farewell party for Martin Bonin and Christin Meier

Today, after the successful defence of his doctoral thesis, Martin Bonin invited the whole group to his farewell party, jointly with Christin Meier who has worked with us as an excellent and steadily increasingly precious research technician. Martin is going to continue as a post-doctoral researcher in Prof. Till Ischebeck’s group in our institute, while Christin refused an offer to continue working with us, preferring to travel the world. Well, that’s a more than acceptable decision and a great plan! Both Martin and Christin have been core members of our slowly downsized group. Martin combines experience in both biochemistry and bioinformatics, and he was never easily satisfied with any experimental approach or too quick answer, be it in vitro or in silico. And similarly, Christin has never shied away from any new challenge in the lab or in the office – even taking on the wheat stem rust fungus. By now, Christin might be the only person in the world who knows how to grow this obligately biotrophic pathogen in axenic culture. Neither of them required significant supervision at the end, performing their work highly independently, always meticulously and equally reliably. And both were always ready to offer a helping hand to students and to their own colleagues. We will miss both of you all the more! - Christin and Martin: we wish both of you the very very best for your future journeys, and we are more than curious to learn about them!