The life of a PhD student is really varying. Some days we eat, sleep, autoclave, repeat, while on other days we write papers, analyze data, guide students, etc. The senior generation of PhD students told us, junior PhD’s, about the benefits of going to conferences, doing teambuilding activities and lab retreats, afterwork activities, live meetings …
Category Archives: Blog
The story behind Latilactobacillus fragifolii, a new bacterial species isolated in our lab.
A new bacterial species? Well, new to us, as it was never ‘seen’ or described by humans before. For me, there is a very personal story attached to this new species. It started in 2017. I moved to central Portugal together with a friend. A place where time moves at a slower pace. We moved …
Starting the sisterhood on vaginal health: now in Peru
Introducing Laura Almost a year ago, I wrote a blog about vaginal microbiomes and ethnicity. As a Isala team member, born and raised in Peru, I am now super excited that, thanks to the global minds starting grant, we could now extend Isala to Peru, where “Isala” becomes “Laura”, named after Esther Rodríguez Dulanto (1872-1919), …
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Trans-Atlantic mentoring in NSURP 2021
Another pandemic-summer that wreaked havoc on opportunities of young scientists to not only enrich their learning but also provide real-world experience that enables them to put everything they have learned into action. Since many research institutions cancelled formal summer research experience programs, we were very excited to see that NSURP came back this year. “NSURP …
Eat, sleep, autoclave, repeat…
For several months now, my university is in code red due to the high cases of corona infections and deaths. In case you would have missed it, we’re in a global pandemic and that poses challenges for everyone. Code red means that theoretical courses cannot take place on campus and all students are following online …
Lactobacilli and Bioengineers, a relationship under tension
My last semester as a master student ‘Cellular and Genetic engineering’ has recently started. At this moment of my study, I have had countless lectures about how we scientists can genetically alter micro-organisms to not only study them and try to understand them, but also to implement them in all kinds of sustainable applications. Thus, …
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