Lisa's Lab Book

Working on the O2K I am back in the lab! After so many weeks months I am back...but where is everybody? I'm only back to work on the CRUK project which is due to finish later this year. The whole set up is designed so that there is physical distancing and therefore much reduced capacity. Trying to get everything back up and working feels monumental but at last we can start to ramp the work back up again. Next week we get our April cohort 1st years onto campus for the first time. Will we ever return to normal?

Somebody said it has been 12 weeks now since 'lockdown' started and our labs stopped being our workplace (I have to admit that I never really started counting, just couldn't see the point). Is that a long time or not that long? I know I have got some things done, and others have stubbornly refused to leave my (home) desk despite serious efforts. There have been many lovely things happening, a couple of really exciting new collaborative applications. Some excellent work from the group who have been magnificent in their ability to take this all in their stride. Our final year vets have all passed their exams in unpredictable circumstances! Personally I have had the wonderful experience of having both my sons at home with me for some time when I had previously worried that the empty nest was my next chapter. The labs are gradually being re-tuned to be functional and much deliberation and preparation has been going into the process of returning to research in a Covid19 compl

The tomato plants keep growing, now there are some outside in the garden too... Everything else continues to grapple with the concept of being a scientist in lockdown - no lab, no new data. Just the work of untangling data we already have, shaping it into manuscripts without the chance to add a gel or tidy up a figure. Lots of MSTeams meetings, lots! It's lovely to see everybody but hard to have a natural conversation, no eye contact  an inability to fully interpret body language. Screen fatigue. Wifi issues 😑. But we keep going, grant applications are always exciting especially now when we can only anticipate the experiments. Collaborations, meetings proposals as well as finding interesting bits of data that had been placed to one side. Onwards!

'Lockdown' We have all been working from home for the past three weeks (the moka coffee pot goes on at 11.00 am). Quite an adjustment since we were full flow in the lab. Cell cultures were stopped, O2K experiments halted, flies and worms disposed of or stored. Fortunately so far none of us have fallen ill with Covid19 so overall everything is fine. We have several manuscripts to write and datasets to analyse, grants must be written. This is all on a backdrop of uncertainty about when we can return to the labs.  In the middle of this our first dual intake cohort has started...everything is online and I have met my lovely new tutees at their computers in the bedrooms and study spaces at home. We did some fresher's week activities together...my wifi signal turns out to be better 'half-way down the stairs' ( I did feel like Kermit's nephew from the Muppet Show! ) when several videos are being streamed. All in all our planet continues to turn. More peopl

Tom had his viva last week and has passed! Huge congratulations! Here he is pictured with his external examiner Dr. Martin Lindley from Loughborough University and our own Prof. Richard Emes was his internal examiner. Apparently they gave Tom a 'fair but tough' grilling.