I have officially accepted the first three students into my lab! It's an extremely exciting time as we get to know each other, work to set up the lab, and get protocols approved. We can't wait to get started on preliminary research, which is hopefully right around the corner!
The Caesar Lab's First Selfie! Dr. Caesar, Lexie, Ashley, and Elijah standing outside the Phys/Chem building on their first day of research together.
It's been about a month since I've started my position at JMU and it has been a whirlwind! I've been overwhelmed, overjoyed, anxious, excited, and everything in between. Lab set up has felt slow (I've never set up a lab before), but it has been amazing to start to get to know my very first group of research students and have the extra hands to help in lab. The flash chromatography system and the HPLC are set up and ready for separations. The freezer is chilled and the first set of extracts has been safely stored inside. The biosafety hood has been disconnected from its previous home and is on its way to the Caesar lab. Everything is unboxed and organized. The unexpected challenge was the rotovap, which is officially almost functioning after the condenser fell off and shattered during set up (it's not a lab until something breaks, right?).
Posing by our HPLC. This instrument is a beauty! In the hopefully not-too-distant future, we will be using this Agilent 1290 prep HPLC to purify compounds from antifungal bacteria, unexplored fungal species, and traditional botanical medicines.
While our biosafety protocols haven't been approved yet, we've been working on finishing up Biosafety trainings, reading lots of papers, and preparing microbial samples for mass spectrometry analysis. We've even initiated a collaboration with the Arboretum on campus, and are working to schedule our first field collection trip this semester. I cannot wait to get into the swing of things, just reminding myself that patience is key. Sometimes it helps to look back at how far you've come, and I am feeling very lucky.
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