I have, once again, shut down the lab. This time, not to spare us COVID (I think that ship has sailed, given the failure of provincial leadership), but to at least ensure that everyone is boosted by the time they encounter covid, and to help preserve hospital capacity. I have also purchased N95s and RATs for our return. We will check back in two weeks -stay safe out there.

And its back - the in person Christmas party, the in-person Secret Santa! Things aren’t quite back to normal - as you can see from the masks, but we were able to put together something pretty close to our party from 2019, aka ‘back in the day’. I was absolutely shocked at how good people were at guessing their secret Santa - over half got it on their first try. I wasn’t one of them :P.

Over the last two days, Amany & Alejandra have been representing the lab at Phage Futures 2021, which they were sponsored to attend by Cytophage. I was really debating whether to highlight this with a picture of the city, of fries, beer, chocolate, or a picture of the poster session. So… I decided on a little of everything. Click through for the poster session.

I’ve hosted a podcast… but it’s been a long time since I was on the guest side of things! MURSA interviewed me just a few days ago about my career, , phages, and advice for undergraduates. The podcast is up here: https://spoti.fi/3CvhEC7

A huge shout out to Janice, who took home the prize for best MSc poster at the IIDR last week. Given she won for best undergraduate poster a few years back (perhaps the only person so far to claim those two titles?) - and for a completely different project - it’s clear Janice has serious scicomm chops!

There will come a day where I stop using alliterative titles… but that is not this day. Today, we celebrate the publication of an article, a collaboration with Bienenstock lab, that just appeared in Gut Microbes. The coolest tidbit in here was the fact that the prophages in the probiotic strain were detectable as free phages systemically in mice a mere 30 minutes after administration of the probiotic! Check out the open access article for more here.

A fantastic “lab feature” in our BBS talk on Tuesday - for which Gayatri, Amany and Rabia all deserve serious congratulations - a best-ever performance by Tamina in presenting her research at RIP on Wednesday, and a lab outing to see Dennis Villeneuve’s Dune today… it’s been a busy week!

Sometimes the alliterations just write themselves… This year, we are feeling the lack of BBS pumpkin carving contest, or costume parade - but as a lab, people still shared their costumes and pumpkins for this year. Click through for more:

Yes, the title is an alliterative double! In giving today’s Noon Rounds presentation, I realized the last research talk I had given was… this, Noon Rounds, Feb 2019, in person. And that was one of my best talks ever… I even had props. Didn’t get a tonne of mileage out of that talk though… and because I’m a masochist, I didn’t even recycle a single slide for this new one. Still, had a blast showing off our latest research to a broad audience, highlighting the exceptional work of Amany, Rabia, and Steven (@McGill).

Lovely fall weather, the start of fall colours, and an easy stroll along the escarpment yesterday from Romar Dr to Borer’s Falls… we ought to do this more often! Click through for a second picture, both courtesy of Janice.

I just came back from the Department of Medicine Awards Dinner, the first in-person gathering of that size I’ve been to in… well, you know. Ages. It was great for that alone, but a particular pleasure to be recognized with the Graduate teaching award. Yes, yes, using my lab website to congratulate myself is pretty petty… but I am proud of the impact I’ve had on graduate students in this particularly tough stretch of time. And if I advise my students to toot their own horns, I, too, should take that advice!

When we first went into lockdown, Alejandra was resourceful and sought out collaborators back in Mexico that we could help out bioinformatically to push projects over a finish line. She picked up the skills, did the outreach, put in the hard work coordinating between our teams… and this wound up being much more than just helping with the bioinformatics. The results just got published today in Viruses - check them out here.

It turns out that zoom interviews does not prepare you for how tall your incoming cohort of students might be… This week, despite disruptions, we managed to complete the sixth iteration of the Phage Boot Camp, bringing Autumn, Jacob and Alan up to speed on the lab and the basics of phage handling. Gayatri also took it as a refresher. Next week it’ll be time for these students to put their newfound skills to the test.

Hiba dropped by to say hello (and goodbye!), something we didn’t really get to do after her defence! And, as her flights are booked for her PhD in Ireland starting later this month, I’ll raise a parting glass. Good night, and joy be with you all!

It’s been a while since we’ve welcomed brand new members to the team - so it’s with particular delight that I get to welcome our undergraduate thesis students for the year; Autumn, Alon and Jacob. They’ll be subjected to the Phage Boot Camp, and be ready to tackle some exciting projects over the coming year. To learn more about them, check out their updated profiles on the “The Team” page.

Yesterday was Onam in Kerala… but more importantly (!), it was also Tamina’s wedding. I was honoured to be a part of such an important milestone in a love story that has spanned continents and weathered COVID - and delighted that we were able to take advantage of the occasion to get this, unusual, lab picture. I’m not sure we’ll ever top this one…
Congratulations Tamina & Johns!

Fresh news from Egypt, and the picture speaks for itself. Congratulations Amany!

It’s been almost exactly a year since we got everyone together (outside!) for a hike, and we were able to have a long overdue social today. Hiding behind us is a potluck including some remarkable fruits of a bake-off between Rabia and Felix, but ‘hiding’ in the foreground is the reason this was a particularly special gathering - the sashes on both Amany and Tamina! Big events in the coming months for both of them.

Yes, yes, I know the campy alliterations have got to go at some point, but this one was too easy. Today, Amany was awarded the Fred and Helen Knight Enrichment Award! She sent me the following emoji, which I am too old and uncool to decode, but I transpose it for you here:

In another alliterative headline, yesterday Rabia was recognized with a Thomas Neilson Scholarship, “Awarded to a Biochemistry graduate student deemed to show the greatest potential as an independent scientist at the time of transfer to the Ph.D. program”. And I couldn’t put it better myself. If the picture’s a little grainy, it’s because I cropped it from our lab social the other day… not exactly a wealth of picture to draw on this year!