Big news here at beverlyshipko.com.
My Webmaster and daughter, Laura Sloofman, was officially awarded her Master of Science degree in Biophysics and Computational Biology last weekend at the University of Illinois (UI) in Champaign/Urbana. Congratulations, Laura!
It was an action packed 5 day weekend for Jay and I, starting with a barbecue Thursday night at Sarah and Erik’s (oops! photo didn’t turn out), where I caught up with Laura’s friends, like Vishal.
Plus I met one of my most loyal blog readers, Pei-Chen. Here she is with Casey helping Laura prepare for our Friday dress rehearsal photo session.
So how many graduate students does it take to figure out how to put the hood on a graduation gown without the directions? At least 3 (4 if you include me!) plus the internet. Thank you Pei-Chen and Casey (shown searching for the answer) for your help – and patience!
Here we are on the plaza of the Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB), one of the two places where Laura works on campus. For some reason, I love these sculptures, which are open to much interpretation. What do you think they are? For those of you who may be curious, click here to read the answer.
Friday night Bonnie (Laura’s sister in the pink scarf) arrived for the weekend festivities, and we got to meet more friends at Laura’s apartment.
Somehow Laura found time to make a delicious gourmet dinner for the four of us, including homemade noodles. The fresh pasta with pesto sauce was amazing! I’m salivating just thinking of it.
Saturday we got up early and spent almost 4 hours outdoors at the university-wide ceremony at Memorial Stadium, home of the lackluster football team. It was surprisingly emotional for me to see Laura in this setting. I kept searching for her on the big screen, but alas, she never showed up. I had to settle for more intimate photos.
We had never heard of the keynote speaker, Jeff Huber (formerly of Google) who recently founded his own firm called Grail to discover an early detection blood test for cancer that might have saved his wife. He gave such an inspirational speech that we momentarily forgot we were shivering from the 35 degree temperatures (not to mention the wind)!
Jeff Huber challenged the graduates to find a better way, a powerful theme he skillfully wove together in the tapestry of his carefully crafted message.
On Sunday we went to the indoor Convocation Ceremony for the Department Molecular Cellular Biology at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. This was Laura’s big moment walking across the stage. Can you find her? Fortunately, there was a professional photographer close by.
Afterwards we mingled outside with the other graduates and their families – and naturally took more photos. There’s no such thing as too many graduation photos, in my humble opinion.
For our final family photo, we scoped out the University of Illinois Quad, a setting that reminded me of Laura’s alma mater, the University of Delaware.
Speaking of alma mater, we went to take Laura’s photo by the Illinois campus iconic sculpture called Alma Mater, which was dressed for the occasion
Several hundred other people beat us to it. Apparently this is a long-standing university tradition since the 2 hour line kept getting longer and longer all weekend!
We never even considered standing in this line, and were amused by it the entire weekend. This is what we settled for.
Laura, we’re excited about having you back in the New York Area, and seeing you more often. We are all so proud of everything you have accomplished! Good luck with your new job at Mt. Sinai. Having said that, I’m not sure luck has as much to do with it as the brain power, hard work, and motivation that went into getting your degree and forging a new path for your future bioinformatics career.
We wish you all the very best that life has to offer!
Much Love Always,
Mom, Dad and Bonnie
