Professor of Biology Karen Schmeichel recently co-organized the 2026 Southeast Regional Meeting of the Society for Developmental Biology, bringing together researchers, educators and students from across the region to share new discoveries and teaching methodologies in the field.
The three-day meeting, held May 18–20 at Kennesaw State University, featured keynote talks, poster sessions and an educational program focused on mentoring the next generation of scientists. Schmeichel was one of several faculty organizers from institutions including Emory University, the University of Georgia and Kennesaw State.
The conference also brought together four recent Oglethorpe alumni to present their unique research — some of which was developed during their course-embedded undergraduate research experience, or CURE, pipeline courses. Oglethorpe’s CURE pipeline integrates valuable research opportunities throughout students’ standard academic course load and gives them sustained, hands-on experience preparing for careers in science.
Four recent alumni participated in the meeting including Mackenzie Roberson ’24, Zohra Jamil ’26, Marilyn Jimenez ’23 and Miyah Jones ’25. Roberson, now a graduate student at Emory, earned first place for best graduate student talk.
“The project that I am working on for my doctoral thesis is something that was originally discovered in Oglethorpe’s ‘Research in Epigenetics’ class in 2022,” she said.
Her research examines how changes to gene regulation can be passed across generations in a model organism, offering valuable insight into human neurodevelopmental disorders. The work has continued to grow beyond her undergraduate experience and continues to engage Oglethorpe students.
Zohra Jamil ’26, who graduated this spring with the James Edward Oglethorpe Award, also traced her conference work back to her CURE course in epigenetics. In it, she investigated gene interactions involved in RNA interference using the model organism “C. elegans.”
“It turned out that the mechanism by which we induced single mutations within worms was actually inducing mutations in two different genes,” Jamil said. “In doing so, I may have identified a novel gene within the RNA interference pathway.”
For Schmeichel and her collaborators, that kind of experience is central to the goals of the CURE model: preparing students not only to conduct research, but to engage with the broader scientific community.
By embedding research into coursework and extending it across multiple years, Oglethorpe’s biology program aims to give students a foundation that carries them into graduate study, laboratory work and other science careers.
