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Friday, August 1, 2025 at 12:12PM 
Congratulations to Dr Katy Palios for winning the 2025 Golden Pipette! Katy won the Golden Pipette for her exceptional scientific leadership and teamwork, bringing out the best in all those around her. Well done Dr Palios!
Golden Pipette Thursday, August 1, 2024 at 10:28PM Hanging on the wall of immunologist Adrian Liston's laboratory at the University of Cambridge is a commemorative plaque. Engraved are the names of laboratory members who received the Golden Pipette Award, an annual honor that recognizes incremental advancements and team players. It may or may not grant the recipient the Midas Touch, but Liston reflected on how the tradition fosters a sense of community.
In 2016, we had a special PhD candidate graduating from the lab. James Dooley had been a technician in my lab for several years prior to his graduation. To celebrate his achievements and the impact he had on the careers of others in the team, we painted one of his pipettes gold. The gesture was well received, so each year, we award the pipette to an individual who made a significant contribution to the team.
Science is tough. We work at the very limits of human knowledge, which means we constantly fail. The Golden Pipette tradition is one of the ways we create a positive culture and supportive environment. Big achievements, such as a paper, take a long time, so it’s important to celebrate the small successes: generating a transgenic mouse; developing a new protocol; the heroic effort that ends up as supplementary figure 12. It also signals our values and priorities: imagination, creativity, robust science, and team contributions.
It seemed silly at first, but the tradition has outlasted everyone in the group. It serves as a visual reminder that we’re part of a greater project. In a recent hiring round, several people said that they look forward to the chance of winning the Golden Pipette.
Thursday, June 20, 2024 at 11:19AM 
Congratulations to Alvaro Hernandez for winning the 12th Golden Pipette for his work on fate-mapping microglia clonality during health and disease! The first time that the Golden Pipette has been won by an under-graduate research - an amazing accomplishment!
Golden Pipette, Liston lab Tuesday, October 17, 2023 at 10:12AM 
Congratulations go to Amy Dashwood, winner of the 2023 Golden Pipette! The Golden Pipette is handed down from winner to winner in recognition of elegant experiments and a positive contribution to lab culture. This year Amy has won the Golden Pipette for her elegant experiments creating a genetic chimera system to analyse microglia homeostasis, and for being an outstanding lab citizen and mentor to undergraduate students. Well done Amy!
Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 5:55PM 
The Golden Pipette has a long and illustrious record. Awarded at every lab retreat in recognition of a single very cool result, the Golden Pipette has been handed down through generations of talented scientists. This year the Golden Pipette was awarded to.... Ntombizodwa Makuyana, for her exciting new approach to creating an anti-inflammatory environment in the lung. Well done Tombi, for a stunning first year PhD result!
Wednesday, October 21, 2020 at 5:27PM Congratulations to Julika Neumann for winning the 8th Golden Pipette at the 2020 virtual lab retreat.
Brutally tough competition this year - the quality of science is just constantly rising year after year. I was really tempted by Orian's UMAP analysis (it looks like an elephant!):
But for that single piece of data that just speaks for itself, it is hard to go past this crystal structure of a point mutation found in a novel primary immunodeficiency gene:
Well done Julika!
Julika receiving the Golden Pipette from past winner Lidia, in our virtual happy hour
Golden Pipette, Liston lab Friday, August 30, 2019 at 4:06PM 
Congratulations to Dr Lidia Yshii for winning the 7th Golden Pipette at our joint Leuven-Cambridge lab retreat held at the Babraham.
The most elegant experiment is always a tough call at our lab retreat, but it is hard to go past a simple treatment that blocks 90% of the damage during traumatic brain injury!
Looking forward to accelerating this treatment into the translational space.
Friday, May 17, 2019 at 8:54AM 
Congratulations to Dr Wenson Karunakaran!
It was tough competition for the sixth Golden Pipette at the Cambridge-Leuven joint lab retreat. The final prize had to go to Dr Karunakaran for his work on brain CD4 T cells.
Many neuroscientists assume there are no CD4 T cells inside the healthy brain, but there are in fact around 5000 per gram of brain tissue. How do we know? Wenson imaged and counted them, one by one.
That is what it takes to win the Golden Pipette.
Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 10:40AM 
Congratulations to Steffie Junius, the first PhD student to win the Golden Pipette!
Dr Carly Whyte had to relucantly hand over the Golden Pipette to Steffie Junius, in recognition of her pioneering experiments on regulatory T cell fate-mapping.
This means the Golden Pipette will stay in Leuven for now, but the Babraham Team is building up to take back the pipette in 2019!
Tuesday, October 16, 2018 at 3:39PM 
Congratulations to Dr Carly Whyte, for winning the Golden Pipette!
Carly won the Golden Pipette for her mind-boggling data on how the cellular source of IL-2 profoundly alters the impact of this key cytokine on the cells around it. Data to be published, as soon as we understand it!
Carly will be moving over to the Babraham in January. Will the Golden Pipette be won back by team Leuven in time? Or will Cambridge take ownership of this proud trophy?
Golden Pipette, immunology 