraduate students. Welcome to the young brigade!

Girodat lab Kintek Stopped Flow is here!

March 2023

Anu had fun judging posters by students across middle school and high school at the Northwest Regional Science and Engineering Fair ! It is always a rewarding experience to be able to encourage the young minds pursuing STEM. 

January 2023

Teslie Sehorn  joined the lab as PhD student (Cell and Molecular Biology Graduate Program). Welcome! 

December 2022

Samuel Biya-Sambian joined the lab as PhD student (Chemistry and Biochemistry). Welcome! 

November 2022

Divya Sapkota joined the lab as PhD student (Cell and Molecular Biology Graduate Program). Welcome! 

We had our first lab dinner, joined by Samuel and Teslie ahead of their official start! 

October 2022

Girodat Lab GPU workstations are here! Anu has been having fun with it already. 

August 2022

Anuradha Rai Chowdhury joined the lab as PhD student (Chemistry and Biochemistry). Welcome! 

Girodat Lab is Here!!