Being passionate about our work is a drive that allows us to thrive in any work environment. Since I joined the Microbiology department in 2019, I felt blessed to be surrounded by great people who had vast experience in their field and a huge willingness to rise to challenges, and what a challenge we had in 2020, the world was hit with the first wave of COVID19, and the national healthcare system was confronted with the pandemic storm. The team had reacted on a crisis mode and played a major role in the national response and accomplished with major health care providers in the country a model that was recognized internationally. Since then we did not look back but we unlocked the potential in various sectors in our service and took a leap towards what I defined as DREAM team that capitalized on the state of the art infrastructure that we acquired in the last two years and re-positioned ourselves among the elite public health microbiology laboratories in Europe and beyond.
The DREAM team was built around Dedicated staff who are passionate about their job and delivered services to the nation 24/7 over 18 months period, working together in Respect, not only to each other but with our collaborators and our stakeholders, aiming to achieve Excellence with a vision to establish ourselves as an international center for excellence in public health microbiology. The team is leading various national projects and collaborating with clinical partners and Research institutions. We had developed a new leadership model that encourage Appreciation culture to our team and our partners as we believe that every contribution counts toward our vision as center for Excellence in Microbiology field.
It was impressive to see how the department evolved during the last 2 years and the great efforts by everyone to integrate and welcome the new blood as we had welcomed more than 20 new colleagues in the last 18 month and over 100 members of the outreach team delivering testing services to schools and nursing homes or LNS-dedicated sampling centers on daily basis. The COVID19 operation was a flagship of LNS together where the whole institution delivered a new model of care that would be a showcase for years to come.
The achievements are inspiring for further changes and evolution, We had been recently awarded a capacity building grant of 4.8 million euros from European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) that will enable us to expand our state of the art Genomic and Molecular Microbiology unit (LUX-GEMM), and establish our dedicated Microbial biobank (LuxMicroBiobank) and a revolution in our IT framework by launching our Paperless lab project which will dramatically improve our analytical workflows and reporting systems.
The MicroNews is another pillar of the evolution of our department by offering a communication channel with our partners. This Quarterly newsletter will provide an outlet for us to share our activities whether it is a service project or research highlight. It will also allow our partners to explore the potential collaboration ideas and knowing more about our scope of activities. On behalf of the editorial board, I would like to express my gratitude to Ms. Frédérique Theisen (LNS – communication manager) and Mr. Yannick Kirschhoffer (LNS – IT manager) for their kind support and expertise to launch MicroNews.
We are so thrilled to have our first issue. We hope that You will enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed its production process and we cherish your partnership in making the difference together.