The Cloning Wizard

"Brett is an outstanding research associate that I have had the pleasure of working alongside for nearly 5 years (my entire PhD). Brett reminds me of what I believed science should be all those years ago when I was a young and hopeful undergrad student - fun, passionate and full of wonder. I cherish the spirit Brett brings to the lab with him each day and although he manages a spectrum of projects he always makes time for myself or others to ask questions, even when he is in the middle of an experiment himself. Brett is an excellent teacher, and I can always trust him to patiently and carefully teach me a new protocol. For example, when I first joined the lab in 2020 I did not know how to do a western blot. Brett taught me, and I was so nervous the pipette was shaking in my hand. I was too slow to pour my stacking gel, and it hardened in the tube. In that moment I felt like I was going to cry because all I wanted was to succeed at a western blot. Brett calmly reassured me it is ok, that we all make mistakes, and cheerfully got busy setting up a new stacking gel for me to pour. I had come from a lab environment where mistakes like this would be harshly addressed, so his joyful patience startled me in the best way. This story repeated itself over and over, except it became myself forgetting to prep enough empty vector plasmid and asking to borrow his, it became my undergrad student forgetting to add a secondary antibody before mounting her coverslips for immunofluorescence, our other PhD student struggling with cloning and Brett redesigning a new cloning strategy that worked on the first try. Upon every mishap, every question, every 'can you check this protocol for me', Brett remains patient, calm, and genuinely positive. If I were to give a gift to the PhD students in other labs, it would be to do your degree alongside a RA as extraordinary as Brett. Therefore, I believe he is truly a lab hero and is immensely deserving of this award, as he continues to humbly save the day (or in this case, a cloning protocol) routinely from the safety of his lab bench."

Nominated by Alexa Wilson, McCormick Lab, Dalhousie University, Canada