Summer Farewells

On August 10th, Brianna Gaspar and Caine Taft presented their Summer research. It was a joy to have both students in the lab this Summer and we will miss Bri as she heads back to California this weekend.


Presenting Dr. Mariah Pierce

On August 2nd, Mariah Pierce defended her thesis and is now Dr. Pierce! Congratulations on a job well done and we will miss you so much. She moved onto the team at Sino Biological as an Associate Technical Account Manager.




SOURCE Fellow: Caine Taft

Our awesome undergraduate researcher, Caine Taft, was awarded a SOURCE fellowship for Summer research this year. We have the privilege of working with him through the school year as well and we are proud of all he’s accomplished in the lab. Looking forward to another great year and good luck on the MCAT:)

Mariah Defends on Wednesday!

Mariah Pierce defends on Wednesday, August 2nd at 1pm in LSB 105. Please come and celebrate with us! The title of her talk is “Expression, Purification, and Characterization of Enzymes Involved in Ghrelin Signaling.” Congratulations, Mariah, and good luck in all that comes next!

Miracles never cease…

CONGRATULATIONS, HOUGLAND LAB, OLD AND NEW! The ligand paper is accepted! This labor of love is now in publication. So many colleagues and collaborators made this possible and we thank everyone who worked on it for your support and patience. On to the next one!



Welcome REU 2023 Students!

We welcome Brianna (Bri) Gaspar to the Hougland lab for the Summer. She joins us from Los Angeles, California where she attends Loyola Marymount University as an undergraduate. We are looking forward to a great Summer of research.

Review Accepted!

Congratulations to Mariah Pierce and James Hougland for publishing “A rising tide lifts all MBOATs: recent progress in structural and functional understanding of membrane bound O-acyltransferases” in the journal Frontiers in Physiology. And of course, we celebrated with a lab coffee outing.


Congratulations, Andrea!

On April 11th, Andrea passed her qualifying exam and she is officially on track to get her Ph.D. We are so proud of all your hard work.

Welcome to Our Lab, Kate

We would like to welcome Katherine (Kate) Brand, a first-year student in the Department of Chemistry, to our laboratory group. She joins us from SUNY Oswego where she did her undergraduate work. We look forward to working with her over the next few years as she pursues her PhD degree.

Burn Run 2022

The Lab ran another race together this past Fall. The Burn Run is hosted by the East Syracuse Fire Department and raises money for the Burn Foundation of Central New York. This year, we had participants running both the 5K and the 10K as well as a few walkers. This was also the debut for our new lab t-shirts. We ended our time together with much-deserved donuts. Stay tuned for more lab outings!