This week, Katelyn Butts joins the lab as a work placement student from the St Lawrence College Biotechnology Advanced program. Katelyn will work remotely for the next four months, helping us shift all our shared files/drives/messaging systems to Microsoft Teams and develop on-boarding materials including a lab wiki and updated protocols. She will also work with the Phytotron, Safety,  and Department managers to develop training platforms for new personnel. Even though all of our interactions will be via Zoom/Slack, I am really looking forward to working with Katelyn and I am sure her work will benefit our lab and Department for years to come.

Welcome, Katelyn! 

This week we welcome 4th-year students Mackenzie and Brandon to the lab as they start their Honours Thesis projects. Mackenzie will study the molecular evolution of a family of Raf-like kinases and Brandon will study a sub-family of E3 ubiquitin ligases. We are very interested in how these important signalling enzyme families have evolved in plants. Both projects will contribute to ongoing projects in meaningful ways and learn how to use a variety of plant genomics databases. 

Welcome to the (virtual) lab! 

Congratulations to Carmen Gonzalez-Ferrer who successfully defended her MSc thesis last week. Carmen's thesis, "Initial characterization of a subgroup of Arabidopsis group VIII receptor-like kinases in immune and flowering time pathways" received excellent feedback from her examining committee and she expertly defended her work. You can read more about her work here. 

To celebrate, we met as a group (for the first time since March!) at a local craft brewery. It was great to see everyone and celebrate Carmen's achievement. 

​Well done! 

​Even though they are not allowed in the lab due to COVID-19 restrictions, I am very happy to welcome Thakshila Dharmasana and Nick Smith to our group. Thakshila is a MSc student and Nick has been awarded an NSERC Undergraduate Summer Research Award. Over the next few months, they will work together with former student Natasha Kelkar on a data-mining and molecular evolution project. 

Welcome! 

We have an annual tradition in our lab to head up to the Queen's University Biological Station over Reading Week for a two-day Research Retreat. We discuss all ongoing projects in detail and use our hive-mind to map out research plans for the upcoming year. 

We also enjoyed sunny morning coffee on Lake Opinicon, playing Codenames by the wood-burning stove, and of course, sharing meals and good conversation. 

I had the pleasure of visiting the Department of Biology at the University of Ottawa this week, where I was graciously hosted by my good friend and colleague Allyson MacLean. I toured the shiny new labs of Gendron Hall and CAREG, and of course the rooftop glasshouse where I learned about the legumes that Allyson's group studies. I presented our ongoing work in their Departmental Seminar series and shared a wonderful meal with Ottawa's newest plant faculty: Allyson MacLean, Liz Brauer, and Marina Cvetkovksa. Thanks for the great visit, and see you again soon. 

 

​Natasha Kelkar joins the lab today as a visiting MSc student from the Savitribai Phule Pune University. Welcome to the lab, and to our Canadian winter!