Episode CLXIX: Thanksgiving in Houston

For Thanksgiving, The Norris Family traveled to Houston, just for the fun of it.

[Rice University, Houston]

We stayed in an airbnb downtown, an old Victorian house with a lot of charm. Here we are eating turkey jerky in honor of Thanksgiving.

We visited some art museums downtown, and I have to say that Elliot is a really good museum baby. In fact he behaves better at museums than he does at restaurants or at church!

We visited the Houston Space Center. Here's a picture I thought was funny. Elliot was mildly amused by the ginormous Saturn V rocket on display, but REALLY EXCITED TO HAVE SUCH A LONG ROAD TO DRIVE HIS TOY CAR ON!

We visited the George H.W. Bush presidential library, and taught him to say "Hi George" every time he saw George.

Also made our way down to Galveston, for Elliot's first time in the Gulf of Mexico. He loved it (the sand, that is).

 Fun was had by all. And then the trip was over and we were exhausted.

Episode CLXVIII: Surprisingly Successful Summer for the Norris Lab

This summer was the second summer for The Norris Lab at SMU, and it was full of good news. There were three main things:

1. Paper

The main "output" of a basic biology research lab is journal publications. We were therefore excited to publish our first major lab paper this summer in the journal eLife, which is a fairly prestigious journal.

This was exciting because it was the first paper consisting mostly of work done in The Norris Lab, and the first with me as the "senior author."

A small news article, intended for a non-scientific audience, was written about the study. Take a look at it here if you're interested.

2. Funding

In order keep the research funded and papers published, it's necessary to obtain funding for the lab in the form of grants. In my field that usually means grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Competition for NIH grants is fierce, so I kept my goals modest. My work on worms is fairly cheap, so we wouldn't need a "big" NIH grant, but could survive on a medium-sized NIH grant.

Well this summer we got word that we'll likely be receiving not one, but TWO BIG NIH grants! This much money so early in the life of the lab is definitely unanticipated. Now the goal is to turn this money into data.


3. People

The lab continues to grow. This summer we added a new graduate student, as well as the lab's first postdoctoral fellow.

That makes the lab: Me, 1 postdoc, 3 graduate students, 1 part-time technician, and 8 part-time undergraduates. It's getting full!

Here was the 2018 Norris Lab photo, with us holding a worm.

Here is the 2019 Norris Lab photo, with us inside a worm.

Episode CLXVII: Shreveport, Louisiana

The Norrises took our traditional Anniversary Trip in August, and this time it was a road trip. We explored some tiny old towns in East Texas before making our way to Shreveport, Louisiana.

Texas has a line of gas stations called Buc-ee's that tend to be located in rural areas but right off the big interstate. They definitely fit the everything-is-bigger-in-Texas theme. Think 7-Eleven but at the scale of Costco. Anyway, Elliot loved our first Buc-ee's trip. He especially liked the Buc-ee's mascot.

There were a lot of them!

Here we are touring a historic house (Sam Houston slept here!) in Nacgodoches, TX.

We stayed in a rural airbnb just outside Shreveport. It felt like we had the whole bayou to ourselves!

 [Front yard]

 [Back yard]

Shreveport is home to many notable and diverting attractions, including the Gardens of the American Rose Center.

We also visited some fine art museums. Amazingly, Elliot accompanied us to two consecutive art museums, for a total of ~3 hours of well-behaved art consumption!
 

We made sure to eat some Cajun while we were there.

 [I believe the restaurant was playing UFC on the TV]

Finally, after a delightful but exhausting weekend, it was time to head home.

Episode CLXVI: UCLA Worm Meeting

Every two years, the Genetics Society of America hosts a conference at UCLA bringing together people from around the world who work on C. elegans worms. I have attended these conferences many times in the past. This was my first time attending as a big grown-up professor. In fact, I was also joined by the first Norris Lab graduate student!

[First night at the conference: image source: https://twitter.com/SSerenaDing/status/1141933928137351169]

I also spent a lot of time skipping conference sessions to catch up with all sorts of family and friends, including...

Kyle, at Santa Monica Beach. 

[Living the SoCal life!]

Rafael, for brunch/lunch in Beverly Hills.

And my parents, at The Getty Villa.

I did in fact do some productive things at the meeting. I gave a talk and my graduate student presented a poster. Also, while we were in transit between LAX and UCLA, we learned that the lab's first paper had been accepted by a journal! (More on that in a future episode.)

Finally, a highlight of the meeting is the infamous "comedy show," where extremely science nerdy jokes abound. If you'd like to subject yourself to a sample, here's a clip of one of the funnier segments.




Link here

Episode CLXV: Surprise! Yosemite.

Mom turned 60 this year, and her family surprised her by showing up for a vacation at Yosemite National Park.

 

[Surprise!]

My part of the family first made its way from Dallas, TX to San Jose, CA. There we met Brian, and spent some time at the Googleplex.

Elliot enjoyed the free food and games on campus. 

 [Mmmmmmm.... kale smoothie!]

We all rendezvoused  at an Airbnb just outside Yosemite, where we surprised Mom!

We mimicked the camping life with campfires in the backyard.

During the days, we entered the park.

Here are the Norris Boys napping at the top of Vernal Falls.

Elliot and Micaiah had a hilarious time together, as usual.

Here they are "Playing Frisbee"

And here they are in their favorite TV-watching poses.

Elliot is definitely a water baby, so it was no surprise that he loved Yosemite. He wanted to play in / get in / point at every bit of water he saw.

Finally, time to go home. Here's Elliot helping me roll my suitcase back into the San Jose airport.

Episode CLXIV: Professor Norris

Fall 2018 was my first semester as a full-grown professor. I finally started performing my big teaching responsibility. The course was BIOL 3304: Genetics.

The course consisted of two separate classes, each class containing ~75 students. One meeting was MWF at 11 am, and the other immediately thereafter, MWF at noon. In other words, I got to give a lecture for one hour, then turn around and give the same lecture again the next hour, 3X a week! Here's a photo I snapped during the final exam, for a sense of scale.

Here I am posing with two of the most useful tools for the course: our genetics textbook, and a hoodie. The hoodie displays two strands of DNA (of the famous double helix). The zipper represents the hydrogen bonds by which individual DNA bases from one strand interact with their counterparts on the other strand. The students loved it!

 

 

Meanwhile, The Norris Lab continues to grow! Two Ph.D. students, one technician, six undergraduates, one Professor (me).

 

[Norris Lab posing with C. elegans worm. Not to scale.]

Episode CLXIII: Visiting California

As per tradition, we headed west to spend time with family for Christmas, and had a lovely time. Here's the whole Shearer gang at Grandma's (aka GG's) house.

And here's the Norris gang out for a hike. Looks like we're in Utah, right? But we're actually still in Orange County.

Last year  at this time Elliot met his cousin Micaiah for the first time. I posted this picture of them "sharing hands":

Well here they are, one year later, still going strong:

While in California, Micaiah spurred Elliot on to walk, and now Elliot is walking all over the place!

One last picture of Elliot doing two of his favorite things: (1) being a Cool Dude, and (2) chewing on a fresh-cucumber-scented-baby-wipe.

Finally, while we were in California, my brother turned THIRTY! We all sang him this song.