The BBSRC Skills School ‘Broadening Horizons: Cultivating an Innovative Mind Set’ was held with great succes in Edinburgh, from Monday 4 to Tuesday 5 June 2018.

This event was supported by the BBSRC National Productivity Investment Fund (NPIF).

Read more here.
                     

NPIF Skills School ‘Broadening Horizons: Cultivating an Innovative Mind Set’

Edinburgh, 4 - 5 June 2018

This skills school “Broadening Horizons: Cultivating an Innovative Mind Set” has been developed by the BBSRC EASTBIO DTP and the BBSRC IBioIC CTP in partnership and close collaboration with 5 industry facilities: the IBioIC Flexible Downstream Bioprocessing Centre, Edinburgh (FlexBio); the National Phenotypic Screening Centre, Dundee; BioAscent / the European Screening Centre, Biocity, Newhouse; the Edinburgh Genome Foundry; and the Roslin Cell Therapies Ltd GMP facility, Edinburgh.  It draws on expertise and know-how from these complementary partners to address industry-identified needs and skills gaps.

Event programme.

Event website.

What participants can expect

Winning in western blotting at Thermo Fisher Scientific (please click on the title to read more)
by Zandile Nare

Background information

I am a second-year EASTBIO PhD student within the Institute of Immunology and Infection Research at the University of Edinburgh. My research focuses on the identification of specific inhibitors of kinetoplastid RNA editing ligase 1 (REL1), a validated drug target, for use as lead compounds for the treatment of human and animal diseases caused by  kinetoplastid parasites (e.g. sleeping sickness, nagana, Chagas disease & various leishmaniases). A secondary goal of my PhD is to understand structure-activity relationships of REL1 and the other kinetoplastid ligase; REL2.

PIPS project background and motivation for pursuing project

Stevie Bain, final year EASTBIO PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, was invited by Springer nature group to blog on her research. Stevie works on Parental Genome Elimination (PGE), a unique type of genomic imprinting.

Her resulting blog - "Paternal genome elimination: investigating a strange reproductive strategy" - can be found here.

EASTBIO DTP PIPS administrator Dr Caroline Pope has published a paper entitled "'Work wisdom' and the PhD: Exploring the Benefits of doctoral internships" on the Vitae website's Occasional Papers series.The article draws on research data from 65 postgraduate researchers from the EASTBIO DTP programme who carried out a doctoral internship as part of their doctoral training between 2013 and 2016. The research provides their views of emerging benefits of doctoral internships to Universities, employers and society at large.

The paper can be accessed via the Vitae website (for those who have individual or institutional Vitae membership) or found here.

EASTBIO is happy to present the new Student Handbook, to be handed out to our new cohort of students and supervisors at the Induction Day (Dundee, 5 October 2017).

You can browse the contents here!

Hamish Todd, second-year EASTBIO student, presents Virus, the Beauty of the Beast - an interactive documentary on Friday, 30 June 2017 at The Banshee Labyrinth, Edinburgh, Scotland.

Viruses, in spite of the pain they cause us, are some of the most beautiful creatures in the world, covered in varied and intricate patterns - the patterns on Zika virus actually have connections to medieval Islamic art.

'Virus, the Beauty of the Beast' is a documentary, three years in the making, about the patterns we find in the shapes of viruses, and how understanding them can help us fight those viruses. It has a particular focus on HIV, Zika virus, and Hepatitis and, by using animation and simulation, it explores what the patterns tell us about viruses, but also what they tell us about the human designs that they appear in (buildings, golf/foot/zorbing balls, origami, gamma ray and neutrino detectors, alloys, and more).

EASTBIO successfully awarded 6 BBSRC Research Experience Placement awards to excellent undergraduate students to enable them to gain lab experience during the summer months of 2017.

More information about this year's successful projects can be found here.

The next call will be advertised in the same page no later than March 2018.

The International Society of Avian Endocrinology (ISAE) held its quadrennial conference from October 11-14 2016 at Niagara-on-the-lake in Ontario, Canada. ISAE is an event which takes place every four years in a rotation system between Asia, Europe, and America, and is dedicated to showcase up-to-date advancements in the field of avian endocrinology, while bringing together scientists from all over the world. With a combination of plenary lectures, symposia, and poster sessions, ISAE2016 is the ideal venue to meet other scientists and exchange information on a wide range of avian species. Topics discussed include, endocrinology of behaviour, endocrine disruptors, neuro-endocrine control of reproduction, feeding and metabolism, circadian rhythms and clock genes.