On Jan 6th, it was Dr. Song’s birthday. I had to leave early and missed eating the cake. One big candle and one small candle probably indicate she has become 31 yrs old I guess. Congratulations!

As usual, we had a belated birthday celebration for Aprajita today. She became 29 years old, enjoy the last 20’s! We had a cake together in the office afterward. I’m sorry that she had to spend her BD preparing MS thesis which is coming in a couple of months. Well, that’s a part of life as a graduate student…. Hard work will pay off (someday…)

Students desks are now in my office, we are sharing an office and we moved some equipments to the students’ room. Crowded Lab becomes spacy and we can work a little more effectively. The reason for this Lab rearrangement was that the building is slightly tilted and some water runs out of big 4 degree C reagent shelf. The shelf is quite huge and we need to relocate it to stop draining. One thing led to another, we ended up sharing the office together….

If I share my office, it is easier for me to grasp what’s going on in the Lab and students can easily learn bioinformatics from me. I then realized I can have only 3-4 students in the Lab. “소수 정예 “, I will have to be very careful accepting students in the future… Only for those who wants to become a professor in the future, please contact me.

Qiagen opened a seminar for those who are interested in using Qiagen products for microbiome research. I was invited to give a 30-40 minutes talk about how I have been using Qiagen products for our microbiome projects. It was not “too academic” and more for “practical application” and those sales persons are really good at catching attentions. They’ve got me thinking about purchasing digital PCR someday…. only if I have enough fund 🙂

Azka with lab mates on Sep 14th, 2023.

Azka who has been with us for a year decided to take a break for a semester, and she will be flighing back to Pakistan tonight. The last blog I uploaded was her birthday…. kinda made me back to wordpress and post the photo. I am sorry that I was not there on her last day with us (for the record, I had an oral presentation in Seoul).

And I wish I were there and young enough to do the peace thing together 🙂

Since we were too busy to do anything but setting up the Lab, we had Azka’s BD celebration a month later thant it was supposed to. Dr Song baked a cake for Azka so that it contains non-halal animal-derived substance ^^. I just wish the Lab had more room so that we can sit and eat together. Next time, we should do this in the seminar room.

The Lab moved from Jeju to Cheongju and there are four former members and one new member joined. We came here in the end of February 2023, and now it is almost the end of March. We have been doing lots of cleaning and moving stuff around for a month. It seems we have finally got time to start research!

FYI, the right image shows 미선나무, not cherry blossoms!!

Another Commencement on Feb 18th, 2022. Dabin and Adeel finished their degree and leaving the Lab. It has been a great honor working with you two and we hope a bright future ahead of you.

Dabin, let us know if you can give us some discount for sequencing!!

Shahbaz and Vineet have obtained ph.D degree and have become Dr. Raza and Dr. Singh. Yujin also got BS degree and now she starts MS course. Academic contributions made by these two doctors are invaluable and more importantly, we have had a great time being with them. Dr Singh will move to Kyungbuk National University and Dr. Raza will move to HanYang University for their carrier as Post-doc. I am sure they will do well in the new lab, but I hope they don’t forget that they will always count on us whenever they need help from MBL. Hoping a bright future to you two.

Youjin, your journey has just begun. Fighting ^^.