What's new in the Poynton Lab
Aug 2026
New Paper Alert! Check out our new paper published in Environmental Pollution, in collaboration with our good colleagues at Limerick University in Ireland: "Assessing a Tailings–Topsoil Amendment Approach for Mine Site Restoration Using Earthworm Bioaccumulation, Stress Biomarkers, and Transcriptomics."
July 2026
Welcome Saloni Kellore! Saloni is a double major in Environmental Science and Biology and is joining our lab this summer as a U54-REC intern. Saloni will be investigating the toxicity of roadside snow to our favorite amphipod, Hyalella azteca.
June 2026
Several members of Poynton Lab attended the Pollution Responses to Marine Pollutants (PRIMO) meeting in Hamilton, ON. Valeria, Alyssa, and Irina's presentations were excellent and very well received!
June 2026
CONGRATULATIONS to Tyler Kulak who successfully defended his thesis, "Spider Biodiversity and Insecticide Sensitivity across Active and Restored Cranberry Bogs on Nantucket" and Dr. Valeria Hernandez Talavera for her successful PhD defense, "Genomic-based Environmental Health Assessment: Vieques, Puerto Rico." These young scientists are amazing!
May 19, 2026
CONGRATULATIONS to Dr. Irina Polunina-Proulx for her successful PhD defense, "Innovating a Crustacean Embryo Toxicity (CET) Assay for Screening Environments"
May 2026
Many Congratulations to the members of the Poynton Lab who are graduating this summer! Irina is the receipt of the Graduate Innovation Award and Valeria received the Graduate Legacy Award! Tyler received the Graduate Mentoring Award!
March 2026
It was a true lab effort! Our paper, "Characterization of insecticide resistance across aquatic arthropods of the California Sacramento River watershed" was published in Environmental Pollution with several undergraduate student co-authors! This study investigated the occurrence of insecticide resistance in multiple insect orders within an area of California with high insecticide selective pressure. Our evolutionary tox model species, Hyalella azteca was the only arthropod found to harbor resistance.
September 2025
Several members of the Poynton Lab participated in the UMass Boston Beacon Bash 5k and Helen came in 4th! Thanks Bryce for coming back to run with us!
August 2025
Congratulations to Taryn Broughal for completing her Master's project, OBSERVING GENETIC RESISTANCE TO RUNOFF PESTICIDE USE IN THE NON-TARGET SPECIES COMPLEX HYALELLA AZTECA IN THE NEPONSET WATERSHED and her earning Master's degree.
July - August 2025
Tyler and Helen taught a new course on Nantucket, MA, Aquatic Invertebrate Biodiversity. We learned morphological identification of aquatic insects and crustaceans and used DNA fingerprinting to confirm IDs. Thanks to the amazing students who made the class unforgettable!
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Get in touch to learn more.
helen.poynton@umb.edu
© 2025. All rights reserved.
