Friday, September 16, 2011

Committee Selection

So, I met with my advisor yesterday.  He reminded me that I need to start assembling my graduate committee for this degree.  The committee has to contain my advisor, 3 professors from within the Zoology department and one professor from outside the department.  The outside professor is the only member (besides my advisor) that I have made a decision on.  I worked with Jeff Johnson at the University of North Texas last year; Jeff's lab was specifically created to process and analyze DNA samples that are more than 10 years old. 

The genetics portion of my dissertation work will be important.  It may be the most important part of my research scientifically.  I will be assessing the changes in genetic structure of an entire species over the past decade.  This assessment will give us insight into the past and possible future of the lesser prairie-chicken.  If successful, it will also show the scientific community that existing programs (currently used for spatial analysis) can be applied temporally.  This means that my findings could lead to some very exciting future research in the field of population genetics.

Fingers crossed.....

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