Call to Action

Our lab, like many in the U.S., has been impacted by changes to the scientific infrastructure. We had the fortune of good funding success in the past, and recently with highly meritoriously selected grants. Unfortunately we also have had a grant terminated (see Tulsa News6, Stillwater Newspress, and Washington Post coverage). This grant would have funded a final cohort of ten people to be paid full time researchers on OSU campus – they now have to scramble to find other opportunities.

We also have several pending grants that have been delayed or likely will never be funded despite high importance and impact. We had applied for an National Institutes of Health (NIH) ReWARD R01, which is a multi-million dollar grant that would have funded our research for five years, but also connected scientists with advocates, autistics, family members, and clinical caregivers to help bridge communities impacted by autism. However, this mechanism was considered DEI and is likely permanently terminated and will never be funded leaving our funding in forever limbo. We also have two other NIH grants that have been delayed and a delayed potential NSF grant.

What does this mean? This means that we have been scrambling to keep our lab afloat this summer. We have limited funding for graduate students to 1.5 months from 3, we are reducing or eliminating costs, we are unable to pay undergraduates for their summer research time, we are struggling to pay for our animal care costs, we have delayed hiring, we have eliminated PI summer salary funding, and in general we have been stressed out!

What can you do? We are hoping our funding situation will improve in July and August, but for now – if research is valuable to you, and you want to support our lab – you can donate here to help us bridge this gap in funding – no amount is too small and all will help! See below to check out what we have been up to and what types of things your donation would help fund.

Thank you for the support!!

What have we been up to?

Graduations – we have had lots of amazing undergrads come through the lab since it started in 2020. This year we are graduating a few and we are so excited to see what they decide to do with their futures!

Preston Freeman joined the lab 2023 working with Clare Barr (fellow undergrad) on a project that was started by former undergrad Ishani Ray. Preston has been working to understand if mice with a genetic form of autism, called Fragile X Syndrome, have the same number of cells in the brain representing sounds as neurotypical mice. This is not an easy project, but Preston has been an amazing contributor in the lab and we are looking forward to seeing what he does next!

Jorja Ford joined the lab in 2023 and quickly found herself working on several different projects. She instantly took to working with Jesse on her prairie vole projects, but then it was clear that Jorja was ready for some more independence. At the same time as Jorja was ready for her own project, we started a collaboration with Dr. Ed Lucas in nutrition to examine that effects of pinto beans on Alzheimers-like phenotypes. Jorja was also awarded a Niblack scholarship to help her dedicate her time to work on this research. Jorja has been awesomely productive and presented her work last summer in the annual Nutrition conference in Chicago. We are hoping Jorja is going to find the perfect research-based opportunity for her next steps soon.

Rodney Ashaba joined the lab in Fall 2024 while taking my Principles of Neuroscience course. He has spent the last few months exploring the different projects in the lab and providing great feedback during lab meetings. This summer he will continue in the lab and help transition into Preston’s project.

Roland Ngom joined the lab in Fall 2024 also due to my Principles of Neuroscience class. He quickly excelled in taking on his own project and is currently working through the summer to establish a mouse line in the lab that allows for selective highlighting of specific auditory cell in the brain.

Morgan Scott joined the lab in Fall 2024 as a part of the Principles of Neuroscience cohort like Roland and Rodney above. She has been working with Lu to examine differences in neural circuits in the brain across the wild rodent species he collects in the field.

Eden Rutledge joined the lab for a short project in the Fall of 2024 to complete her Honors thesis graduating in December 2024. She focused on whether different startling sounds, like ambulance sirens – which is super relevant for her since she is an EMT – make mice more or less responsive.

ON-RaMP – we had the pleasure of finishing out our second cohort of the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded RaMP program here at OSU in 2024-2025. This year we got to include the amazing Naleyshka (Nale) Colon-Rivera into the lab. She had lots of different projects, from braving the Oklahoma and Kansas wilderness with Lu to collect wild rodents to understand hearing across species (which will hopefully be coming out in publication on the hispid pocket mouse in the next few months) to working with our autistic Fragile X Syndrome mice. She presented the capstone of her project at the final ON-RaMP symposium along with the nine other postbacs who spent time in OSU labs this past year (see picture). We were just about to welcome our last cohort of ten graduates to spend a paid year in the lab gaining research skills when our grant was abruptly canceled. This is a real travesty for American science and ends an awesome program that had a great impact across the years we were active.

