No two people learn the same. At the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory School of Biological Sciences (SBS), graduate students have the unique opportunity to rotate through several different labs and conduct research in those that best fit their area of interest. After years of mentorship, graduation day finally arrives. Director of Research Leemor Joshua-Tor and her team have started a tradition that ensures their lab’s graduate students are remembered and celebrated for all they’ve accomplished: personalized graduation caps.
Ankur Garg, a research investigator in the Joshua-Tor lab, adopted the idea from his graduate program in Berlin, Germany. He says that the cap “will always remind you of your time as a Ph.D. student, no matter what you end up doing in your career.”
The hats designed by the Joshua-Tor lab are shaped like ordinary graduation caps, but a bit larger than life. Over several months, lab mates collect, design, and craft trinkets that represent the graduate’s hobbies, research projects, friendships, and more. Like the graduate program, the cap is personalized to the student.
Leah Braviner has worked and studied in the Joshua-Tor lab for several years, so she has helped construct caps for a number of her colleagues. As she prepared to defend her thesis, she began to imagine the cap as a symbol of her goal. And she wondered what it would be like on the receiving end of her lab’s tradition. “Leading up to my defense day, I was genuinely excited to think I might get a hat and curious to know what my team would put on it,” she says.
Braviner successfully defended her thesis this past July. She’s now set to walk in the next SBS graduation ceremony in May 2026. As for her cap, Lab Manager Stephanie Goldsmith says the Joshua-Tor team used an Earl Grey tea bag for a tassel—a nod to Braviner’s preferred caffeine source. They also included miniature versions of the rafts she’d helped build for the CSHL Raft Race, a long-held tradition where teams assemble homemade boats to race along the harbor.
The level of personalization and detail in Braviner’s cap would not have been possible without the Joshua-Tor lab’s strong sense of teamwork. Thus, it represents not only the graduate student’s experiences but also the community that has helped inspire her and may continue to serve as a source of camaraderie and collaboration for years to come.
Written by: Bridget Shanley, Marketing Specialist | bshanley@cshl.edu | 516-367-5014