Our "Labmaster" is Kathie (lesich@oakland.edu), a position she has had for over 12 years. For what it is worth, her official title is Laboratory Research Technician II. In the laboratory, she is in charge of coordinating all research and activities. Her duties include ordering all supplies and services, equipment maintenance, lab safety, assisting and guiding student's individual research projects, performing her own experiments, gathering and analyzing data, manuscript preparation and maintaining this website. She obtained her BA and MS degrees in Biology from Oakland University, another example of the seed not falling far from the tree.

Courtney started working in our lab in May, 2006 as a result of her receiving the Undergraduate Student Research Summer Fellowship in Biological Sciences at Oakland University. Originally, she worked on the chemotactic responses of mammalian sperm as part of her fellowship project. Although this is not a specific aim of the current project, the program has benefited greatly by her inclusion in the lab. She has successfully worked out the details of mammalian sperm hyperactivation and the production of optimized in-vitro fertilization medium for our use with rodent sperm. Furthermore, she provides important and much needed assistance to Kathie on every project in the lab. Courtney graduated in April, 2008 but continues to work with us. This is very much welcomed as Courtney is very reliable and detail-oriented.

Ben is an undergraduate pre-med that joined us in May, 2007. He is a beneficial addition to the laboratory as his knowledge of computers is unparalleled by any other undergraduate student we’ve encountered since Robin Autore-Blalock. He started out by assisting both Kathie and Dominic on their research projects. He is now working on follow-up work to the counterbend response in sperm. This is the first project he's been assigned to conduct on his own. If Ben can't make it into medical school then he should try the comedy circuit as he keeps us quite entertained with his funny anecdotes and quick-witted comments and comebacks.

Anetra joined the laboratory in January, 2006. Initially, she was assigned the important task of cleaning and organizing the lab. Anetra also assisted Dr. Lindemann with graphing Geometric Clutch computer model output data. She assisted Kathie with studies of the response to calcium in mouse sperm and the effect of calcium on microtubule doublet sliding. She graduated August 2007, with a Bachelor of Science degree.

Anissa joined us in January, 2006 at the same time as her twin sister, Anetra. Her job was to assist Kathie in quantifying the results from the microtubule sliding and response to calcium work with sperm from SPAG16L mice, graciously supplied to us by Drs. Zhibing Zhang and Jerome F. Strauss III from Virginia Commonwealth University. Her help allowed us to present an abstract at the 2006 ASCB Annual Meeting. Anissa graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in April, 2007.

Laurel worked on the project during the summer of 2007. As one may surmise from the last name, she is related to Dr. Lindemann. She is an undergraduate student at Michigan State University majoring in Zoology and Japanese. Her primary function in the lab was to assist Kathie. As a result she was given the important taks in the lab that have a tendency to be shoved to the back burner when Kathie has too many tasks to perform at once. On occasion she assisted with preparation for experiments. Her largest accomplishment of the summer was to update the database of research articles important to our field of study which required many hours of pretty much mundane work. Although we would have welcomed Laurel back to the lab this summer, she chose to pursue other opportunities.