Mikko Taipale, PhD

The Glorious Leader, capo di tutti capi

Education: University of Oulu (MSc), EMBL Heidelberg (PhD), Whitehead Institute (Postdoc)

Hometown: Helsinki, Finland

Other activities: Working from home

  • Doing things that PIs do (not experiments) 97% 97%
  • Doing experiments (ideally) 12% 12%
  • Doing experiments (actually) 1% 1%

Mandy Lam, PhD

Senior Research Associate, Lab Manager

Education: University of Toronto (BSc, PhD)

Hometown: Mississauga, ON

Other activities: Managereering the next feline social media star

  • Ensuring the lab doesn’t spontaneously implode 75% 75%
  • Other lab managering activities 25% 25%
  • Trying to NOT kill Mikko’s plants 10% 10%

Juline Poirson, PhD

Research Associate

Education: University of Strasbourg (MSc, PhD)

Hometown: Isle-Aubigny, France

Other activities: Climbing, running, drawing, taming cats

  • Forcing proteins to interact with each other 60% 60%
  • Finding new ubiquitin ligases 30% 30%
  • Sorting many many many cells 20% 20%

Chris Mogg, MSc

Technician

Education: Carleton University (MSc)

Hometown: Ottawa, ON

Other activities:

  • Making sure things are where they are supposed to be 55% 55%
  • Fixing broken equipment 40% 40%
  • Ordering 15% 15%

Tanisha Teelucksingh, MSc

Technician

Education: University of Guelph (MSc)

Hometown: Brampton, ON

Other activities: Aerial fitness, crocheting and taking too many photos of my cats.

  • High throughput profiling of pathogenic disease variants 63% 63%
  • Brushing up on my microscopy skills 33% 33%
  • Collecting all the pink coloured items in the lab 14% 14%

He Leng, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow

Education: Heilongjiang University (BSc, MSc), Peking University (PhD)

Hometown: Harbin, China

Other activities: Ping-pong and badminton

  • Characterizing TFs/COFs interactions 63% 63%
  • Designing superactivators in human cells 27% 27%
  • Beating Dmitri at squash with only a ping-pong paddle 20% 20%

Hanna Cho, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow

Education: POSTECH (MSc), Korea University (PhD)

Hometown: Seoul, Korea

Other activities: Walking

  • Inducing proximity to oncogenic proteins 64% 64%
  • Finding novel small molecules 23% 23%
  • Learning French…but only as high as her elevator goes 23% 23%

Jason Q. Tang, BSc

PhD Student

Education: University of Toronto (HBSc)

Hometown: Shanghai, China (but really Scarborough, ON)

Other activities: Thinking of startup ideas, smashing shuttlecocks, fishing, eating food

  • Getting proteins to engineer themselves 71% 71%
  • Thinking novel ways to use engineered proteins 25% 25%
  • Undercover Angers Lab spy – please don’t tell them 14% 14%

Michael Ostrovski, BSc

PhD Student

Education: University of Tel Aviv (BSc, computer science), University of Toronto (BSc, molecular genetics)

Hometown: Toronto, ON

Other activities: Bouldering, camping, moving stuff at the gym

  • Taming dCas12 68% 68%
  • Thinking about naked mole rats 26% 26%
  • Splitting his time between the Moffat and Taipale labs 16% 16%

Jack Li, BSc

PhD student

Education: University of Toronto (BSc)

Hometown: Beijing, China

Other activities: Playing first person shooter games

  • Taming dCas13 67% 67%
  • Drinking up all the luciferase reagents 14% 14%
  • Climbing the two flights of stairs between Blencowe and Taipale labs 29% 29%

Chloe Reno, BSc

PhD student

Education: York University (BSc)

Hometown: Seattle, Washington

Other activities: Long walks

  • More phenotyping of rare diseases (ideally) 54% 54%
  • Cloning her days away 40% 40%
  • Battling robots 16% 16%

Elizabeth Mei, BSc

MSc Student

Education:University of Toronto (BSc)

Hometown: Toronto, ON

Other activities: Birdwatching, baking, drawing bees for kids at the ROM

  • Quickly killing cells with toxins 80% 80%
  • Slowly killing cells with toxins 28% 28%
  • Finding family-friendly synonyms for “toxin” 2% 2%

Travis Tribble, BSc

MSc student

Education: University of Western Ontario (BSc)

Hometown: London (no, not that one), ON

Other activities: Almost beating Dmitri in squash, listening to music and podcasts, actively trying not to kill my plants 

  • Cloning Libraries 48% 48%
  • Figuring out why my clones are the wrong clones 49% 49%
  • Reading about Viruses!!! (And listening to TWiV) 13% 13%

Francis Lefebvre, BSc

MSc student

Education: University of Montreal (BSc)

Hometown: Chandler, QC

Other activities: Reggaeton, hockey, hunting

  • Inducing proximity to rescue PTEN dysfunction 65% 65%
  • Scheming to translate academic science to therapies 37% 37%
  • Beating Travis at squash (in the near future) (hopefully) 8% 8%

Kevin Yuan

Undergraduate student

Education: University of Toronto (BSc)

Hometown: Vaughan, ON

Other activities: Going to the gym, listening to music, playing the bass

  • Learning new techniques 70% 70%
  • Mulling over career options 32% 32%
  • Figuring out how to cook for myself 8% 8%

Tisha Parikh, BSc

Undergraduate student

Education: McMaster University (HBSc)

Hometown: Brampton, ON

Other activities: Hiking, drawing, reading 

  • Cloning to create expression vectors used in induced proximity experiments 40% 40%
  • Creating viruses and optimizing assays to measure the efficacy of said clones 57% 57%
  • Holding my breath every time I check my cells 13% 13%