Logan Edvalson
Graduate Student, The Larracuente Lab
You work in a laboratory. What are you currently researching?
I study how meiotic drives often evolve to target parts of the genome that have typically been labeled as “nonfunctional”. Doing this also helps me learn fundamental things about how chromatin is regulated in the male germline.
What was it that originally sparked your interest in biology?
When I was a kid, my friends and I would explore a forest near one of the parks we liked to hang out at. I often wondered how the trees and plants would intrinsically know how to order their cells to make a functional organism that could stand the test of time and season changes. Although, being a kid, I didn’t think about it in such elegant terms.
What advice would you give to prospective students looking to study in our department?
Although it is a bit of a cliché, it’s so important to look into potential mentors and learn their mentoring style. An awesome mentoring experience here is worth a heck of a lot more than a poor experience anywhere else.
How do you unwind when you’re not in the lab?
I recently took up woodworking and like to make little pieces of furniture or shelves for my apartment. I also like to play video games online with my brother who lives in Utah.
What is one thing about yourself that you’d like more people to know?
I’m pretty happy to talk to anyone about anything. Just about everything that exists has enough nuance in its existence to be interesting to take a deeper dive into.