Vidal-Gadea Lab

https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=https://news.illinoisstate.edu/2026/02/research-award-winners-for-2025-2026-announced/&ct=ga&cd=CAEYACoTOTczMzI2NDM5MTY3OTI4MzU5MTIaNDBiNzgyNTVjZTE4ZWE4MDpjb206ZW46VVM&usg=AOvVaw2FUTgGKMOoxaGL_jdySALk

Research award winners for 2025-2026 announced Illinois State University announced the winners of the Outstanding University Researcher and the Outstanding University Creative Activity awards. Also honored are the winners of the Research Initiative Awards and the Creative Activity Initiative Awards. Recipients for these awards are selected from....

Freshly hatched L1 C. elegans larva. they are so cute...

As we close out 2025, I want to pause and say thank you. This year has been defined by funding and scientific crises, cuts, and uncertainty that never really let up. Through it all, our students and collaborators showed up with steady optimism and a stubborn work ethic that kept our lab moving forward. I watched our team push harder than my wildest hopes, and I am deeply grateful for it.

We had big milestones to celebrate. In May, Shifat Niha and Aalimah Akinosho graduated. Mackenzie Jones passed her MS proposal and was nominated to represent Biology in the Three Minute Thesis competition. Adina Fazyl was nominated for the Fisher MS Thesis Award. Danny Marchiafava published his first manuscript, including our first work using human muscle cells. Aalimah published her first manuscript, an eLife paper that helps clarify a long running disagreement in the field. We submitted Aalimah’s second manuscript, on the effects of Martian analog physics on terrestrial organisms, to Scientific Reports a couple of weeks ago, and her third (and most ambitious) project is still in preparation. We are actively developing several high impact manuscripts, including one centered on Danny’s work and multiple papers emerging from Adina’s thesis work. And yes, I even got back behind the microscope for a bit this week to help finish key controls for Adina’s project.

Outside the lab, we also celebrated life milestones. Danny and his family welcomed twins this year, a joyful reminder that the people doing the science matter just as much as the science itself.

Our undergraduates helped build the community around the science. Grace and Erin founded the Physiology, Neuroscience and Behavior student association (PNBSA) and hosted a PNB open house. Rene returned after a summer in Costa Rica doing research and won an ISU RedBird grant to support her work. Sabrina saw her undergraduate honors thesis work published with Adina. Our high school interns Anushi (now at Case Western) and Abhinav successfully completed their internships. We are fortunate to benefit from our longstanding partnership with Normal Community High School and to work with such strong students. We were also happy to welcome intern Florencia from UICU in our lab this summer.

On the broader visibility side, Adina’s work made the cover of the December issue of the Biophysical Journal, and we published an outreach children’s coloring book to bring the Amazing World of Worms to younger scientists. We traveled, reconnected, and shared science again, including the muscle meeting in Gainesville and the worm meeting at UC Davis (my first time seeing many colleagues in person since before the pandemic). We were also visited by dear alumni, including Lucas Barickman, a founding member of the lab, now a surgeon in Switzerland, which was a genuine highlight.

On my side, 2025 also brought two personal milestones I am grateful for. I was promoted to Full Professor this past August, and a week ago I received the University Outstanding Researcher Award. I see both as reflections of our team’s incredible work, making our lab a place i feel trully proud of and honored to work with such Anazing folk.

We also pushed hard on funding (because we had to). In 2025 we submitted six proposals, which, alongside three published manuscripts this year, gives a fair picture of how hard everyone has been working.

Finally, a special shoutout to our close collaborator and partner in crime, Wolfgang Stein and team, for years of support, friendship, inspiration, and the kind of collaboration that makes hard years survivable and productive.

We are as passionate about what we do as we are grateful for the chance to do it. In biology, pressure and change drive adaptation, and science is no different. We did not ask for the turbulence of 2025, but we learned fast, supported each other, and kept moving, together.

2026 will be wilder than 2025. Whatever it brings, we will face it standing tall, proud, and together.r

Adina’s third MS manuscript is now live. Just in time for the holidays. Merry Christmas everyone!

https://journals.biologists.com/bio/article/doi/10.1242/bio.062371/370225/Activity-dependent-remodeling-of-muscle