Your ICaMBlog team would like to wish our readers, followers and colleagues a joyful and restful August. We have decided to take a well earned break over the next month to muse on new ideas for when we all get back into the swing of the new academic year in September.

Before we look forward we have some hot off the press news to pass on to the ICaMB community and those further afield.

We are sure everyone will agree that our current cohort of MRes students deserve a big pat on their backs for finishing their project assessments this week with some very professional project presentations and a brilliant Poster evening on Tuesday (30^th July).

We are also very happy to inform you that Anna Stanton (Main supervisor: Dr Judith Hall) won the MRes Poster prize. Anna’s project explored the detection of bacteria in vaginal epithelial cells and how hormones influence this response. Anna, we assume, will be taking a short break to enjoy this wonderful summer before getting back into the lab to continue her project during her PhD studies.

But that’s not all, we have more success to report! As part of the prize giving the MRes team of the Graduate School also picked 10 runners up. In no particular order we must also therefore congratulate Pippa Harvey (Dr Jeremy Brown), Anthony Moore (Prof John Hesketh) and Sophia Valaris (Dr Jun-yong Huang) for their prizes.

Where next then? The coming months offer some interesting activities for ICaMB members. This year the British Science Festival is being held in Newcastle from September 7th – 12th and a number of us have projects being showcased. A particular highlight of the festival is on Sunday Sept 8th, called “University Family Challenge”.  Paula Salgado is leading a structural biology drop in activity looking at 3D puzzles of infections,while Phil Aldridge and Jeremy Lakey are inviting families to “Epifection: Build the Bug“, which involves lego! Moreover, our collaboration with Leading Edge is being highlighted through the perspective of the Year 9 participants.

Epifection is a digital interactive project developed by Phil and a number of other Academics across the University that will run through the entire festival. It explores the decisions we need to make in the face of a infection outbreak. It also exploits Phil’s addiction to his smartphone!

After the festival the next big event in the ICaMB calendar will be the Away Day on 14^th October. The program of activities is looking rather exciting and will provide a great opportunity for ICaMB members to network and discuss the research we are all doing (and maybe go out for a beer or light refreshment afterwards!).

The Away Day compliments our summer social event, the famous “Boat Trip.” Floating down the Tyne enjoying the sun allowed many of us to relax, meet sometimes familiar characters as well as new faces.

Regarding new faces, over the next few months a number of new researchers will be moving to ICaMB. More on this when we return in September.

So on that note we wish everyone a superb break over August. For those staying, work hard but enjoy yourselves too: remember Science is Fun, even if it looks like 300 tubes or 10 96-well plates to process.

We hope the first few months of us running this blog have shown you both the fun and serious side of research in ICaMB. There will be more to come in the Autumn.

We leave you with this picture of St Mary’s Lighthouse at sunset….enjoy