Back from Hiatus

After a long break this blog is back in action. In the last posts I covered the celebration of the new molecular laboratory and the start of the works on the second part. Since then there was a long summer. I traveled to the UK (Oxford), US (Boston), Japan (Tokyo, Kyoto, and many other places). I was back to Israel for few days and then off to Austria, and then back again and off to Egypt, and then the Jewish High Holidays arrived.

While I was traveling many other group members were also traveling (some for longer and some for shorter periods), and so action at the lab was a stop-and-go process. Nonetheless, a lot has happened during the last three months, and I will try to summarize by quick snapshots, most of them taken by Assaf and Avital.

The renovation started with a fierce burst of rebuilding walls.

At the lab about that time we finally got proper chairs.

Following the drywall people, the systems people moved in to install electricity, pipes, and A/C.

In the working lab things kept improving. A new cabinet arrived. This required moving out the temporary ones, and covering all equipment again dust.

Some people tried to continue working in spite of the harsh environment.

At this point we (i.e., Ayelet) realized that the office next to the robotic room will be very small, and to make it less claustrophobic we asked the builders to open a window into the robotic room. This changed the perspective of the room quit a bit.

All the while the lab was teeming with activity, with many new faces such as Jenia, Eli, and Alon who came for the summer.

The main work was done and now we got into finishing the systems. The electricity board for the new section arrived, followed by the control board for the A/C. Each was tended to by a team of technician for more than a day.

The main issue at this point with the lab was the set up of the robotic room.

We worried allot about different options, and at some point decided to setup a mock-up to check whether the diagrams match reallity. We took a tape and marked the different parts on the floor.

 This led to arguments, rethinking, and eventually we settled on a plan, and ordered the furniture.

Few days later we learned that the UPS has finally arrived. We found several large cabinets, and a stack of batteries that was almost as tall as Naomi.