I am a week away from labwork.
No PCR. No ligation. No cloning. No colony PCR to think about. Just to take a break from routine that had slowly become exhausting — at least for now hehe…
Oh, I have an announcement! We finally have a baby nephew! I decided to pay him a visit while I am in KL until next week. Cute little guy is now a month-old :)
From July 28 onward, I was glued to my phone, knowing that my supervisor, Dr Wee whatsapped me during my short escape to Genting Highlands…
“Mana awak?”
I couldn’t help but putting a nervous smile when I read to his message.
“Dr saya takde”
A simple and straight-forward reply because I assumed he was just checking up on me. No urgency indeed.
That tomorrow morning he sent me a link for S. oneidensis MR-1 mutant strain deposited in the University of Tuebingen, Germany.
My first thought it feels surreal to think that a project which started in our lab could now involve discussions that cross continents. The possbility of working with researchers from another country that I never imagined.
In our research group, we have made several attempts to establish international collaborations from India, China, Thailand and Japan. Well, many of those ended up halfway, maybe because the projects (which I assume) were not fully aligned to our research objectives at the time.
I remember on one occassion when my supervisor invited me to join Zoom meeting with UM and Dr Muammar from University of Tuebingen. The discussion was centered around my project. It was my first opportunity to explain my CRISPR/Cas9 work to Dr Muammar. We exchanged a few ideas and discussed the objectives of our projects. As far as I can recall, his work involved in pyrite minerals, which was quite interesting to me because my junior, Siti also worked on something similar last time. But the session wasn’t very that long because a spokeperson from UM wanted to arrange a more formal follow-up Zoom meeting with the UM Dean. So, we had to continue the discussion another time.
Research has a funny way of bringing people together. Different expertise, different perspectives, and different experiences often lead to better ideas than working alone. That’s what excites me the most about this collaboration for now—not just the science, but the opportunity to build networking from people beyond borders that could eventually support my future plan into postdoctoral research after PhD.