Science Outreach – One of the passions of the lab is to share our science with the general public. To this end:

• Liz got to go on a podcast “The Odd Fellows” to talk with Dr. Skye Cooley and Dr. Andrew Abernathy to talk about the research in the lab.
• OSU featured Liz in their monthly “Research on Tap” series at Iron Monk – you can catch the recording here.
• The Honors Acoustics class was featured on Kicker Unmasked, where we talk about Liz’s research but also what the class got to do in Fall semester – this is a really fun class – highly recommend if you are interested in Acoustics, co-taught by the awesome Aaron Surratt of Kicker.

Awards – The McCullagh lab was honored to receive several awards this year:

• Sabiha Alam received the Integrative Biology Outstanding PhD Student award
• Genesis Alarcon received the Integrative Biology Outstanding Masters Student award
• Andi Gensky received the Wilm Graduate Student Travel Award
• Amita Chawla received the Wilm Graduate Student Travel Award
• Olivia Emerson received the Niblack scholarship and Lyle Family Scholarship
• Grant Emerson received 2nd place in the Spring Karen Smith Symposium poster presentation and the Dr. G Michael Steelman Endowed Scholarship
• Eden Rutledge won 3rd place in the Fall Karen Smith Symposium
• Liz McCullagh received the College of Arts & Sciences Early Career Faculty Award for Scholarly Excellence and the Excellence in Research Mentoring Award

Miscellaneous – we had lots of other fun comings and goings this year:

• Liz and collaborator Giulia Bertolin, through their FACE Foundation funding, published a paper showing sex-specific differences in mitochondria (the powerhouse of the cell!) in our FXS mice. Check it out in Open Biology here.
• A bunch of the lab (see photos above) traveled to the Association for Research in Otolaryngology (ARO) annual conference in Orlando, FL where we presented our research in both contributed talks (Luberson Joseph and Amita Chawla) and poster sessions (Genesis Alarcon, Andi Gensky, and Nale Colon-Rivera (her first poster ever!)). We also had some fun traveling to Disney World Magic Kingdom – thanks Crystall Aeppli Samano and Wendy Aeppli Samano for showing us around and getting us discounts!
• Liz gave a talk at both the winter Animal Behavior Conference in Steamboat Springs, Colorado and a panel at the Winter Conference on Brain Research, with Sabiha Alam presenting a poster in Tahoe, California.
• Undergrads have been presenting a ton on campus! In the winter Karen Smith Symposium we had 9 of 15 presenters from the McCullagh lab including Addison Browning, Anastacia Simmons, Julie Luper, Agustin Delgado, Ashlee Munoz, Grant Emerson, Olivia Emerson, Preston Freeman, and Eden Rutledge, In the Spring Karen Smith Symposium we had 12 of 32 presenters from the McCullagh lab with presentations from Grant Emerson, Olivia Emerson, Preston Freeman, Emillia Hubbard, Gracie Toben, Caden Miller, Ashlee Munoz, Agustin Delgado, Roland Ngom, Anastacia Simmons, Addison Browning, and Julie Luper. Grant Emerson also presented his work at the Wentz Symposium, Sydney Cuttler and Laci Wright presented at the Freshman Research Scholar Symposium, and Olivia Emerson, Jorja Ford, Addison Browning, Anastacia Simmons, and Julie Luper presented at the Undergraduate Research Symposium.

What’s Next? Hopefully funding will come through sooner rather than later so that we continue our important research! We also have several events and exciting things happening this summer.

• Casey Sergott and Jesse Hurd are traveling to Baltimore to give talks at the Annual Animal Behavior Conference in July.
• We are being joined this summer by Tayres Bluett as a part of the SUREIA program through the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) to gain some experience in the lab in acoustics – welcome Tayres, we are excited to have you!
• We have several other papers in the works that we hope will come out soon – you can check out the preprints in the meantime here:
  • Jesse Hurd’s thesis work on sperm differences in monogamous prairie voles. Also featuring lab members Gracie Toben and Casey Sergott.
  • Luberson (Lu) Joseph’s contributions including hearing in Peromyscus species, and sex differences in hearing in the Hispid Pocket Mouse. Also featuring lab members Margaret New, Tamara Woodley, Vanessa Franco, Sarah Hobbs, and Naleyshka Colon-Rivera.
  • Casey Sergott’s masters thesis work on pinna differences across Peromyscus museum specimens. Also featuring lab members Katelynn Rodman, Genesis Alarcon, and Luberson Joseph.