Skirball Retreat

Last week, the Skirball Institute (of which I am employed) bussed me and about 200 other post-docs, grad students, and faculty to the Berkshires for our annual retreat at the Cranwell resort. There were hours of symposia and sharing of research from all around the institute.

We submitted another poster this year telling everyone about all of the various techniques and instruments available. It is about 3x4 feet so the text in the image below may be somewhat hard to read.
Here's a link to download a higher quality pdf.

I had a lot of fun and learned a lot about some new and exciting research going on. I cannot reveal too much about it, but I heard speeches about cures being worked on for all sorts of diseases including to alzheimers, AIDS, and cancer. There are some really amazing things going on at this institute and I'm humbled to be a part of it.

Another highlight of the symposia was seeing some of my images and work in a few of the presentations. My colorized image of the bacteria infected intestine was used as a cover slide for one of the presentations. The paper related to this speech was accepted and will be published in Cell magazine. Cell is HUGE in the biology world so lets keep our fingers crossed. If this makes the cover it will really help the researcher involved and I'll get an acknowledgment in it as well. Either way, at least our lab will be acknowledged.

Finally, Massachusetts is beautiful this time of year. I saw tons of fall colors and leaves. This is a rare treat for me living in New York. The leaves here don't usually get much color outside of Central Park. They tend to go from green, to brown, and then fall off; even the maples don't get much color. Enjoy 'em if you got 'em!