Though we did venture out to the winter markets with Hayden bundled up deep inside Adrian’s jacket. It feels like winter has arrived, with a cold wind gusting through the bare trees and now with all the buildings lit up for the holidays.

Thank-you to Dr J and Dr L for their fun and beautiful baby gifts that Hayden was able to model today. He might not be rolling over yet, but I bet other babies don’t know the building blocks of DNA.

Adrian stood up and presented the figures to what was to become his first research paper, accepted and published in the best immunology journal in the world, Nature Immunology. I was impressed and intimidated. Even as a PhD student, Adrian seemed to be in his element. He would join the lab head and senior post-docs in asking probing questions during lab meetings, and would deliver scathing analyses of other papers during journal club. Even back then, he was an excellent mentor, improving thesis drafts or demonstrating the scientific method to undergraduate students, completing a Graduate Certificate in Higher Education to improve his teaching skills.

It was only later when I came to know him on a personal level that I learned how hard he had worked to reach this level. He had sacrificed every summer in his undergraduate degree to work in a research laboratory, running experiments and producing figures that would be published in peer reviewed publications even before he finished his Bachelor of Science.

He chose his PhD lab very carefully, interviewing at numerous institutions before finally finding one with the best opportunities. Here he worked every weekend, every night, designing experiments, talking to other scientists, and thoroughly reading the literature until he could keep up with the experts in his field. He made some great friends during that time, as he was always willing to talk over scientific or personal problems over a beer or two.

He knew that an excellent publication record was essential to succeed in academia. Every experiment was a figure in a paper. If he had to wait for some lab work to come to completion, he spent his time writing reviews and book chapters. At the beginning, Adrian never turned down an invitation to write a review – even if it was only a foreign print-only publication, he would still write a new and insightful manuscript on one of his areas of interest.

He continued in this manner through his post-doc, which meant that he was impressive enough to be awarded a start-up grant to create his own lab here in Belgium. I remember the first day he walked into the building – just an empty room – no furniture, no equipment, no staff. For the past three years he has worked tirelessly. He applied for every grant for which he was eligible, meanwhile recruiting staff and students, and setting up national and international collaborations. Knowing how stressful it can be to complete a PhD, he ensures that his students have every opportunity for success and fulfillment. They all have the opportunity to write their own reviews, and to have their own primary research paper as soon as possible. Plus he bought them a Nespresso coffee machine.

Today he received a letter stating that his latest research has again been accepted into Nature Immunology. However this time, nine years later, he is now the senior author on the paper. He has now been recognised as a leader of a world-class research laboratory conducting novel and cutting-edge investigations. I am so proud of him. Congratulations, Adrian.

When he was in his 20s he worked with Macfarlane Burnet at WEHI in Melbourne to understand the incubation periods of infections such as smallpox, measles and chickenpox. After a stint at the NY Rockefeller institute, he became the first Professor of Bacteriology at the newly established ANU.

He successfully introduced the lethal myxomatosis pox virus into the overwhelming feral rabbit population, thus dramatically reducing the burden on Australian native plants and animals. When some members of the public were concerned about the risk of this virus for humans, he and his colleagues publicly injected themselves with myxoma virus to demonstrate its safety. In 1977, he was elected the chairman of the WHO Global Commission for the Certification of Smallpox Eradication, and in 1980 addressed to World Health Assembly and declared that smallpox had been globally eradicated.

I have a signed copy of his book “The John Curtin School of Medical Research: the First Fifty Years, 1948-1998″ on my bookshelf, and I am grateful for the years that he and I worked as scientists together in the same building. He has left a lasting impact on all of humankind.

I think that’s enough to keep me busy for twelve months or so. It is a bit overwhelming to be faced with so many changes, but I realise how lucky that we are to have this opportunity, so the main emotion I feel is excitement. We had a great time in North America over the past two years, and while I think we are better suited to Europe, I am very thankful for all the happy memories that we have of the United States of America.

Wednesday, November 5 was my last day as a senior post-doctoral fellow at the University of Washington. We went out to Lydia’s Last Lunch at Serafina with current and past lab members. I had some delcious trout, and they gave me a lovely card:

“thank-you for all your help and for answering all my questions… thank you for teaching me awesome Australian words: arvo! I will miss you! You’ve always had a smile and a kind word to share. You know how to distract me when I’m nervous (i.e. you let me rattle on about my cats)… we’ll miss you.. We are sad to see you go!… I have enjoyed and learned a lot from our many conversations… Thanks for all your support to me, especially when things have not been going the best. Your positive attitude and kindness have been very helpful so many times.”

I may never again walk through the university library, watch the squirrels hide and recover acorns, see the mountain behind the fountain, celebrate a birthday with cake, or a paper with sparkling apple juice. We have made so many wonderful friends here in Seattle. Now I am leaving my career at the bench behind, and looking forward to a rewarding future in clinical trials.

