What’s Happening Around the Lab?

Sternberg Lab holiday party

Dec. 20, 2018

We held our year-end holiday party together with Laura Landweber’s lab and other members of Hammer 9, with delicious food catered by Floridita, a fantastic Cuban restaurant down the block. Maroon seems to be the theme color of the lab… can you tell?

Tyler and Leo take on CSHL

Aug. 24, 2018

Tyler and Leo attended the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s meeting on CRISPR-Cas and Genome Engineering, which included meeting their academic grandmother, Jennifer Doudna!

Lab-warming party

July 13, 2018

At long last, we celebrated the ‘opening’ of the Sternberg Lab at Columbia University. We’ve come a long way since February – from one member to six, from an empty lab to one filled to the brim (and more) – but we still have so much more to do. Still a good time to take a breather and invite friends and colleagues to party. (Oh, and the flyer was of course inspired by the movie Rampage…)

CRISPR Meeting

June 20, 2018

Sanne and Sam attended the annual CRISPR meeting (dating back to 2008), held this year in Vilnius, Lithuania. What a conference! Great science, great socializing, great locale. Our research from our time at Caribou Biosciences was expertly presented by Paul Donohoue, and we had a chance to catch up with old friends and make new ones. (Can you find us in the picture?)

Lab Outing to the Yankees game

June 12, 2018

The lab grows to four, then five! Tyler joined the lab as the first PhD student, and Marcus joined as the first undergrad. We celebrated during a lab outing to see the Yankees stomp the Nationals, joined by the Landweber lab, with whom we’ve been having joint group meetings.

May the 4th be with you

May 4, 2018

‘May the 4th be with you’ was a busy one… in addition to some lab experimental firsts and surplus equipment scavenging from the Maniatas lab, plus a visit from friend and colleague Mitch O’Connell, we had a lab outing to go see CRISPR-based action movie Rampage (source of quote) in the theater!

Sanne’s acceptance

April 15, 2018

It’s official – Sanne will start in the fall as a PhD student in the Integrated Program at Columbia University Medical Center (http://columbiaphd.org/).

Lab Grows to Three

April 13, 2018

The lab grows to three! Leo Vo, a first-year PhD student in the Pharmacology & Molecular Signaling program, joins the lab for a rotation. He’ll be instrumental in getting the lab’s mammalian cell culture experiments off the ground.

First Publication

April 1, 2018

No fooling - the lab publishes its first article! This one’s just a review, but we were happy to contribute to the nascent CRISPR Journal and summarize the state of the field, both CRISPR–Cas biology and CRISPR-based technology development. It's open access, so please take a look here.

Sanne Klompe Joins the Lab!

March 7, 2018

The lab grows to two! Sanne Klompe joins the lab as a research technician after having recently completed her Master’s Thesis in the Netherlands at the University of Wageningen. Before that, she and Sam worked on CRISPR technology development at Caribou Biosciences, together with former colleague Peter Cameron. Her arrival was celebrated with a group lunch, some lab ordering, meeting/journal club planning, and pizza and beer.

Keystone Meeting in Santa Fe

Feb. 12, 2018

Sam attends the Keystone Meeting on Mobile Genetic Elements and Genome Plasticity in Santa Fe, NM. Highlights included a hike alongside some local pueblos, catching up with old friends while making new ones (e.g. Mitch O’Connell, University of Rochester, and Orsolya Barabas, EMBL, pictured), and of course some fantastic science. Having recently read Barbara McClintock’s biography, the laser pointer–McClintock corn cob contraption for speakers was a fun surprise.

Grand Opening!

Feb. 1, 2018

The Sternberg Lab opens! We’ll be in temporary space on the 9th floor of Hammer for about a year, sharing a large laboratory with the Ivanov, Liu, and Arpaia labs, before moving into our permanent space on the 7th floor, where we’ll be neighbors with the labs of Laura Landweber and Laura Johnston.

Depapartue

Jan. 16, 2018

Sam says a bittersweet goodbye to the Bay Area, shipping his belongings, and embarking upon a cross-country road trip that takes him through Death Valley, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Big Bend, Austin, Little Rock, Memphis, Nashville, Charleston, Lancaster, and more, before finally arriving in New York City!