12/11/15 – The second annual Pub Club Christmas party. There was plenty of good food and desserts, and the White Elephant gift exchange was a lot of fun. The gift of the night was the Plant Disease Book, which was initially opened by Brad Paasch and stolen multiple times before Brad recovered his prize at the end of the game. Check out the picture galleries in the 2015 Fall Photo File.
12/04/15 – Following another lively science update session, Prateek led a discussion on techniques and methods used to profile taxonomic and functional aspects of a microbiome. This was a great opportunity for Prateek to practice describing questions related to his research in a way non-microbiome researchers could understand. For those of us not studying the microbiome, it gave us an opportunity to use our scientific thinking on a topic a bit outside our comfort zones. All in all, a great day at The Pub Club.
11/20/15 – Sheng Yang got us started with a lengthy discussion on the new Nature Plant article regarding the controversy on auxin-binding protein, ABP1. You can check out the paper on The Pub Club’s Scoop.it page (click here). We then talked with Rique Campa, a professor of fisheries and wildlife and associate dean of the Graduate School, about career options and the need to prioritize and target our professional development towards the career of our choice. Rique shared a lot of information and resources with us, which you can find here.
11/13/15 – Xiufang and YiJu both shared about recent meetings they attended and Li told us about her recent interview with Popular Science (check out the Twitter feed for the link to the blog). We then started a group list of conferences, which you can find here. If you have information for a conference you would like to share, please do so by using the comment box below the post. Thanks to Carl Rhodes for taking time to meet with us “on the edge.”
11/06/15 – Last week at The Pub Club we had an opportunity to learn to navigate our lab’s digital camera for more effective and productive photo sessions with your favorite organism. Cait and Brad presented photography basics including a demonstration on how to adjust camera settings in manual mode, and advice on how to capture quality photographs (click here for more information). Afterwards we all got to practice with our cameras and ended with a brief RCR discussion of how to avoid problems associated with photo editing by simply taking higher quality images to begin with! The information provided was very helpful and I for one am glad I didn’t miss it.
10/30/15 – If you were not able to make it to the first Pub Club Halloween Party, check out The Pictures Speak to see what you missed. Koichi brought the best “scary treat,” Rob won the candy guessing contest and almost everyone had a turn “pumpkin bowling.” A special thanks to Ryan and Emily for helping plan the games and decorations.
10/23/15 – Elise Zipkin joined us at The Pub Club last week. After our science updates, Elise talked with us about how she views statistics and uses it to address biologically relevant questions. She encouraged us to think in terms of what parameters we want to estimate rather than simply running tests. She also showed us how effect sizes can be more meaningful than p-values alone. Thanks, Elise for taking your time to meet with us.
10/17/15 – Several of The Pub Club members took the opportunity to have lunch with ASPB Executive Director, Crispin Taylor. Check out The Pub Club Twitter feed for the picture posted by Siobhan. Great networking!
10/8-10/15 – This week The Pub Club had 3 Great Opportunities provided by the 4th Annual Plant Biotech Symposium here at MSU. For highlights on the Career Symposium, click here.
10/02/15 – Last meeting we had our first Mug Club guest of the semester, Tim Whitehead, visit us at The Pub Club. Tim described the protein engineering research done in his lab as well as some of the methods and potential applications of interest to our group. He also challenged us with questions such as “What are the Big Questions in your field?” and “What criteria do you use to determine what projects or part of a project you will pursue?” Thanks, Tim, for taking your time to meet with us “on the edge of science!”
09/25/15 – Each semester at The Pub Club we take time to have our newest members introduce themselves to the group. This time we got to meet Brad Paasch (new PhD student in the He lab), Adam Seroka (rotating PhD student in the He lab), Ryan Corbett (rotating PhD student in the He lab) and Amy Baetsen-Young (new PhD student in the Day lab). While she was not able to join us, we also said farewell to Alyssa Burkhardt, who is headed to California for her post doc. Thanks to all for the lively science updates and also to Adam and Emily for the sandwiches. Also a special thanks to Rongzhi for providing the moon cakes in celebration of the Chinese mid-autumn festival. (See “The Pictures Speak” for the photo.)
09/18/15 – Last week at The Pub Club we had a chance to sit down with Rebecca Ceru
, our EHS biological safety inspector, following her inspection of the 4th floor (MPS). She answered our questions regarding inventories for biological materials, shipping biological materials, biohazardous waste disposal and more.
Position: Biological Safety Technician
Area: Biological Safety
Phone: 432-5019
Fax: 432-8659
E-Mail: cerurebe@ehs.msu.edu
Thanks to Yi-Ju for bringing in the pizza!
09/11/15 – We had a packed house for our Fall semester kick-off! One of the items on the agenda was saying Thank You to our 5 PIs for taking their time to meet with us at The Pub Club. Thanks to all for the science updates and announcements on recurring meetings (Writing Group, Python Group, Biotic Interactions Journal Club and Microbiome Journal Club) and upcoming events (Plant Biotech. Symposium, see below & RCR opportunities). We will be updating the Events calendar soon with these many opportunities to “stay on the cutting edge of science” so keep your eye out to catch the ones of most interest to you! Thanks also to Alex for a great introduction and discussion on AlphaScreen.
