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The New Haven Lawn Club -
MSI faculty member Jun Liu -
MSI Retreat 2022 -
Colleagues catch up over breakfast -
Graduate student Catherine Shipps hosts a quizz -
MSI faculty member Eduardo Groisman -
Lunchtime -
MSI poster session -
Talking science -
Colleagues discuss the latest microbial science
Yale’s Microbial Sciences Institute (MSI) held its annual retreat April 29, 2022 – the first such in-person event since 2019. The gathering at the New Haven Lawn Club brought together the 60 or more members of the MSI in a day of shared research and friendship.
“We are so fortunate that the same organizing committee members were able to come back together and finish what we started,” said graduate student Catherine Shipps, one of a group of organizers of the postponed spring 2020 event.
“We are just so happy to be with all our friends again,” she said. Other organizing committee members were Lillian Smith, Jun Liu, Aimilia Krypotou, Yekaterina Kovalyova, Andrew Verdegaal, Jean Vila, and Donghyun Park.
Introducing the event, MSI Director Andrew Goodman set the context for the day - not just as a valued forum for sharing research but for learning about the personal narratives that brought colleagues to the multidisciplinary field of microbial science.
This diversity of scholarship and connection played out throughout the day, with formal research presentations held in the Lawn Club’s stylish ballroom interwoven with fun (and games), and at lively poster sessions showcasing projects the length and breadth of microbial life – the dominant form of life on earth – and its relevance to health science.
Befitting on a day of reconnection, keynote speaker for the 2022 MSI retreat was Daniel Segrè, Professor of Biology, Bioinformatics, and Biomedical Engineering at Boston University, who kept his invitation made two years prior to inspire the MSI audience about microbes at the ecological, and global, community level.
Words and photographs: Jon Atherton