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/explode 75% 75%
  • Other lab managering 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%

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%

Jessica Lacoste, BSc

PhD Student

Education: Dalhousie University (BSc)

Hometown: Thornhill, ON

Other activities: Taking pictures of Todd, running

  • Phenotyping pathogenic disease variants 74% 74%
  • Mastering high-content microscopy 25% 25%
  • Filling up hard drives 11% 11%

Dmitri Segal, BSc

PhD Student

Education: University of Western Ontario (BSc)

Hometown: Richmond Hill, ON

Other activities: Ice hockey 

  • Mapping the interactome of 14-3-3 proteins 85% 85%
  • Trying to find a better name for 14-3-3 proteins 20% 20%
  • Playing hockey with old men (Puckheads) 5% 5%

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%

Zoheyr Imrit, BSc

MSc student

Education: York University (BSc)

Hometown: Port-Louis, Mauritius

Other activities: Reading

  • Figuring out the PRR20A degron 71% 71%
  • Testing degraders 10% 10%
  • Training to become the next big rapper/Karaoke star 29% 29%

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%

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%

Jack Li, BSc

MSc 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%

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%

Sarit Radak

Undergraduate Project student

Education: University of Toronto (Undergraduate)

Hometown: New Providence, New Jersey, USA

Other activities: Giving campus tours, eating goldfish

  • Cloning ORFs from pathogens 54% 54%
  • Finding proteins that interact with cGAS and STING 40% 40%
  • Chugging LB media 16% 16%

Kaiden Thompson

Undergraduate student

Education: University of Toronto (Undergraduate)

Hometown: Indian Head, SK

Other activities: Cooking, reading, semi-successfully growing plants

  • Being a human midi-prep machine 70% 70%
  • Doing Michael’s bidding 11% 11%
  • Educating the lab on the existence of Saskatchewan 29% 29%

Cindy Zhou

Undergraduate student

Education: University of Toronto (Undergraduate)

Hometown: Shanghai, China

Other activities: Walking & trying different activities

  • Learning new lab techniques 70% 70%
  • Trying to kill cells with toxins 22% 22%
  • Memorizing where everything is supposed to be in the lab 18% 18%