A hearty mazeltov to Dan Bear, who recently gave a beautiful thesis defense and earned his PhD. Dan worked on the Ms4a genes, a new class of olfactory receptor he discovered (along with his colleague in the lab and benchmate, Paul Greer) that mediates sensory responses in the necklace olfactory subsystem (check out his super-cool paper here).  In addition to being an amazing scientist, knowing at least two pluralizations of “octopus” that are not “octopuses” or the incorrect “octopi,” and the only person who really knows what is in Thom Yorke’s heart, Dan both set the bar really high for the lab and defined many of the problems we are working on now. Thankfully for us, he is sticking around for a few months to finish up the follow-up to the first Ms4a paper, so it is not goodbye yet – just congrats at a job well done!

Dan deftly answering questions at his defense

 

The famous 10,000-word email

 

Toasting good fortune and hard work

 

Receiving the traditional lab gift

 

Dan will be missed!

 

Now, which brain is the pigeon?