After disembarking, I bought a Luxembourg card which entitled me to free public transport and free entry to all the museums. A great deal I thought, until I discovered that the Old Town was an easy ten minute walk away, the museums were closed on Mondays, and I had missed the guided tour. Determined to get my euro’s worth, I caught the bus in, which took twenty minutes, due to all the traffic.

The streets were all packed with people, as it was market day, which in Luxembourg seems to consist more of leather handbags and fur coats than of fruits and vegetables. I started my explorations down in the UNESCO World Heritage Casemates. After the Treaty of London, most Count Seigfried’s 963 CE fortifications were razed, but the underground passages remain. Surprisingly, they are full of sunlight, as they often open up into the cliffs that surround the city, giving spectacular views of the Grund in the valley below.

I then walked across the Chemin dela Coniche, which is called Europe’s most beautiful balcony, as it winds along the edge of the cliff tops above Petrusse Valley. The black spires of the Cathedrale Notre Dame dominate the skyline of the old town, and I found the inside also very beautiful, even if the Lonely Planet calls it “an ugly hotchpotch of progressive renovations”. The stained-glass windows are bright and intricate, the columns decorated with delicate carvings, and the ceiling filled with grand arches.

My recent explorations of Europe have emboldened me to be able to enter church buildings, and not feel too intimidated as a non-believer. I now realise that these churches were designed to be overpowering and intimidating to everyone, and now I am able to enter them, while still respecting their status as an important monument of history, art, and architecture. Just outside the church, a congregation of gargoyles seemed to mock those passing by.

My last stop was a visit at the free museum of the headquarters of Luxembourg’s oldest bank – the Banque et Caisse d’pargne de l’Etat. It was an interesting look behinds the scenes of money in the Grand Duchy – I could walk inside a bank vault, and see the original sketches for some of the bank notes in the early 1900′s. My favourite was one proudly depicting dozens of factory chimneys energetically pumping huge clouds of smoke into the sky, as a symbol of the countries growing industrial power.

And this is the view from our lab:

It is my pleasure to advise you that on 26 November 2007 the Dean of the relevant College has approved the award of your degree of Doctor of Philosophy. I congratulate you most warmly on this achievement.

The paperwork has finally gone through, and now I am officially a doctor!

I am am very proud of all my work over the years. Glad that I never quit, I kept on going, and it was all worthwhile in the end.

I shall come back to Australia to graduate in December 2008, but will celebrate this weekend in San Francisco, and this December on a cruise through the Southern Caribbean.

I am happy happy happy.

I myself feel like I am just keeping my head above water. I can see some ahead of me swimming with sure easy strokes, but so often it feels like a struggle just to get through the day. I feel like I’ve studied my whole life for this job and I’m still not good at it. Failed experiments, slow data, rejected fellowship applications. I just never feel like I’m any good at what I do. I look around me, and I don’t think that I’m the only one who feels that way.

Next month I am starting a Masters in Public Health, part-time by correspondence. One day I want to have a job that I enjoy, in which I feel competent and successful.

Please let her say I can submit…

Fleur and I are off to decide on the paper and dividers that we need this afternoon.

I’m submitting the following Thursday, and then flying out the next Monday.

It’s all coming together.

I have moved my flight to the 29th of January, so I have plenty of time for my supervisor to read my chapters, and for me to instigate her changes. What a great way to start 2007.

I only have one resolution this year: Finish Thesis.

Stanford
I had always wanted to study at Stanford, and now I finally had the opportunity. Later on in the course, they even gave me an umbrella for coming the furthest to attend. My dorm-room was a very freshman experience, but the Advanced Course in Immunology was great. All the other students were really friendly, and didn’t form the impenetrable cliques that sometimes form at conferences. The good lecturers usually spent an hour or so going over the classic experiments in the field, and then the next couple of hours encouraging us to explore the unanswered questions that they were leaving to the next generation of researchers.

I had my post-doc interview at Stanford, and met some of the leading researchers there and heard about their unpublished work. Their offices are decorated with their own images on the covers of Cell and Nature, the department is full of exciting discoveries and inventions, however the working environment is very focussed on the individual.

I went on a walking tour of the university, and saw the Stanford Church and the main quad, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted who also planned NY Central Park. I also saw the large Rodin outdoor sculpture gallery, and the first Google computer in the basement of the William Gates Computer Science building. Mr and Mrs Stanford had created the university in honour of their son, Leland Stanford Junior. One of the conditions of the original founding grant was that tuition be free for all students. Obviously, this last condition no longer holds, and now undergraduates pay $38,000 a year to attend. The weather was amazing, and the ground squirrels very cute, but with San Francisco so far away and no on-campus housing for post-docs, I was told a car was almost compulsory.

Seattle
One final weekend in Seattle before returning to Australia. As I had caught a cold at my immunology course, Adrian and I had a relaxing weekend filled with naps and gentle activities. He took care of me, even walking to the store to buy me three different types of Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream to soothe my throat. We saw the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, found a bright apartment in Fremont with a stunning vista to rent, went to the movies, and treasured all the shared joys that we could squeeze in before I had to fly back to Australia.