We enjoyed the opportunity to talk about our work several times this year:

Sam Ferguson was our summer student, and presented both at the summer student symposia and also at this years SPPIRIT Symposium at the Roslin Institute!

Peyton and Mattie enjoyed being hosted by Julie Tottey and the INRAE team to discuss Cryptosporidium biology and animal health. Mattie enjoyed getting to meet Aurelien Dumetre and the members of his lab and department in Marseille to discuss our collaboration as a part of our new Wellcome Trust Career Development Award.

We also were asked to present about our work on the 3Rs in Belgium. See the post HERE to learn more.

We look forward to welcoming all of our collaborators in the Cryptosporidium field to Edinburgh in May 2026 for the 2nd Biennial Cryptosporidium Meeting.

To celebration publication of Ross and Sarah’s paper in PLoS Pathogens, we spent the day at the Scottish Deer Centre in Fife. They recently received 2 capybaras and we have adopted this adorable animals as a lab favourite! We are on track to visit all the capybaras in Scotland! It was cold day, but we enjoyed seeing the birds, feeding the deer, and catching up with alumni.

We then had lunch in St. Andrew’s at Mitchell’s. It was decorated for Christmas, so it was extra cosy. Every plate was licked clean… so I think it was a hit.

Happy holidays from the Pawlowic lab, members present and past!

The 3Rs refer to “Reduction, Refinement, and Replacement” for the use of animals in scientific research. The Pawlowic lab takes our efforts to incorporate the 3Rs very seriously. Animal welfare is key to us as a group, and also at an individual level.

Recently, our team worked in collaboration with the staff technicians at the University of Dundee and were recognised for our efforts to refine our work. Specifically the group was awarded 2025 Refinement Prize awarded by the European Partnership for Alternatives Approaches to Animal Testing (EPAA).

Specifically, the prize recognises a team that has demonstrated outstanding achievements in new, novel approaches to advance the implementation and/or awareness raising of refinement of animal testing.

You can read the University Press Release HERE.

A member of our group was invited to present our project and accept the award at the 20th Anniversary Conference of the EPAA in Brussels, Belgium. The lab watched live from Dundee! It was clear that the work was very well received by the members of the EPAA. Since, we have been asked to give additional presentations about our work on the 3Rs to another academic group.

Grant MJ Hall is an MRC student co-supervised with Prof Susan Wyllie to continue our collaborative work to develop Mode-of-Action technologies and insight for Cryptosporidium. On Friday November 7th, Grant gave a seminar on his PhD project and then had a successful viva. Congrats for several years of hard work and for presenting and defending your thesis so well. We are so very proud of you!

Special thanks to Prof Rita Tewari for serving as External Examiner and Prof Marcus Lee as Internal Examiner, and Prof David Horn for acting as convenor.

Grant’s hat, showcasing memories for 4 years… and also a thank-you slide dedicated to Watson.

Our lab PhD alumni came back (Ross, Emma, and Jack) and as the second mode-of-action focussed PhD student a brief “sorting hat” ceremony was performed 🙂

We also celebrated with a Guinness Chocolate cake, a shared favorite of both Mattie and Grant’s of the new local restaurant, East Field, on Perth Road. This time courtesy of Mattie (recipe from Nigella).