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.

Isn’t it nice when the granting agencies do the alliteration for me? I was delighted to see this grant award in my inbox today. I really can’t take any credit, though - I had a moment’s panic wondering what I had written/promised to do for this grant, as it was written mid mind-fog during early pat-leave. I remember it seemed exciting at the time - thankfully he PI, Anthony Vincent, must have been more alert than I was - I’m sure he edited my sections heavily.

Some big updates on the horizon, but in the meantime - some waterfalls. With guest speaker Carolina Tropini today, we took some time in the afternoon to hike to a waterfall and show her Hamilton is more than a steeltown. Actually, it wasn’t this one… but I didn’t take a picture. I think this walk-and-a-waterfall will be a tradition for visiting speakers, if I can.

The paucity of updates since Christmas doesn’t reflect any lull, but rather a frantic period - a period of recruitment, a period of preparation for some big changes in the lab. But it’s big news items like this that force my hand (and rightly so!). It’s the first time I’ve seen this form… there’s a date now, and everything. This is going to be exciting, and it’s time to set up some new traditions!

Ok, sometimes the alliterations aren’t forced. With last week’s candidacy exam, we’re back to having no PhD Students in the lab - just candidates. I don’t think the photo below was technically related to celebrating that, but these are Christine’s thermophilus cookies - a lovely chain of cocci.

The last RIP of the year yesterday was Tamina’s, and she won over audiences with the troubleshooting on her last slide. Oh, and the data were pretty good too. Congratulations Tamina on closing off the year with a strong presentation!

It’s that time of year - the annual Solstice Celebration. Although Ayesha and Amany couldn’t join us, we had everyone else (and partners!) around for this one, and I think it’s fair to say the potluck was the most impressive culinary achievment we’ve had to date. I’m clearly selecting for students with something other than lab skills…

And as for the Secret Santa, once again, almost everyone (not me) has an uncanny ability to guess their santa on the first try. I’m beginning to suspect a conspiracy.

I had to look it up, but yes, alliteration is by sound, not by letter. I think I knew this at some point. Ok, enough of about the title - more about the picture; at this year’s IIDR Trainee Day, Jordan got to present his MSc work for the first time - and his poster was so busy, I never got a chance to chat with him about how it was going until the next day!

See the picture? We’re famous! I don’t think we’ve featured on the McMaster front news yet… but here we are (see link here). We’ve regularly trained graduate students from other labs to give them the tools they need to work with phages, but this was a first time for an undergrad, and that apparently caught someone’s eye!

This one, you have to click through to see the pictures… there’s too much to capture in one thumbnail. But the Thumbnail is great too - that look of intense concentration in pumpkin carving, and the payoff… well, you’ll have to click through, now, won’t you!

This year, with a great song/entrance routine, we managed to take the best possible place in the costume contest (2nd. Nobody can dethrone the Li lab, apparently!), and some good strategic planning won us first place in the Pumpkin Carving Contest.

Well, it’s not really Tamina’s, but she had an electron microscopy run today, and a few other lab members tagged along to learn the tricks of the trade… which means we now have photographic evidence. I love the ‘antique’ displays in the foreground… really adds to the ambience.

You know, we often celebrate a new piece of equipment… but the unsung hero of the lab is storage space. With some recent changes in the lab layout, we’ve made room for this fancy new rack, and it has been a game-changer. Am I excited about storage solutions? Yes. Does that make me weird? Probably.

Also, if OHS is reading, that cardboard box is exactly 45 cm from the ceiling.

Ok, despite the same letter, I realize this title wasn’t alliterative… but this isn’t just a phage publication - it’s a publication in the jouranl PHAGE. You can check it out here. This one had an unusual route, with Amany taking lead to support an effort based elsewhere - making it the only case where one of my students is lead author, but I’m not corresponding!

It’s our first forray into systematic reviews for phage therapy, but one of the nice findings to come out of it for me was not just the core findings, but the pattern of publications in this field - a huge gap in the 90s and 00s that tracks with a wide-scale lack of interest (and training) in phages. I’ll definitely be using that figure!

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.