Well done to Adam Duxfield for publishing the results of his first year of PhD, and to everyone for getting our next MRC project funded. Here’s to great science ahead!

We had a lovely Pirog/Briggs barbecue last week. It is so nice to be able to sit outside, play croquet and chat about life. A big thank you to Prof Mike Briggs for inviting us to his lovely Northumberland home!

In June the NC3Rs welcomed twenty of their PhD students to London for the annual summer school, which included peer networking, a flash poster session and some further useful online sessions. Here’s a picture of all the students, with our own Marc Farcasanu in the front row.

Explore Lifelong Learning have kindly invited us and our colleagues (Shoba Amarnath, Kasia Pirog, @GrainOfScience, @jorisveltman and @linda_lako) from Newcastle University to talk about our work as part of their summer programme. Save the date and see what we’ve been up to! @nubiosciences

Our Black Box project (https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/blackbox/) will be featured at the Edinburgh Science Festival on Saturday the 9th of April and will screen until the 9th of June. Come say hi if you’re in Edinburgh this weekend, we will be hosting an opening talk at 2pm.

The full program of our Edinburgh show can be found here: https://www.sciencefestival.co.uk/mediaLibrary/other/english/58530.pdf

Being a scientist is not only about the work, results and publications, but also about forging links and networks, and long lasting friendships that can help in these discoveries in the future. We had a lovely day out in Corbridge yesterday with our students and joint with the Briggs lab. Spring is definitely here!

A lovely lab Christmas lunch this week, joint with Mike Briggs’s lab. It’s so nice to be able to celebrate together again. Thank you all for a great year despite the difficulties! Here’s to another year of great science!

Great festive fun, and a big thank you to Mike for writing it!