The Scientist: Masque party

Almost a month ago now, I attended a masquerade gala in honour of my supervisor, Dr. Lorne Tyrrell.

The party was a fundraiser for the Canadian Liver Foundation in honour of the research Lorne has accomplished over the years to fight hepatitis B and C viruses.

Although seats at a table were $75, Lorne decided to invite the entire lab, so we all dressed in our best to attend the event. I wore my new dress, purchased in California during our holidays.

The party was held at the Petroleum Club - nothing if not typically named here in Alberta. We were given masks at our seats, although I had borrowed one from Bonnie for the evening myself. Here's Kristen (left - my summer student and now project student) and Rineke (post-doc):

Here's Rineke, me and Nikki. My mask didn't sit totally straight on my face, so it looks a little funny.

See! Crooked.

Despite the offset of the mask, other people wanted to try it on too. Here is Nikki:

And Kristen:

I also have a few pictures from other lab members. This is Ran, our newest graduate student:

And Darci, one of our techs, looking slightly stunned.

We sat at our tables for a nice fancy meal, enjoying all the servings including the CHOCOLATE dessert. Yum.

After dessert, Lorne was awarded and gave a speech.

Not only was he brave enough to wear his mask on stage (at least for a few minutes - it's hard to wear a mask and glasses at the same time), he was not shy about bringing politics into the fray during his speech.

He spoke about the disproportionate amount of funding that goes to diseases like HIV, which has 35 million people infected, compared to diseases like hepatitis B and C viruses, which infects up to 700 million people worldwide. He also talked about how the Canadian government has put an emphasis on making research technologically marketable, instead of just basic research, and how this approach is backwards. His discovering of a drug treatment for hepatitis B virus 25 years ago, would never have happened if the basic research had not been in place. Anyway...I liked that Lorne didn't shy away from telling the elite of Edmonton "how it is".