Well that was interesting.
As I write this, the Langlais Lab will have been here at the UA COM-T for four and a half years and to me, the fact that we've been here for this long already, is hard to process. 2020 turned out to be pretty productive for us, in spite of it all. We had multiple lab shut-downs, some lab members were forced to flee home, others planned their next chapter after the Langlais Lab, and we even had a new member join us, Kaelie. I was able to submit a second and final attempt at renewing the CLASP2 NIH R01, a proposal that did so bad, the third reviewer logged three 7's, THREE SEVENS. When I was invited to participate in a NIH study section early in 2020, the hope was that I would get better at grant writing, instead, I got better at getting worse. Luckily, I am not alone, things are hard out here, a lot of colleagues are missing cuts as well. The CLASP2 R01 reviews were helpful though and I hope to change direction a bit as a result, mix it up, get out of my comfort zone.
So, we'll be losing Mac, she has accepted an offer from Utah to start her PhD in the Fall. DeHaven is finishing his Masters, he has multiple offers from schools for his PhD and he had to decide yesterday what to do. So, we will see if he ends up staying with us for his PhD or instead gives us the middle finger and heads on to greener pastures. Either way, DeHaven has been a solid and dedicated student and he has come a long way in the short time we have had him for his Masters degree.
We are hoping 2021 will be productive, with both grants and publications. Skylar and I are putting the finishing touches on a review article about microtubules and insulin, while DeHaven and I are trying to finish the CLASP2 phosphorylation paper. I've got a small grant in already and we will put in a few more before the end of the year.
As far as the Proteomics Lab goes, simply out of control, Austin worked through the pandemic with very little down time, resulting in more being done in 2020 as compared to 2019. We've had almost 70 Principal Investigators come through, and helped at least 80 trainees. This has resulted in collaborating on about 70 grants and of course, publications publications publications.
Beat it 2020.