While Amany has abandoned us for Alberta, she made a brief trip back for her husband’s PhD defence (!), as well as making an in-person appearance to kick off the BBS seminar series. It was a treat to have her back and sharing this story that is oh-so-close to its end, as she sets off to write up.

Yes, I haven’t been updating the site much during pat leave (not much longer, now, though) - but I couldn’t not acknowledge the crew that participated in lab cleanup, with two of three new faces pictured here. Had a bit of a different feel this year, as the lab space is no longer shared with the Stearns lab… but the end result - a clean, tidy lab space (for now) is always a treat.

While I couldn’t attend (Pat leave has some drawbacks!), I’m delighted Greg German had the idea to call on the Canadian Phage presence at Evergreen for a group shot - look at the number of labs represented!

It’s the end of the RIP year, and that means awards. And because my lab is awesome, that means Felix picked one up this year - congratulations!

We gathered in the driving park (with a few children missing, thank god for summer camps) to say goodbye to Amany, who is heading out West to finish writing up her Thesis. It feels like we just got her back from Mat leave! Oh, and if you’re eagle-eyed, you may spot in my arms why updates have been slower than usual.

The best session of the CSM, every year, is the student competition - no competing sessions, all focus on the trainees, incredibly high-quality talks that never run over time. And everyone knows it - the attendance is high, the enrollment is highly competitive - this year, 92 extended abstracts submitted for contention. It is quite an experience just to be one of the 12 selected to showcase your research in front of the entire Canadian Microbiology Community. And winning? Well that’s awesome. And both Rabia and Felix won this year. Wow. Wow. Wow.

With baby #5 due any day, I had to miss out on my favourite part of the year. Thankfully, my students are sending me updates so I can live vicariously through them - here’s Christine presenting her poster (and looking a little scared of her error bars) on Day 1.

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.