At a BBSRS that started with the Chair’s reflections on creativity, I was fittingly impressed by the poster setup (pictured below). The CRISPR contingent (Felix and Christine) presented posters - Christine’s first, and Rabia was invited to give a talk - which was superb. The Hynes lab was very well represented! The only drawback was running home in 31 C weather after…

From a remarkable talk at the FHS plenary two weeks ago to this week’s RIP, Christine has been knocking it out of the park and getting a very wide audience to connect with her research. I assume the memes help (see pic), but any day now she’ll be deploying ones I don’t recognize at all, and I’ll feel old… or rather, older?

You’ll never guess which Marathon I just ran. There are no clues in the picture (Click through for the “after” pic). Now, I’ve heard plenty of people compare grad school to ‘a marathon, not a sprint’ - and I think with two marathons (but only one PhD) under my belt, I’m beginning to be qualified to comment on that analogy… and yeah, not a fan. The two are nothing alike!

Not just Star Wars Day (although it is that, see the shirt!) - but lab cleanup day, on the birthday of the mentor who introduced me to this tradition. Everyone scrubs, everyone pitches in, we find all the missing racks (turns out we do have a lot!), and the boss buys lunch. It’s a good day.

I think when my last student passed her compehensive, I mistakenly claimed that I had no more PhD students… having somehow forgotten poor Gayatri. Last Friday, hot off the back of winning a poster award, she became the first MedSci PhD Candidate in the lab, and did so off the back of a truly impressive exam. While it’s definitely more challenging than the “on-topic” BBS candidacy, I think it’s a far better format for testing the core skills needed for a PhD - and Gayatri showed she has those in spades. Well done!

Stealing my keynote-lecture Thunder, Gayatri took a break from studying for her comps later this week to show up, present, and walk away with a prize for best poster. What a flex!

Today at the MedSci research day - the first since the pandemic, I was invited to give a keynote touching on themes of work-life balance. It’s my first in-person talk not about my science since… well… since back in the teaching Salsa days. It was a real treat to have such a large, rapt, and engaged audience, although the irony of a talk on work-life-balance finished at 11:45 the night before isn’t lost on me. Also, it wasn’t even the biggest lab event of the day… more on that later.

… that’s two talks in a row from my students that, despite my famously nit-picky ‘there’s always something that can be improved” approach to sci-comm, I just have to hand it to my students - in this case Rabia - that they don’t need me anymore. They’re out there, outperforming their boss. And, for the record? It’s awesome.

In today’s RIP, Félix really showed off what a senior PhD student can do if they continue to iterate on their narrative and their slides - this was a silky smooth story, superbly covering a lot of ground. Looking forward to conference season!

Ok, the alliteration may be tortured, but the run - the run was great. The lab website risks getting turned into a running blog, at this rate.

My first rematch. Last year's 30k was my first race ever, I had a blast, and I immediately knew I'd be back. A very different day; a bit warmer, beautiful sun, a harsher wind direction - you can definitely see the difference in this picture and the one I featured last year. A year of really consistent training, and I managed to beat my record by over 11 minutes, comfortably earning one of the coveted ATB gold medals for <2 h (Chip time 1:56:43). Had a fantastic time once again, and am incredibly proud of this. And... yeah, I'm doing it again next year.

In very exciting news for the lab, I just secured a grant to chase down what is possibly our weirdest (and coolest?) idea. It’s a unique kind of grant, a very impressive team, an unusual approach… in short, it’s going to be a blast. We’re looking forward to working with the other centre in Cork on this long-deliberated, finally-coming-to-fruition project that started at a brainstorming session in an airport hotel (pictured), pre-pandemic.

More on this in the coming weeks!

Lab cleanup - always a bit of an occasion! Whether it’s the novelty of the supervisor on his hands and knees scrubbing, or that fresh “clean pine” scent that lingers from a choice made by a student 5 years ago, or just proving that yes, we do actually have enough racks, thank you very much, we just needed to round them up… the benefits are innumerable.

In the oldest-running Lab tradition, I was once again able to host people for a Christmas potluck. We had delicacies from around the world. We held a Secret Santa (Pictured) - where once again, people are getting freakishly good at guessing who provided presents. We shared memorable stories of the year: From saying goodbye to a favourite car, to weddings, to learning to drive, to holding a pipette for the first time, to first trips out of the country ages, to moving in with a partner, to a stretch of sudden blindness - the good, the bad, the memorable.

Back to alliterations - all is well with the world. Tamina gave a great talk this morning, but also constantly impresses me with the fact that she’s not content to rest on her laurels. I think the last three of her talks have always involved major restructuring and reshaping of the underlying narrative - always looking for a new take on her project. Her PI, however, is stuck in a cycle of recycling old slides…

It doens’t really make sense to use the public-facing website for an in-comment (I hesitate to call it a joke) that will only mean anything to the lab… but hey, after 2 months of pestering, I finally bought them what they’ve needed. And my running backpack didn’t look comical at all on the way in, with these 8 beauties hanging off it…

My usual lab photographers/videographers were too busy running the event to get pictures, but thankfully Tamina thought to get a quick shot of Rabia in her brief respite, standing by her poster. This year, the trainee committee invited the wonderful Martha Clokie - so there was a phage theme right from the get-go, and Rabia, Gayatri & Félix all presented their work. Congratulations to the trainee organizers, who did a phenomenal job bringing us back to in-person meetings!

I ran the local half marathon this weekend, which was the culmination of a year of consistent running and training. I often joke that I’m running from my responsibilities (and have a lot of responsibilities to run from) - but it didn’t quite hit me how fast I could run from them until Sunday - apparently, I can run from them at 3:50/km for quite a long time…

But the responsibilities do always catch up eventually :P.

While I’ve kept the rest of the site up to date, the lack of photographic evidence of our many accomplishments since July means I just haven’t been on top of the front page. The one (and only!) drawback to not having a cell phone, I suppose. A new cohort of undergrads, a new bootcamp/cleanup day, talks, awards… well now reporting all that feels a little small in comparison to the latest big event - Gayatri’s wedding. Here are all the lab (sans undergrads) and our partners/families. I think this’ll be the lab picture for a while to come… how are we going to one-up this?

I just finished presenting at Viruses of Microbes 2022 - it was great! But my “controversial” statement that got a nice laugh at CSM had a very different reaction here at a phage conference - mostly a lot of heads nodding. Hah, I’m glad they agree!

Here is Rabia. You may not recognizer her; her eyes are open, she’s smiling… but the clear name on the prize for best poster should help identify her. Congratulations - well deserved!