“A fun space for serious science” – extreme makeover gives physics lab the look and feel of a 1950s diner

Professor Fiona McNeill’s lab was moving and she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

It’s not that she was giving up prime real estate – she was leaving a windowless, cramped and crowded space that was cursed with unreliable A/C.

It’s that the space she was relocating to in the basement of the Arthur Bourns Building hadn’t changed hands since 1968. A lot of equipment, supplies and miscellanea accumulated over a quarter century, along with a few structural surprises. A student who checked out the lab’s future home with Fiona was left speechless and could only give a consoling shake of her head.

But when life throws you a lemon, look to students to give it a squeeze. They’d long joked about how Fiona’s lab – which tests the absorption of lead by using ethically sourced pigskin from a local butcher – was like a diner that served a whole lot of bacon. A graduating student even gave Fiona a handmade thank-you card with a diner sketched on the front.

So Fiona used the move as the opportunity to redesign her lab from scratch, creating Toxic Allure – a fun space for serious science. And that’s what she pulled off with help from Facilities Services during an eight-month reno.

“This is the most fun research space I’ve ever worked in,” says Fiona, who completed her PhD in physics from the University of Birmingham, England in 1989 and has spent 30 years studying the effects of lead on people’s health. Among the research she’s most proud of is her work showing that women exposed to high levels of lead experience early menopause.  Her research into the toxicity of white lead make-up from the 18^th century generated international media coverage. For the last four years, Fiona’s been exploring the underlying mechanisms of lead absorption into skin using synchotron techniques. It’s still a mystery and Fiona says we’re underestimating just how much lead our bodies are absorbing.

“I wanted a lab that feels welcoming for students from the moment they walked through the doors and makes them want to stay around after they’d run their experiments.” A lab with the look and feel of a 1950s diner definitely fit the bill.

The room’s original scuffed and worn flooring had to be replaced – Fiona went with black and white checkboard laminate. She salvaged two metal desks and a cabinet that were so old they were now vintage and had them painted a Tiffany blue. She found a retro fridge in the same colour at Home Depot that’s used to store the frozen pigskin samples.

One entire wall was painted hot pink – “Facilities Services kept checking to see if I was absolutely sure about the colour.” Ads pitching lead-based make-up and hair dye cut out of 1950s magazines were framed and put up on the wall beneath a neon sign for “Toxic Allure”.

The lab leans hard into the bacon motif with signs on every wall. Experiments are run on pigskin that’s kept at 37 Celsius – the same average body temperature of humans. It doesn’t take long for the samples to smell and not in a way that sets off a craving for bacon and eggs. “Very few students keep eating bacon at the end of their time in the lab.”

The centerpiece of the lab is an aluminium-edged Formica table with matching chairs and a bench seat. It’s where students set up their laPtops, analyze data and huddle with Fiona to work through their research projects. “The retro dinette brings our group together.”

All that’s missing is a jukebox and soda fountain.

Once the clutter was cleared out, Fiona realized she was moving into a much bigger space – a pair of windows looking into a courtyard was an added bonus. She dedicated half of the lab to a custom-built clean room. Fiona and her team run experiments measuring extremely low levels of lead so it’s important to keep environmental lead from getting in and contaminating their samples. The room’s clear plastic walls let students sitting at the diner table to watch their colleagues do their wet work.

Fiona says she got an enthusiastically warm welcome from research colleagues who thought her students would inject some life back into that part of the building. “I’m not sure they were counting on quite this much life, energy and Taylor Swift music.”

The lab is full of “Swifties”, says Siya Sood. Taylor’s songs are on heavy rotation while the all-female lab does their research. Siya, an Integrated Science student who’s going into her second year, is spending the summer working with Fiona. She’s the second youngest of the nine students in the lab – Fiona has also taken on a high-school intern. Siya found about the job opportunity after joining the mailing list for the Faculty of Science’s Office of Undergraduate Research.

Siya says it can be intimidating and overwhelming for undergrads to walk into a research lab. “That’s not what you feel here in Dr. McNeill’s lab. It’s changed my perspective of what it’s like to be in science.”

Siya adds that the diner vibe matches Fiona’s approach to supervising and mentoring students. “It’s such a supportive, welcoming and fun culture. Dr. McNeill makes a point of learning what you’re interested in and then finding ways to incorporate that into her lab.”

Fiona held an open house to show off the extreme lab makeover – more than 100 faculty, staff and students turned out. In keeping with the diner theme, she served slices of pie while each student delivered two-minute talks about their research. Fiona, whose research has generated national and international media attention, is a big believer in science communication. “It’s important that students know how to talk about their research and get comfortable and confident working with journalists and media relations professionals.”

This helps explains why Toxic Allure may be the only 1950s diner that includes a ring light on a tripod. Students use the light when recording TikTok and Instagram videos to talk about the lab’s research. And should any of those videos get liked and shared by T-Swift, the noise coming out Fiona’s basement lab just might get heard across the entire campus.

Follow the Toxic Allure’s Instagram account here.