Thoughtful, Dedicated, Clever

"I am delighted to nominate Ying-Jie Pan for Lab Heroes Awards. Ying-Jie joined my lab as lab manager three years ago, shortly after receiving her bachelor’s degree. Since Academia Sinica is the national academic institute here, we must comply the strictest government regulations and paperwork, from internet security, chemical registration, biosafety inspection, annual training requirements for lab members, fruit fly inspection, to tax-exempt application, etc. Ying-Jie quickly learned everything from scratch. Meanwhile, Ying-Jie also manages and maintains more than 4,000 fly strains for the entire laboratory. A few months after she joined the lab, we encountered the first outbreak of COVID-19 in Taiwan and faced possible institutional lockdowns for a long period of time. Being working on Drosophila, we have to figure out how to maintain all fly strains, coordinate fly food supplement, and keep experiments running under the regulation on an ongoing basis. Ying-Jie had handled all these things so well that we eventually got through the crisis safely. From the moment she joined the lab, Ying-Jie has to continuously follow and update regulations from different government departments and well coordinate with institutional administrative staffs to help the lab running smoothly. She always identifies and solves the problems effectively. Her dignity and daily smile soften every tense heart, win the respect of all lab members and bring everyone together. It is really because of her continuous support that all members of the laboratory can concentrate on research as much as possible. As such what I most want to do for her is giving her my strongest support for the Lab Heroes Award."

Nominated by Ya-Hui Chou, Institute of Cellular and Organismic Biology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, R.O.C.