June 20, 2008

In mid-May we had our annual lab retreat. I am a little slow in posting pictures!

Once again, we held the retreat up in Maine thanks to the generosity
of the Newell Family and Pete Newell, a Ph.D. student in the lab.

It was a really fun and productive retreat. As part of the presentations
we usually do some career development activities. This year,
two soon-to-be-post docs in the lab, Russell Monds and Dan MacEachran,
talked about their experiences looking for a post-doc.

We've have several new additions to the lab this year.

Alicia Ballok (L) and Chelsea Boyd are two new Ph.D. students
who joined the lab in June. They'll be spending the summer
working on a couple of different projects each.


The Emilys, Emily Trentacoste (L) and Emily Summers are
Dartmouth College undergraduates who worked in the lab
the past school year and are also working here over the summer.


Mike Danziger is a high school student from St. Anne's
School in NYC. He is the student of a former student of mine,
JP Connolly.


And Katrina Mateo is spending the summer in the lab
as part of the SURF summer research program. She
is a Vassar College student.

June 05, 2008

A couple members of the lab went down to the ASM meeting in Boston. We had the opportunity for a nice lab dinner with current and former members of the group. We got together for a traditional New England lobster boil. Very fun!

Russell Monds is now Dr. Monds. He defended his thesis last week. He's spent the past few years studying the role of phosphate in the regulation of biofilm formation by Pseudomonas fluorescens. His outside examiner was Dr. Jack Heinemann who came all the way from New Zealand.

Russell will be heading off to Stanford as a BioX fellow (http://biox.stanford.edu/) later this summer.





Here are Russell, Mark Silby (another Kiwi, currently in Boston) and Jack.