One of our revered senior faculty members is retiring, and a research symposium has been organized in his honor. It's quite wonderful to see how many former undergraduates have returned for the occasion, in addition to ex-postdocs and collaborators. It's especially great to hear that this grant-getting machine (not just by SLAC standards) was also a beloved mentor to so many - something that was not said of my own brilliant postdoc advisor on retirement!
For me, the highlight of the past few days was a talent show with singing, dancing, and comedy routines, my favorite of which was a talk on the important discoveries our colleague had made in "Evolutionary Confectionary Biology." The speaker used a variety of commercial candies (Muetmu ordinalis, Almondus jocularis, etc) to illustrate sexual dimorphism, trade-offs, Mendelian genetics, etc. Hilarious! I bet that his undergraduates love him if he puts that kind of creativity and humor into his lectures. Hmm. Maybe I should be taking something away from this.
MAD, We Hardly Knew Ye…
7 years ago
