Laboratory Technician Hattie Liu Wins Staff Impact Award For Outstanding Mentorship

Lab Technician, Hattie Liu, has won the 2020 Service in a Laboratory Research Environment Award, one of the Temerty Medicine Staff Impact Awards.

Liu has worked as a lab technician in Professor Richard Horner's lab for an impressive twenty years. She has trained and mentored the lab's many undergraduate and graduate students, as well as post-doctoral fellows, and directly contributed to their research projects. As Professor Horner explained in his nomination letter:

"Hattie is a valued co-author on thirty-two papers published in peer-reviewed journals. But it is the mentorship, values and support that trainees gain throughout their research experience that are so important.

"These rich experiences are so much more than the obtaining of degrees, publishing papers and getting grants. They are life-long experiences that are sustained, long-remembered, and are passed on from the recipient trainee to their subsequent trainees."

In the many student testimonials submitted in support of Liu's nomination, the following descriptors came up repeatedly:

• Supportive 
• Encouraging
• Emotional intelligence
• Wisdom, experience, and talent 
• Advocate and ally
• Foundation of our community

It is clear that Liu, in addition to her talents as a scientist, has been a cohesive force and emotional anchor in the Horner Lab throughout the years.

In response to receiving this award, Liu said:

"I am so honoured to be part of the research team and I am very grateful to receive this award! It has been twenty great years working in this department with Dr. Horner, colleagues, trainees and these bright students!"

We are so pleased to see Hattie Liu receive this well-deserved honour!