Month 2

‘We have work to do’ – Saruman, The Fellowship of the Ring

With most of the health and safety courses and lab tours out of the way and the two interns and technician started, it felt like it was about time to make some moves. I discussed with two former employers if I could take some of my former samples from their freezers along to my new institute and they were willing to help me out with this. Also, through some emailing I managed to locate a number of samples previously generated at my institute from a lab that had left (as did all but one of its members). After quite a bit of delay (right when I needed him the person I needed for this was on holiday), I am also finally able to order things (reagents etc.) for my group. With these ‘starting materials’ I at least managed to get my technician to set up some workflows that will hopefully benefit current as well as future projects.

A slightly bigger investment (a GPU workstation for the computational work in the lab) took quite a bit more effort in spite of me having negotiated to have this included in my startup package. The computational interns seem to be quite eager for this since the central high performance computing facility is rather busy with other users (and to be honest the performance is not as high as the name suggests in this case). I got quotes from four different suppliers and settled on a favourite one. The investment has now been approved from higher up so hopefully we can formalize the order for this soon(ish).

In the meantime, I another rejection from a grant pre-proposal I submitted previously (no explanation why), while I am still waiting for the third (this one was actually a full proposal so a bit more effort went in, fingers X-ed). This motivated me to push a bit harder for the HFSP collaborative proposal with my US-based partner, which was in the end also neatly submitted a day before the deadline.

Likely, this contributed to what I have to admit is a bit more stress than I expected. Having done about 7 years of postdoc as well as a PhD, I am no stranger to work-related stress, but somehow this still caught me a bit by surprise. Perhaps it is also the combination with a commute that depends on the whiffs of our national railway system. I am trying some breathing exercises and to rush a bit less during the commute (even if that means having to catch the next train), let’s hope this will help.

An incident that was more comical than stressful happened after a Friday drinks that was organized to celebrate the finalization of an internship in a neighbouring lab in the institute. The drinks themselves were nice but not eventful. However, as I was waiting for the train afterwards, I got a phone call from one of my interns if I might have accidentally taken the wrong backpack. I was rather discombobulated since it looked exactly like mine from outside, but still I quickly checked inside, while the whistle blew signalling the train doors were about to close. Shit. Not mine. Next my intern told me whose backpack it was… no less than the head of my department (who was also at the drinks, as this intern was from her lab). Double shit. No choice but to run back to my bike, cycle back to the bar where the drinks were hosted and swap back the correct backpack, panting from the bike ride. Turns out we both got the same backpack from the Christmas market at a shared former employer. Thankfully she didn’t appear like she was about to leave and we all had a good laugh about it.

I was also added to an online meeting of group leaders about our national research infrastructure for one of the techniques my lab uses. While I always had some vague understanding that such meetings took place, it is still quite different to actually be invited and take part in it. While I didn’t contribute anything this time beyond introducing myself briefly, it was still useful to hear about the current state of this infrastructure and also nice to see some familiar faces including former colleagues as well as my PhD supervisor.

At the end of this month, I joined a 1.5-day symposium by a society of a field I am new to, but I plan to take my research in this direction so it seemed like a good way to get to know this field and learn about the latest science. It indeed turned out to be an excellent networking opportunity and I met several people that I previously only had had email contact with face to face. The ‘highlight’ of this meeting was the dinner and subsequent drinks at a beach restaurant/bar. I made some PhD students from my institute wait as I thought I had lost my coat (which turned out to be right where I put it up in the luggage room), resulting in us having to walk through a hail storm to get there (it only started just after we left). The other head of my department turned out to be the king of the dance floor, which I definitely did not have on my bingo card for him. Also, I watched from across the room how the hair of one of the PhD students from my institute caught fire from a candle, to which her conversation partners thankfully reacted very rapidly and thoroughly. Cue the lame ‘on fire’ joke.

Finally, I have been spending my evening hours building a lab website in stealth mode. While it is not quite ready for launch, I feel like we are getting close, so hopefully I can share it with you in the next update! I promised this one would be shorter than the previous blog, so catch y’all on the flip side!!