On the second floor of the biology building, massive confocal microscopes and tanks of sleek, stripy zebrafish inhabit the developmental biology lab. This is the domain of biology professor Kara Cerveny and her student researchers, who work to tease apart one of biology’s most stunning and complex phenomena: the transformation of a single fertilized egg into a fully functioning, multicellular creature. “Developmental biology is the context in which we study all of biology,” Cerveny said. “Ecology, molecular biology, cell signaling, they’re all crucial in development. It’s a really wide umbrella; it encompasses all sorts of things.”