The Miller family will be growing!

Kevin and I would like to make an announcement: After nearly five years of marriage, we have decided it's finally time for our family to grow. I took a lot of convincing but finally agreed. I'm nervous about how all of this is going to go, since I'm extremely busy with school and lab work, but Kevin has promised to take the extra initiative to make sure everything goes smoothly. He's even promised to be the primary care taker for the little one. Now that we've finally made the decision, I'm really excited and can't wait. We'll keep you all posted on how things go.

On to other things. I finally picked a lab (it only took my eight months)! I am the newest lab member of Dr. Michael Ferdig's lab. I'll be studying malarial genomics (Plasmodium falciparum) and drug resistance. I'm really nervous about joining this lab because I have very little experience in genomics. But I'm told by many trusted advisers that adding genomics to my background in genetics and ecology will make me highly marketable (for what, I'm not sure). Plus, Dr. Ferdig has numerous connections with the NIH, which will come in handy if I decide not to go into academia. The other lab members are great too and were a major reason why I picked this lab. I have a project to start on, but I'm also hoping to develop a more integrative project later on down the road.

I guess that's it for now.