In her last video filmed from Stanford's Ashley lab, Alex Dainis reminisces on the past four-plus years she has spent there, working toward her PhD while chronicling that work on video. She shows viewers her space on the bench and reflects on the tissue culture room where she spent countless hours. "It's weird to me that I'm not going to be here every day anymore," Dainis says.

Her graduate work complete, Dainis, who we wrote about a few years back, is moving on to new adventures in science video producing and more.

I was glad to see that the Stanford News Service caught up with her before she left town. She explains more about her video projects in the piece:

'In my third year of grad school I started making videos about what it was like to be a grad student and to be in the lab, in the hopes of humanizing scientists a bit and to share the parts of my graduate school experience that I thought were interesting with this audience,' said Dainis. In a series called Tea Break, Dainis talks candidly about issues that hit close to home for many students and researchers, such as academic and professional pressure, accepting failure and finding purpose... The main focus of her channel, however, remains answering complicated scientific questions. Other popular videos explain how to store data in DNA and how nectarines are just mutated peaches, [shown below] which she said is her favorite video to date.

Dainis isn't quite done with Stanford - she's planning an upcoming video to address her experience as a graduate student.

Dainis' videos end with a geeky, but endearing sign-off: "Go forth, and do science." So, in that spirit, here's to Dainis, who will hopefully go forth, and do science videos.

Photo courtesy of Alex Dainis