On the day I started at UofL I was shown in to my new office and told that I was to be sharing with fellow new starter Prof Colin Willoughby for awhile whilst his office was renovated. Colin, as those who have met him will tell you, is a great guy and an amazingly good scientist;…
Read more Colin and ColXVII
Another semester, another fruitful batch of MRes students. This time Farhannah and Shane returned for another dose of punishment fun in team Hamill. Farhannah, working closely with PhD student Lee Troughton, generated a load of interesting and somewhat surprising data about LaNt a31 knockdown in corneal epithelial cells. Her talk today was thoroughly impressive; hilarious…
Read more They grow up so fast: MRes Spring 2016 edition
The last couple of days has been filled with fun and great science at the British Society of Matrix Biology meeting in Chester. Team Hamill members Valentina Iorio and Lee Troughton presented posters of their work that together make up a manuscript that is currently out for review. There was also a sizeable showing from…
Read more They grow up so fast – BSMB 2016 edition
I’m off to give a seminar at Cardiff Uni tomorrow so asked the team to assemble for the obligatory acknowledgements photo. No instructions were given. This picture with its interesting stances and expressions is completely unscripted but could equally be used to promote the GAPs next line of scientist apparel! left to right; Lee Troughton,…
Read more Early 2016 team photo
I am approaching the three year anniversary of taking up my position as a lecturer at Liverpool and with each passing week the pressure to publish grows more and more. The current manuscript is taking shape nicely and all being well it will be out for review by the end of the month. The story…
Read more Publish or perish?
It’s been a busy and fun few months for the Hamill lab in terms of MRes projects…. Here are some photos from their poster day today. Side by side looking at the diverse projects they pursued and the data they generated makes me realise just how much got done in the 10 weeks they were…
Read more They grow up so fast – MRes Jan’16 edition
Not mine. That’s a thing I have dealt with a long time ago and I fully embrace upsidedown head status. Nope, I’m talking about my wife’s. The past 4 months have been harder than most. My wife, Hilary, was diagnosed with breast cancer in September and I have been wanting to write something like this…
Read more Coping with hair loss
It’s finally here. The Department of Eye and Vision Science and the rest of the Institute of Ageing and Chronic disease have begun moving into their new home, the brand new, custom designed, Apex II building. Our labs have been boxed up and shifted across the road. With the new building comes new working practices,…
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At the beginning of August Dr Valentina Barrera (@Barrera_LVP) joined my team to work on the BBSRC funded project into the LaNt proteins and their roles in basement membrane formation. Valentina comes to me with a postdoctoral background in vascular biology including malarial retinopathy research following on from her PhD studies into the immune response to malarial…
Read more Doubling up on Valentinas
SInce starting in EVS I have established a student journal club. Initially this was purely as a way to critically evaluate one new publication per week as chosen by the students. The goal was, by being hypercrtical of other, published, work, the students’ own experimental design and figure presentation would improve. Since then, its evolved…
Read more Journal club – season 4 champion