Embarrassing as it may be to have pictures of myself as a 4 year old out in the world, the Washington Post recently covered my quest to find and thank a childhood mentor. I'm so grateful to Dawn Fallik, the reporter who helped put me in touch with the amazing Dr. Vernard Lewis. Read the full article here: 

www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/05/21/bugs-rebecca-varney-vernard-lewis/

And don't forget to thank your mentors! We are all here because of the people who took our dreams seriously. If Vernard hadn't told me what a PhD was, and told me that anyone could go to college, I might not be sitting here with a PhD, ready to take a shot at the academic job market. If I successfully become a professor, I hope to one day receive letters from 4-year olds. 

If you're reading this because you found my story of being inspired by a bug collection, hi! I ended up working on ocean-bugs, but I'm still that same passionate, nerdy 4 year old at heart.

If you are one of the hundreds who reached out to share a personal story of the mentorship moment that changed your life, THANK YOU. I'm vaguely horrified by all of this attention, but hearing so many stories of scientists making a genuine difference fills my heart with hope. My lab-mates and I have spent days regaling one another with the comments that resonated with us. 

If you'd like to do something wonderful, please consider supporting one of the scientific outreach organizations making a difference to children right now! This could be a museum or science outreach center in your neighborhood, or:

SkypeAScientist (https://www.classy.org/give/350351/#!/donation/checkout) - I've been working with this amazing site for years now, bringing scientists live into classrooms via Skype or Zoom to show children that people from all kinds of backgrounds and places can be scientists! I've worked with students from kindergarten through high school over the years. We get to work with teachers to tailor our presentations and discussions to whatever the class is focused on at that moment. My favorite thing is the off-the-wall questions I get (how fast do lobsters swim?!).  

Letters to a PreScientist (https://prescientist.org/donors-and-partners/) - This group pairs students in low-income neighborhoods with scientist pen-pals for a year. We exchange letters across four themes to invite our student to dream big and know that they CAN be a scientist (or anything else!). I have a file folder of letters saved from across the years, and they all make me feel like small actions make a big difference.

Thanks to everybody who shared their stories. I loved being part of showcasing the very human passion that drives us all.

https://twitter.com/RebeccaMVarney/status/1483177665892737025?s=20

Thanks so much to the CSU Biology department for hosting me for seminar today! There were wonderful questions from students that have me thinking still, including what would happen if a chiton made apatite valves instead. 

Always happy to share the joys of chiton dentistry with the masses! 

Dissertations are rather long, so these things are always time-delayed quite a bit, but I'm happy to share that I received this award! I loved the cohesive story I got to tell with my work, and am happy to know that scientists from other disciplines could see the merits in my chiton dentistry! :) 

The problem with studying small brains is that they are, in fact, small brains. If you've ever worked with brain tissues, you know that they are malleable, so small bits rarely hold their shape. We want to compare brain structures between hexapods (insects), stomatopods (mantis shrimps), and copepods and ostracods. Those last two? TINY BRAINS!

I just won a CORE-grant to sequencing single cell transcriptomes from 8 biological samples. I'll be generating data from all four groups to look at homologous and convergent structures at a cellular level. 

I also just looked up how to order a cockroach. I'm all for science being unpredictable, but this is just not what I thought my online shopping would look like today. Hmmm. 

Right now I am ramping up work on an NSF-funded project to examine structures in the brains of different arthropods. Todd and I applied for a "REPS" scholar (Research Experience for Post-Baccalaureate Students) and today we got a notice of award! I'm really excited to get to work with this younger researcher to expand this project- two brains (or fifty, in the freezer) are better than one!