Eric's other new job

I start another new job monday.  I can perform this one while I teach a section of bio at the community college.  My days are filling up!  This position is technically considered a laboratory assistant II position but Dr. Gaines affectionately calls me his lab manager.  I am in charge of setting up, cleaning and organizing a lab as well as initiating projects that can be handed off to grad students when we start recruiting.

This is Dr. Todd Gaines my new boss and adviser.  He's a righteous dude. 

This is Amaranthus or "pigweed"

This is Kochia.

Amaranthus and Kochia are some pretty hostile and serious weed and both threaten farmland.  These two species are controlled using the herbicide glyphosate (roundup) but in the last decade they have evolved a pretty hardy resistance and no one knows why.  That's where our lab steps in...we are investigating the mechanism for resistance acquisition. I can't wait to get started.  I have a huge start up budget to work with and a beautiful lab space with windows!  I can even decorate it however I want.  Todd thinks we need a sound system to play some sweet tunes while we work.  I also have some pretty serious computing power.  We have a few super computers (256 gigs of ram!) to help us out and over 12 terabytes of storage for our data sets.  I have a feeling the learning curve will be high but I can't imagine a funner assignment.  I get to be queen (king) bee and make all lab based decisions.  I also get to train the newbs and bend them to my will....YOU VILL DO VHAT I SAY!  

Anyway its sweet.  Stay tuned for more updates.