Farncombe
Phage

Et de deux! Félix (Seen here presenting the spoils of his PhD - Warhammer, Phage-Planters, and eDNA. Oh, and a Thesis, I suppose) just had a masterful defence… and there goes the last of the lab's starting cohort. *sniff*. Plenty more photos of the event after the jump.

No, I don’t mean the blows, I mean the ‘greatest hits’ - yet another talk where one of ours (Christine) put on a masterful performance. And the line about recognizing a dead end when you see one? Chef’s kiss! You had to be there, of course.

Today, we celebrated Amany’s defence - the first out of the Hynes lab. A great defence with plenty family present, a trip to the Pheonix to sign ‘The Book’, and, after sundown, we ate, we drank, and were merry. Oh, and a warhammer.

One of the last of her cohort to have to give 3 BBS seminars - as they’ve changed the rules around MSc-to-PhD transfers, Rabia finished off strong, of course. At least, so I’m told - I was away (again), but Christine assures me this was “queen behaviour” - whatever that means.

Things haven’t really quieted down, but right now I’m in SoCal, at the lab’s first ever Gordon Conference. It’s a subject area out of my comfort zone - highlighting some gaps in knowledge - and this has been a lovely experience, and a delight to be challenged intellectually in new ways. Gave an invited talk yesterday, and… and I think I nailed it, if I say so myself. How’s this for an opener:

"Since most of you do not know me, and I still don't know most of you, I'm going to try and win over your trust by telling you all in advance that I'm going to lie to you three times in this talk"

Closing off one hell of a week for the lab (5 website entries in a week? And that doesn’t cover it all), Rabia gave the Bordeleau Memorial Scholarship talk at the end of this year’s BBSRS symposium. She was brilliant, of course, getting a chance to showcase some of her newest data, and it definitely hit me that this story is… well, PhD defense ready.

Another facet of the BBSRS - in addition to Jordan’s great poster - was that this was the first time I was in this room since the BBSRS in 2020, days before the pandemic. And it felt a little like the world had fast-forwarded - the background the same, but so many of the people changed - as is usual, of course, for academia - but 4 years hit me all at once.

Told you all it was one impressive week. It’s not even done yet, but we’ve got something else to celebrate - Felix’s thesis is submitted for defence.

Today’s Research in Progress was Christine, who knocked it out of the park… so today’s noon rounds (me) is going to look pretty bad by comparison. Oh well, I’ll just take credit for Christine’s talk instead - that’s my mentorship at work, right?

Abandoning my alliterations is unusual. So is submitting a grant a day early. Feel really good about this one!

It’s not your imagination, there’s something special unusual inside this cake. One of our team is expecting, and yesterday we got together to celebrate, make rather inappropriate comments about burst sizes and whether this is lysogeny, and eat blue cake. I’m excited for the couple, but also particularly delighted that the lab seems to be an environment where people don’t feel pressured to put their lives on hold for their work.