My Biography

My name is Dominic Sebastian.

I have just begun my Sixth year as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. I work in the lab of Dr. Grace Boekhoff-Falk. Funding for my work here originally came from a training grant administered by the genetics department here at the University from the NIH, but now comes directly from my advisor, Grace. The training grant is meant to fund upcoming scientists through their training – and that is what I am doing here, learning to think like a scientist.

Five years ago I graduated from Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA having earned my Bachelor’s degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology. At Western I worked as a resident Advisor in the dormitories, which was my first exposure to a professional position.

What I do at graduate school isn’t hard to explain. One thing that our lab is interested in studying is how the antenna and the leg become different structures during development. Under some conditions we can induce legs to become antennae and antennae to become legs, and this helps us to understand better what makes them different. One protein (just think of this as one tool in a cell’s toolbox) that is different between legs and antennae is called “cut.” My project involves looking to see whether or not this difference in cut is responsible for changes in the fly antennae and how the loss of cut in the antennae affects other proteins that we have already studied there. My project is interesting to me because I would like to know how developmental systems can differentially deploy genetic regulatory systems to effect differential changes in serially homologous organs or appendages. Evolution has been something that I have always been drawn to, and this is how my understanding is being realized.

I have a wonderful boss, Dr. Boekhoff-Falk is supportive and insightful and always very helpful when I am feeling excited, challenged. Grace has a great view on life, on science and many other things which she shares with me, and for which I am in her debt many times over. I continue to learn from her and my other lab mates everyday – I am a very lucky person to have such camaraderie in my work environment.

My family lives in Camas, Washington (Near Portland, OR and east of Vancouver, Wa). There are four of us children, of which I am the oldest – My three sisters’ are Mara, Miesha, and Madeleine. Maddie, 21, is in her Senior year at St. Ben’s, a Catholic college in Collegeville, Minnesota. Madeleine is a tremendous writer, and her recent art is, in many mediums, quite superbly crafted. Mara, 23, is in Just about to begin her second year at Medical school in a DO program in Kirksville, MO. She's working hard and we're all pulling for her. Miesha is 19 and attends Western Washington University (as a sophomore this year) and hopes to study Speech Pathology while she is there. Miesha loves dance, and though she is not sure which path her future life will take, she will be able to accomplish whatever she decides to do, with the full support of our family behind her. My parents are James and Patricia Ebacher. My father is a supervisor for Kaiser, a local HMO, in the Hospice/Home Health Department. My mother works for Wafertech, a company which manufactures silicon chips.

My family had two dogs, Baccio and Sampson, both boxers.