Another exciting year comes to its end – A recap of 2022 in the Bally Lab
As the end of the year is approaching, we would like to take a look back at the past 12 months. A lot has happened. In the first half of the year, we were lucky to have two excellent students visiting our lab – Julius and Damien. Julius worked together with Dario and at the end of his stay had 2 weeks of overlap with Damien who arrived in April. Damien worked together with Konrad and Lifeng. His work will contribute to Lifeng´s upcoming paper, while Julius’s data will likely be used in Dario’s publication.
At the end of June Sarah joined our lab as new postdoc with expertise in atomic- force microscopy (AFM). She arrived just on time for our new AFM. Since the first training, Fouzia, Sarah and Konrad are happily using Nina (this is how the AFM is called internally). As our lab is focussed on biophysical methods, Lifeng, a trained virologist, was quite alone amongst engineers, physicists, and chemists. In October he finally got re-enforcement with Gosia, who is an experienced virologist herself and has already proven to be an excellent addition to our lab. Sadly, December is the last month for Yara in our group. Since she left Umeå last year, she has been working remotely, helping the lab with her expertise in data analysis and being a great addition in several projects.
Regarding publications we are also very happy with 2022. We mostly would like to highlight here the paper of Yara and Lifeng published is Viruses: Cellular Chondroitin Sulfate and the Mucin-like Domain of Viral Glycoprotein C Promote Diffusion of Herpes Simplex Virus 1 While Heparan Sulfate Restricts Mobility. If you haven´t yet, please check it out as it gives a representative view on the work in our lab.
With the relaxation of the Covid-19 pandemic, we were able again to participate to more in-person conferences and meetings. As diverse as our group is, so diverse were the topics. Dario and Hudson went to the Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on biological interfaces. In the end of August the majority of our lab went to Smögen for the yearly meeting of the Swedish Society of Virology. In September Kerstin represented us and our methods at the 17th Conference on Methods and Applications in Fluorescence in Gothenburg. Locally we joined the TRC day with posters and talks. In addition, Marta was invited to two conferences which had been postponed due to the pandemic – The FEBS event Biological Surfaces and Interfaces and the GRC on Biological Sensors.
On a more personal level we are very happy that this year Lifeng´s daughter Ryen and Marta and Hudson´s son Benjamin saw the light and joined and enriched their families.
With all of that, we are looking forward to 2023, which will start with an important conference for our group – the Gordon research conference on physical virology.