Bubbles away - Moran's sendoff party

As you might recall, Moran is trying to finish her PHD soon. In fact, she already got plane tickets to Boston. This week she had two causes for celebration. First, she handed in her dissertation. Yay!

Second, we had a sendoff party. Its a bit early, but since it was the only time when all the relevant people are in Israel,  she had it today.

Moran, being Moran, organized a party with all the lab alumni that overlapped with her and are still in Israel. She and Liron (her husband) organized activities to match the festivities.

And so we found ourselves on the lawn of the university, on the late afternoon of a relatively hot day blowing huge bubbles. Everyone had tons of fun, and we attracted a lot of attention from the passing students.

It was impressive to see the large number of people that were related to the lab at some point in the last few years. 

Ofer

Avital

Merav & Avital

Michal C. & Alon

Jenia

Assaf

Michal R.

Inbar (hiding beyond her camera)

Ruty

Ido

It was even more impressive to see the large number of children at various ages.

Oren & Liron (Moran's family)

Daniela & Ariel (Naomi's)

Oren, back in the action

Naomi, Ariel & Daniela

Marek & daughter

Tal showing off the latest acquisition

Cecile

Michal (Matan's) checking the food

Matan, preparing Michal for the circus

Tal, Amit, and Shachr (Inbar's)

Maya (Matan's)

Each of us brought something to eat and drink, and so we had a nice selection. 

Moran, who is known for her cooking/baking passion, outdid everyone with a fancy desert.

Thankfully, the official speech ceremony was short [I think I was ok ;-)]

Moran, ready for battle!
Ayelet in the background

Before breaking up the party, we managed to get a group picture together.

Dan David Prize

The last two days were a celebration of the Dan David Prize. This is a prize donated by the late Dan David and hosted by Tel Aviv university. The main prize is very large, and every year is given in three areas representing the past, the present and the future. This year the future looking subject was "genome research" an area close to us. The winners were David Botstein, Eric Lander, and Craig Venter. All three were main players in the sequencing of the human genome, but did much more before and after this milestone.

From the left: Craig Venter, Eric Lander, David Botstein, TAU rector, Lady Gilbert, Smadar Fisher.

One of the nice aspects of the Dan David prize, is that each winner "donates" 10% of the prize to fellowships that are awarded to graduate students in the same field. Both Moran and Michal were selected as recipients of the graduare student prize work in the genomre research catagory. In total 5 Tel Aviv students and 5 international students were awarded. Thus out of the 5 non-TAU winners, two were related to our group.

Michal getting a hug from Eric

Moran posing for a formal photo

To add to the story, Moran and Michal were of the same year in undergradute studies here in our Computational Biology program, and are good friends. Moran continued to do her MSc with me, while Michal did her MSc at the Weizmann. Moran continued to her PhD studies with me, but during the course of a collaboration with Aviv Regev at the Broad, she became co-advised by Aviv. More or less at the same time Michal started her PhD studies in MIT, and after a year of rotations elected to study with Aviv. I became involved with Michal's research through a collaboration. Since then Michal spent several long visits in our group and is now an integrated part of our lab.

The two prize winners

Picture with the two advisors 

And so, both Moran and Michal were awarded the Dan David graduate prize by Eric Lander the head of the Broad Institute, where they both do research.

Moran's PHD talk

Today Moran gave her PHD progress talk. This an occasion to celebrate the impressive achievements she made during her time here. (We have few more months until the official farewell, but why skip a chance to celebrate?)

The Comeback + Visitors

About three months ago Moran went off on a maternity leave. Today was the official first step on returning to academic work. To make the transition easier she was accompanied by her family. We got a chance to meet the family and the joy young ones bring.