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Wrapping up six years working in @russellevance ’s lab- most of it on this bench. Hard to say goodbye, but excited to move forward.
But before I go, one funny story. For those who don’t know, when he started at Berkeley, Russell took over Jim Allison’s former lab space. And much of the original CTLA-4 work was apparently completed on the bench I would eventually inherit.
During my second year in lab, I was struggling to get any traction into understanding the mechanism of NLRP1 activation. So with the Nobel prize announcements coming up Russell decided the best way to motivate me was to tell me the history about Jim’s work on the bench.
And how he thought Jim would likely win the prize. But also (jokingly), that I should hang a chalkboard labeled “days since Nobel prize winning work completed here” on the bench, so that every day I could come in and add a checkmark to note my progress.
Well a few years later Jim would win the prize and we’d eventually crack NLRP1, and now it’s time for me to move on - but before I had one thing left to do:
It’s been 711 days since a Nobel Prize was awarded for work on that bench - and since I doubt I’ve made that much progress whoever’s up next for the bench has their work cut out for them! Thanks for all the great time Russell!
