The summer was a time for visitors in the lab. This year we had what has now become a usual crop of sixth form students which helped us with the analysis of the movies. This was part of a scheme, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, which enables young students with an interest in Science to do some lab work. We are always pleased to engage with these young people and this year was not an exception. In the same spirit, we enjoyed the visit of Peter Baillie Johnson , an undergraduate from Cambridge who is now taking part II Genetics. He worked on the loss of pluripotency by ES cells and created the seeds for further projects which he might pursue himself.
We also had the visit of Florian Bonkhofer from the University of Heidelberg (Germany) who did a long stage in the lab. He worked with David Turner on certain aspects of the differentiation of ES cells into a primitive streak like fate. A few days ago, he left to complete his degree in Germany but left behind some interesting results. We shall miss Florian.
At the beginning of November we welcome Susanne van der Brink, an Erasmus student from the University of Utrecht (The Netherlands). She has picked up where Florian left and we al look forward to the development of the project.