Dr. Rebecca Varney
Principal Investigator, Purveyor of baked goods, Orderer of pipet tips

Originally from California, I was surprised to find that I loved Nebraska winters. I received my B.S. in Genetics from the University of California, Davis, and a Master's from the University of West Florida where I first fell in love with the special brand of weird that is marine invertebrates. I completed my PhD at the University of Alabama with Kevin Kocot and a postdoc with Todd Oakley at the University of California, Santa Barbara. I then promptly embraced my love of marine biology by moving the middle of the country. I consider Nebraska equidistant from both oceans, and though I spend summers at Friday Harbor Laboratories in the Pacific, I also have freshwater projects that fuel my appreciate for native Nebraska habitats. When not in the lab, I play with my infant daughter, spoil my two dogs, and look for excuses to go SCUBA diving.

CV                     Google Scholar

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Graduate students

Madison Gott
Survived a research expedition to Antarctica

Madison received her B.S. in Biology from Central Michigan University, where she conducted undergraduate research in the Mahon lab looking at sea spider diversity in Antarctica. She will definitely be doing something with strange invertebrates in the Varney Lab- stayed tuned for what!

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Benjamin Morrow
Mastering in graduate school while working full time at the Henry Dooley Zoo!

Ben comes to the Varney Lab from Omaha, where he currently works full time in the aquarium at the Henry Dooley Zoo. Ben's background includes extensive advocacy for the sunflower stars of the West coast. He organized a network of scientists that are collaborating to better understand how to save gametes and embryos for the future. Ben will be working on settlement cues for starfish during his master's degree with hopes of facilitating future conservation efforts.

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Undergraduate researchers

Kate Ohnoutka
Photographer of ostracods, Main microscopist

Kate is pre-professional and already working in human health. Rebecca has convinced her to dabble in adorable swimming creatures, so she is working with ostracods and Daphnia. Kate has always been passionate about the environment/environmental issues. She is planning to go to medical school after completing her B.S.

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Ashleigh Clayton
Unofficial chiton dentist, master of finding obscure information in really old papers

Ashleigh is pre-professional but willing to play with marine inverts in the meantime. Her work in the lab focuses on ancestral state reconstruction of tooth morphology across chitons. She is already running code more cleanly in R than Dr. Varney ever did...

Christina Van Haren
Vernal pool wader, aspiring eDNA expert

Christina is planning to pursue genetic counseling. She is working on genome skimming data from museum specimens.

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Hamza Chaudhary
HCC enthusiast, working on brains

Hamza is pursuing an honor's thesis in the lab, where he will be working with a single-nuclei transcriptome dataset from the brains of several anthropods.

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A future student
This could be you!

Please contact Dr. Varney if you're interested in joining the lab!

Lab Alumni