Current members

Principal investigator

Karl M. Glastad, PhD
Assistant Professor of Biology
email: [email protected]

Karl has loved ants since he was 6 years old.  Upon finishing is undergraduate degree he decided to "go pro" with his interests and performed his graduate work in the lab of Michael Goodisman at the Georgia Institute of Technology, with a focus on comparative genomics, molecular evolution, and insect DNA methylation.  Following this, he performed his postdoctoral work in the lab of Shelley Berger at the University of Pennsylvania, with a focus on understanding the molecular regulation of ant castes, using a combination of in vitro, in vivo, and computational (lets all agree not to use in silico) approaches. 

When he's not playing with ants professionally Karl enjoys playing with ants recreationally, playing video games, and generally being a hermit.

Lab members

Qua
Lab manager
email: he does not believe in e-mail

Qua is a terrible lab manager.  And not simply due to the 'opposable thumb issue': he sleeps all the time and drinks too much.

Brendan Farhi
Graduate Student
email: [email protected]

Brendan grew up in Brooklyn, NYC, where the wildlife was so sparse that pigeons were practically exotic creatures. Brendan's fascination with these urban critters led him to pursue biology when he attended college in Illinois—where the wildlife was slightly less elusive. There, Brendan spent his days and summers researching vertebrate anatomy and ciliate biology. After college, Brendan spent a year as a technician in a structural biology lab at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory where he discovered how pesky proteins can be.

Now, as a graduate student at Rochester, Brendan landed in Karl’s lab. In the lab Brendan is broadly interested in how hymenopteran eusocial insects epigenetically control their physiology, but more specifically, he's interested in exploring the metabolic and transcriptomic secrets of long-lived ant castes and how they may differently respond to various stressors. When free he is usually: cooking, reading sci-fi, trying at microphotography, and hiking (turning over rocks to find critters).

Pranav Prabhu
Graduate Student
email: [email protected]

Pranav grew up in Chennai, India, where he spent his childhood obsessing over his niche fixations, including bugs, dinosaurs, car number plates, and Rubik's cubes. Before joining the University of Rochester, Pranav did his Bachelor's in biotechnology research from Shiv Nadar University, India, where he investigated the roles of novel secretory proteins and neuropeptides in regeneration and behavior using the cnidarian model Hydra. Pranav is extremely interested in exploring the biology of understudied non-model invertebrate systems (including ants!), and equally enjoy both the benchwork and computational analyses aspects in any project. Outside the lab, you will probably find Pranav in nature, crouched over hunting cool insects to photograph. He has been actively involved in Rubik's cube speedsolving competitions since 2016, and is a former National Record holder. Pranav also loves reading fiction, especially weird science fiction and fantasy novels.