What an amazing showing for the Kopinke lab at the yearly Department Retreat! Kiara Fierman won the Collegiality Award and Best Oral Presentation Award, Xinyue Liu won the Walter Oppelt Best Paper by Grad Student Award, and Hailey Jones won best Poster Award. We are incredibly proud of all of you!

Christian Noble, a first-year PhD student in the Kopinke lab, recently authored his first manuscript as the primary author. His significant discovery indicates that this GLP-1 drug might negatively impact muscles after injury by promoting fat formation within the muscle and hindering muscle regeneration. Christian had the opportunity to present his research at the New Directions in Biology and Disease of Skeletal Muscle Conference in June 2026. This study was done in collaboration with Nikhil...

Xinyue Liu, a third-year PhD candidate, recently wrote and submitted her first and second first-author manuscripts to bioRxiv! These are currently under review but catch an early sneak peek before they are officially published. Click on each link below. FAP-intrinsic Hedgehog signaling controls intramuscular adipogenesis, fibrosis, and myofiber regeneration | bioRxiv: Xinyue found that FAPs are the primary cellular mediators of Hedgehog signaling during muscle repair, using their intrinsic...