Nora defended her MSc thesis, “Intraspecies Antagonistic Interactions Driven by the Type VI Secretion System in Vibrio cholerae,” from the comfort of her own home. As the defence was remotely done in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, people from all around the world attended her public seminar. This was a nice surprise, and replaced the fact she was unable to bake her science-themed cookies she would have shared during an in-person defence.
Congrats, Nora!
Nora’s defence seminar via Zoom.
Our morning defence resulted in a MSc degree by lunchtime. Congrats on your successful thesis defence on “Bacterial Taxonomy in the Genomic Era”, Kevin!
Yann introducing Kevin before his seminar.
Yann and Rebecca held a farewell party before they headed off on sabbaticals at the National University of Singapore and the Nanyang Technological University, respectively. Both labs got together for a group photo, including Fabini, who is currently doing a postdoc with a different group at the University of Alberta and completed his PhD under Yann, and Tania, who defended her PhD thesis last week.
Good luck in Singapore, we are excited to be updated on your sabbatical journey!
The last Boucher and Case lab group photo for a while. Missing: Catherine Bannon, one of Rebecca’s students, defended her Master’s degree the same day and was unable to attend the farewell party.
Tania started her PhD journey in September 2012, and successfully defended her thesis work, “Quantitative evaluation of environmental Vibrio cholerae population dynamics over temporal and spatial scales” today. She will now be working as a Research Associate in Dr. Nicholas Ashbolt’s lab (Department of Public Health) here at the University of Alberta. Congrats, Tania!
Fabini, who joined the Boucher lab in September 2012, has successfully defended his PhD thesis, entitled "Taxonomy of bacteria in the genomic era." After publishing 11 authored and co-authored papers (plus 4 more in the pipeline), he is off to be a Postdoc in the labs of Dr. Dominic Sauvageau (Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering) and Dr. Lisa Stein (Department of Biological Sciences) at the University of Alberta. Congrats, Fabini!
After almost five years to the day, Paul successfully defended his thesis "Population dynamics of Vibrio cholerae and its close relative Vibrio metoecus in an aquatic ecosystem" and is now just a few thesis edits away from officially becoming a doctor! Paul was Yan's first grad student and is moving on to do a postdoc in the lab of Dr. Howard Ochman at the University of Texas at Austin. For the time being, he will still remain in Edmonton over the summer to wrap up various projects from his Ph.D.
Congrats Paul!
Yan's promotion from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor officially takes effect today. The entire Boucher Lab is proud of you Yan. Kudos!
Go Yan!
To celebrate lab members passing their candidacy exams and to welcome the new graduate students, Yan and Rebecca hosted a joint Boucher-Case lab barbecue party. Friends and family joined to celebrate as well.
Paul, Fabini, Tania, and Anna (of the Case Lab) are now official Ph.D. candidates after recently passing their candidacy exams. Tareq is the new Ph.D. student of the Boucher Lab. For the Case Lab, Yue just started his M.Sc. this month, and Albert will commence his Ph.D. in January.
Lab party!
Happy New Year! What a great start of the year for the Boucher Lab.
Yan's research is featured in the 14th edition of the Brock Biology of Microorganisms (chapter 12, p. 347), with an electron microscopy picture contribution by Paul. To Paul's horror, the picture is attributed to...
Congratulations Yan and PHIL!
Brock Biology of Microorganisms 14th edition cover (by Pearson Education, Inc., 2015)
With a bit of delay, Paul passes his Master's thesis defense in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Graz, Austria. His thesis title is "Evolutionary histories of Lake Tanganyika cichlids differ between habitats: phylogenetic evidence from two deepwater tribes." He now has two Master's degrees (the other in Molecular Microbiology, also from the University of Graz).
Better late than never. Congratulations!
