Culture

Community

With so many students going on to become mentors, our lab is built off knowledge that is passed down through “generations” of mentors and students. We form close connections as researchers and colleagues, but also as friends, keeping touch with each other long after graduation.

If interested, you can follow us on Instagram (@microbe.hackers) and LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/ut-microbe-hackers/ ).

Trivia at Fall 2024 stream party – Team “Mishy Fishies”.

Summer Research

Every year, the Microbe Hackers lab is open during the summer. We normally start immediately after Memorial day and go for 8 weeks, ending in mid-to-late July. It is Professor Mishler’s goal to find as much space as possible for as many students as possible to conduct research with us over the summer. A few students receive summer fellowships, but most volunteer.

In 2019, we had 16 of our freshmen stay with us during the summer, in addition to 8 of our returning mentors who conducted research and helped the younger students around the lab. Students are in lab for at least 20 hrs per week during this 8 week period. We have weekly meetings, focused on developing presentation skills, as well as other important skills: such as making professional figures and analyzing data.

Every Friday, the students organize a lunch, either on the patio outside of lab or at a nearby restaurant. In addition, the lab had our first ever “trivia” event at the end of the summer. Teams were formed based on the benches students worked at and answered questions relating the our lab, science, Austin, and popular culture.

Lunch with summer researchers, 2019. We had 16 of our rising sophomores and 8 older students with us during the summer. Every Friday, students had a group lunch, a tradition that has continued each summer, into 2025.

“We Will EvoStab You,” the winning team of our first trivia event. I don’t know where they got their name from, but clearly they intimidated all of the other teams into letting them win! We have continued doing trivia through the academic year, once per semester.

Stream Parties

At the end of each semester, we have a stream party on the patio outside the lab. All the Microbe Hackers gather to enjoy potluck snacks and partake in fun team games concocted by the party-planning mentors, which have previously included trivia, cornhole, and charades (can you act out “evolutionary stability”?).

Microbe Hackers 4 Life

Microbe Hackers 4 Life is the title I give to students who join us in the spring, and then stay with the stream as mentors… until they graduate from UT Austin. In 2018, our first Microbe Hacker 4 Life graduated. In 2019, five more students received this title. Our appreciation for these students is hard to fully explain. These rare students have spent countless hours researching and/or mentoring younger students. They have taught our younger students techniques, gone over concepts, given feedback on papers, helped to run the lab, helped to clean the lab, and most importantly established a friendly, nurturing environment for future Microbe Hackers. Upon graduating, these students receive a small token of my appreciation for their efforts, normally an item somehow related to their time with us.

All of our mentors do a tremendous service for our community, whether they are with us for one semester or five. On behalf of the entire Microbe Hackers lab, thank you all so much for being with us!