LUTZ LAB (for the 1st time) proudly presents ‘The Jingling Penguin Cake’
Why penguin bake? Short answer: “Penguins are super adorable!” If you haven’t seen the movie, “March of the Penguin,” you’d better take care of that during the weekends! But if you are the few ‘penguinologists’, you probably know why they are awesome: their bravery, persistence, and excellent communication among themselves. Throughout winters, they travel many miles away from the food source to lay their eggs on the land. During the windy snowstorms, they make a group hug and shield their eggs. They take turns on the periphery so that everyone gets a chance to stay warm when inside. Together, they see themselves through the difficult times and stay positive and productive for the progeny of their species. Therefore, we select the penguins to represent all of us as in this Holiday Bake off competition. Throughout this year, the Lutz lab has been through an emotional rollercoaster ride. Dr. Lutz (the biggest penguin with some hair poking towards Saturn) was promoted to a tenure-track position and now leads the evolving research team (the other penguins). We just moved in our own lab space (2 days ago) and new members are already popping (and some about-to-be hatched penguin eggs). We are very much like penguins ourselves. We take pride in our work. We are brave to work against difficult, impactful problems to improve the human lives. We stick together through communication and the bonds we share between us, as well as others in the wonderful UW BIOE Department and the rest of scientific community. Outside the lab, we have fun time (as seen as penguins making snow angles, music-responsive dance lights) and spend time with family and friends (check out the penguin lover couple from the back of the cake). Despite our busiest time (setting up the new lab, training new personnel, and taking final exams), we sought to start a tradition in the lab by participating in the bake off event by ourselves! We got together, brainstormed and started making this cake from the scratch. We are excited to share the Lutz Lab Edition 1 cake with the UW BIOE family. If selected to win the bake-off, we would be very proud and treat this award as the present from our family and will be committed to be one of the active contributors to UW BIOE community. Participating in this bakeoff and being on the same platform as veteran bakers and brought us even closer. If we come out with flying colors, it would serve as an inspirational source to and keep doing great science here in N209C.
1 former and current Graduate Student Researcher, 2 Undergraduate Student Researcher, 3 Research Scientist and Post-doctoral Researcher, 4 Primary Investigator,
* Corresponding authors
And we won!
Shivani Dharmaraja1 , Bob Atkinson1 , Rahil Jain1,*, Nuttada Panpradist, 1,*, Ian Andrews2 , Doan Dinh2 , Nikki Higa2 , David McIntyre2 , Annapurni Sriram2 , Isabella Spielmann2 , Annie Won-on-Wing2 , Norman Brault3 , Ryan Gallagher3 , Enos Kline3 , Barry R Lutz4
Awarding moment: (left to right): Doan, Barry, Nuttada, Rahil, Shivani, and Ian.
Behind the scenes:
Our draft
Bob Atkinson and Shivani were preparing the cake mix and topping.
Rahil and Swati were massaging the dough.
Ian, Nikki and I were preparing the dough from the melted marshmallow!