Somehow we are edging towards the end of 2023 already, with the days getting longer and the sun shining over us in beautiful Wollongong. The MINDS Lab has been a busy hive of research activities.
This month we have welcomed a new team member and PhD student, Tamim Ahsan. Tamim is from Dhaka, Bangladesh, and has a background in Genetic Engineering, Biotechnology and Marine Sciences. He has an outstanding track record already with 18+ peer reviewed publications. More recently Tamim has been working as a Scientific Officer at the National Institute of Biotechnology, Bangladesh. In the MINDS Lab, Tamim will be working on a computational biology project developing new ways to analyse single cell and spatial omics data with our collaborator Dr Janine Knauer-Arloth at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Munich. We are so excited to have Tamim join us and can’t wait to see what he achieves next – powered by the world’s best coffee, of course 😉
Back in May, we also held our inaugural lab retreat in Jervis Bay, on the NSW South Coast. Surrounded by some of the most beautiful beaches in the world, we took a deep dive into our lab activities to figure out what we are doing well, how we can improve, and where we are going as a group. It was a wonderful experience for team bonding (meditation, beach walks, science jewellery making, shared meals), getting on the same page with our projects, organisation of our group, and carving out our future directions as a team. For me the highlight was being joined by a pod of dolphins on our late-autumn swim! Overall the retreat was a huge success and something I hope to hold annually. Particularly helpful was this anonymous survey so that we could constructively find ways to improve. I also recommend this article for ideas on planning the retreat.
As someone who has received international training, I am passionate about facilitating overseas training experiences for my students whenever possible. Dr Cristiana Cruceanu (Karolinska Institute) and myself were fortunate to be recently awarded an IBRO Collaborative Research Grant to facilitate a trainee exchange. This enabled our PhD student Dominic Kaul to travel abroad in June/July to visit Dr Cruceanu and Dr Juan Pablo Lopez’s labs at the Karolinska, as well as being hosted for a few weeks by Dr Janine Knauer-Arloth at the Max Planck of Psychiatry. Immersion in these labs, bioinformatics training and collaborative research opportunities was an invaluable experience for Dominic. Thank you IBRO for enabling this exchange to facilitate Dominic’s training as well as the links our lab has with our overseas collaborators.
The other members of our lab have been doing an exceptional job on their projects, with our Honours students Amelia and Adrianna now finished all their Honours assessments and are edging ever so quickly towards their thesis completion.
Our PhD student Amber has been uncovering some exciting results regarding how stress impacts on the human hippocampus, and Katrina is developing a new technique combining spatial transcriptomics and proteomics. Both attended the 10x Genomics Sydney User Group event at the Garvan, and Dominic also represented our lab at our Faculty Research Symposium, presenting his data on how stress impacts astrocytes in psychopathology.
On another happy note, I was surprised and honoured to find out I’ve been nominated for the UOW Young Alumni Award as well as the international USERN Prize in Biological Sciences (shortlisted as one of 10 in the category from 90,000 scientists overall). Thanks to my mentors who nominated me for the former, and to everyone that voted for me for the USERN Prize. Outcomes for both will be announced later this year.
Finally, on World Suicide Prevention Day (Sept 10), the MINDS Lab are walking 9km in Out of the Shadows to support Lifeline’s suicide prevention services and help Australians in crisis. Please donate now and support our walk (and research) to save lives.
Our lab is proud to continue supporting Lifeline, a national 24 hour crisis support and suicide service for which our PhD student Katrina volunteers every Friday. We have recently also fundraised for Lifeline via the Push-up Challenge, partly with an international effort from the Dolomites! Well done, Dominic and the MINDS Lab!
See you for our end of year summary in a few months! Busy busy busy times ahead.
– Natalie
