Goodbye and thank you to Birmingham!

Well, today is my last working day at the University of Birmingham, before I set off after Easter for a new position at the University of Warwick as Professor of Microbial Genomics and Head of a new Division of Microbiology and Infection in Warwick Medical School. I have been at the University of Birmingham since July 2001 and there is no question that my time here has been the pinnacle of my professional life (at least up till now: of course, the best is still to come!). I move on with with a sense of gratitude at having had the privilege of getting to know and work with so many great people and leave with a head stuffed full of wonderful memories. Sadly for me, the co-author of this blog, Nick Loman, is not moving to Warwick with me, but has instead taken up a permanent position in Birmingham. But I draw comfort from the fact that geographically we will still only be just 40 minutes drive apart and psychologically will remain united in our appreciation of all things cool and quirky at the conjunction of sequencers, sequences and software!

This will be my last blog post here, but in any case Nick has already largely made this blog his own. I have set up a new blog for my new life in the new Division of Microbiology and Infection, drawing on an old title that Nick will recognise from when we first met in the late 1990s: the Microbial Underground: catch up on news from Warwick there after Easter and follow us (@WarwickMicrobio) on Twitter too!

I did start writing a long discursive ramble through my memories of my time in Birmingham, but in the end I have decided to sign off with some pictures that encapsulate all the good times! Goodbye Birmingham and thank you!

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