The Golden Pipette

Science plays the long game, but Adrian Liston celebrates the small achievements his team makes along the way. 

Danielle Gerhard, PhD, writing for The Scientist

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.

What is the Golden Pipette origin story?

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.

What does the Golden Pipette represent?

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. 

How did your team respond to the Golden Pipette?

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.

Read the story as told in The Scientist...

Congratulations to Alvaro Hernandez!

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 awarded to Amy Dashwood

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!

2021 Golden Pipette

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!

The 2020 Golden Pipette

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

Dr Lidia Yshii wins Golden Pipette

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. 

Golden Pipette won by Dr Wenson Karunakaran

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.

Golden Pipette won by Steffie Junius

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!

Golden Pipette won by Dr Carly Whyte

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?  

A new era for the Golden Pipette

Another lab retreat, and the Golden Pipette has found a new home. Dr Emanuela Pasciuto passed the batton on to Dr Carlos Roca, for the development of a revolutionary new software package for automated analysis of flow cytometry data. A first for the Golden Pipette, won for bioinformatics, and a first for Dr Roca, having never held a pipette before.