This year's annual meeting of the Taiwan Society of Plant Biology (TSPB) took place at National Chung Hsing University on October 16–17, with Leo, Ruby, and Khoa representing our lab! A special shout-out to Leo, whose abstract was shortlisted for a 3-minute presentation competition and earned him a prize! 🎉 Beyond the exciting science, we were delighted to catch up with Yoyo and Joe, who interned in our lab last year. It was wonderful to see familiar faces again and spend a lovely evening together! The fun didn't stop when TSPB ended! We were joined by fellow bryophyte enthusiasts from several research labs for our annual Non-Seed Plants Meeting. It was a fantastic gathering filled with exciting research, lively discussions, and plenty of enthusiasm for these fascinating little plants! It's hard to believe that this was already our fourth year organizing the meeting! What started as a small gathering has steadily grown into a wonderful community of researchers sharing a passion for non-seed plants. It's truly heartwarming to see our little community flourish, and we can't wait to see what the coming years will bring! 🌿

Summer has always been a busy time of the year for the laboratory. However this summer it was extraordinary to have 4 interns from different countries: Vietnam (Hoc Huu Nguyen), Malaysia (Frank Luo 羅文樂), Taiwan (George Liu 劉兆僖) and France (Maxime Rouffle).  Frank and George concluded their internship by giving their first presentations in English- a milestone in their student life. There were rewarded with beers and a barbecue dinner on their last day at work. Luckily nobody gets drunk~

This summer we have been lucky to host Hoc Huu Nguyen (third from left) from University of Science and Technology of Hanoi as the TIGP-IIP summer intern. His bubbly personality has certainly made him a very popular figure in the laboratory. On the eve of his departure, we treated him to the traditional hot pot dinner which we all enjoyed a lot. All the best in your future endeavours and we hope to see you again very soon!  

It has been a busy weekend for the lab with Menaka, Bal and I attended the 2023 annual meeting of Taiwanese Society of Developmental Biology which was held at National Cheng Kung University, Tainan. We were also thrilled to have Dr. Yuchen Long from National University of Singapore to deliver a keynote speech on mechanobiology in plant apical meristems. It was a fruitful meeting that filled with inspiring discussions and sumptuous Tainan food!

Ruby has achieved a lot during her 2-month stay in the lab. Today she presented her findings at the institute. It is always thrilling to withness the personal development of young people in the lab. Thanks for being a tremendous intern!

After much delay, we finally held our lab warming /1 year anniversary/Christmas party. Thanks to all members of the lab who gave their best and made this party a successful one. Of course, a party is not a party without everyone who made the time to join us and it was a blast! 

Coincidentally, our latest paper is also published online on the very same day. It was a day of double happiness!