We have a new Doctor! Last week, Albane Ruaud defended her thesis titled “Analysis of human gut metagenomes for the prediction of host traits with tree ensemble machine learning models”, for which she was awarded the Magna Cum Laude distinction. As part of her PhD work, she developed ‘endoR’, a framework and R package for the interpretation of tree ensemble machine learning models. In addition, her work on the syntrophy between Christensenella and Methanobrevibacter in the human gut was published last year in mBio. We enjoyed a celebration with cheese, cake, and sparkling wine.