Since March we have welcomed two new masters students - Mara Esposito and Namitha Putananickal.  They are both studying MACROPHAGES!!!!!!! Mara is investigating pulmonary macrophage heterogeneity following mycobacteria infection and Namitha is studying how monoclonal antibodies to surface antigens on Mtb differential impact bacterial uptake and growth in alveolar versus bone marrow derived macrophages.  Macrophages = new territory for the lab and we are learning a lot.

Clemens was awarded a competitive Marie Skłodowska-Curie award to study humoral immunity during BCG vaccination in humans and mice and is already well underway with the IMCB lab's team #tuberculosis. 

Most importantly, we are all healthy and relatively happy (I think!). I'm super grateful to my team for making the IMCB lab the brilliant place it's meant to be - I couldn't have asked for a better group of people to 'science' with.

• February 2020 - Nivedya and David's paper on tissue resident CD4 T cells went online (biorxiv link)
• March 2020 - lockdown begins; Marco and David's paper was published (Science Immunology link)
• July 2020 - Clemens Hermann joined the lab as a senior postdoc - B cells, antibodies and mycobacteria!!
• August 2020 - Marco's paper on TCR signal strength and viral infection went online (biorxiv link)
• September 2020 - IMCB lab received additional support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)
• October 2020 - Marco defended his thesis and is a Dr.!!!; Ludivine gave birth to baby Eleni!
• November 2020 - Sanketh joined the lab as a PhD student; Marco received a SNSF postdoctoral fellowship
• December 2020 - We said goodbye to Marco who is heading to the Masopust lab in Minneapolis for a postdoc