Category Archives: General

The new ICaMB recruits

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As many ICaMB members will have been aware, we have been very busy this year recruiting a new generation of Principal Investigators (PIs).  New faces bring new ideas and fresh perspectives and we are very excited to have successfully identified and then persuaded a number of talented scientists to join us in Newcastle.  In addition, we congratulate Yulia Yuzenkova, one of our current postdocs, for winning a prestigious Royal Society University Fellowship.

Independent Researcher Establishment Scheme (IRES)

For our new IRES fellowships we sought to identify three new PIs in any area of research that fitted within the broad interests encompassed by ICaMB.  These awards are for a 5-year period and, after review, are intended to lead to a permanent academic position in our Institute.   The new IRES fellows will be expected to establish an independent research programme and obtain the funding to build a research group. We received many high-quality applications for these positions and the competition was very intense. We are very happy, therefore, to welcome our three IRES fellows and look forward to them being our colleagues for many years to come.

 

Dr Owen Davies

Research Interests: The synaptonemal complex is a giant molecular ‘zipper’ that binds together homologous chromosome pairs along their entire length during meiosis.  It is essential for meiotic recombination, crossover formation and fertility. Despite its discovery almost 60 years ago, we still lack any information regarding its molecular structure and function. My research is directed towards overcoming this knowledge gap and defining the full three-dimensional structure of the human synaptonemal complex together with the molecular basis of its function in meiosis.

Background: After my PhD, I secured a post-doctoral fellowship from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, which I took to the Institute for Stem Cell Research, University of Edinburgh. There I worked with Dr. Sally Lowell studying the molecular triggers of early lineage commitment in embryonic stem cells. It was during this time that I formulated the ideas for my long term research plans for studying the molecular structure and function of the synaptonemal complex in meiosis. Over the last three years, I have initiated this research at the Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge, working with Dr. Luca Pellegrini.

Owen has already relocated to Newcastle and has started work in ICaMB

 

Dr Josana Rodriguez

Research interest: By breaking symmetry, cells are able to generate diversity, migrate, and organise themselves into more complex structures such as tissues and organs. Misregulation of such cell polarity is implicated in a number of human diseases, most notably cancer. Tumour progression is correlated with disruption of epithelial polarity and randomized orientation of the cell division plane caused by misplacement of the mitotic spindle. These observations show the importance of cell polarity for the correct development of an organism and the tight regulation required between cell polarity mechanisms and the cytoskeleton.

My aim is to identify new interactions between cell polarity and the cytoskeleton, and to understand them in a whole organism context during morphogenetic movements and tissue organisation. I would like to extend these studies to analyse the possible implication of these interactions in diseases such as cancer and neurodegenerative disorders.

 

Background: I am currently a postdoctoral research fellow at The Gurdon Institute (Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research, UK) working in the laboratory of Dr. Julie Ahringer (2006 to date). My postdoctoral research identified genes involved in the polarisation of cells through high-throughput genetic screens in C. elegans. I have been a Wolfson College Fellow since 2009 (University of Cambridge).

Josana plans to relocate to Newcastle in July 2014 after completing some ongoing studies in Cambridge

 

Dr Niall Kenneth

Research Interests:  My work focuses on the signalling properties of a family of intracellular proteins called the IAPs (inhibitor of apoptosis). These proteins were originally characterised as modulators of cell death but have since emerged as key signalling intermediates that regulate a variety of cellular functions. X-linked IAP (XIAP) has been the subject of much recent interest as a possible therapeutic target in cancer due to its greatly elevated expression in tumour cells and its well-documented ability to inhibit cell death. Additional work has identified germline mutations in the XIAP gene that cause a severe primary immunodeficiency known as X-linked lymphoproliferative disorder (XLPD).  My work aims to understand the role played by XIAP in essential cellular processes and to reconcile this with its role in pathogenesis.

Background:  After my PhD, I joined the group of Dr Sonia Rocha at the Centre of Gene Regulation and Expression at the University of Dundee, where I focused on the control of gene transcription following DNA damage and hypoxic stress, regulated by the NF-kB and HIF transcription factors. In 2010, I relocated to the USA to join the laboratory of Professor Colin Duckett, at the University of Michigan, where I have continued to work on transcriptional regulation and developed my interests in the IAP proteins and how they are altered in disease.

Niall will relocate to Newcastle in April 2014

 

Royal Society University Research Fellowship

The Royal Society URF is one of the most prestigious fellowships awarded to young scientists seeking an independent research career.  We are therefore extremely happy that based on her outstanding postdoctoral work in ICaMB, Yulia Yuzenkova has recently received this award.  

Dr Yulia Yuzenkova

Research Interests: My research is focussed on mechanisms of gene expression in cyanobacteria, one of the most ancient and ecologically important, but under-studied group of organisms on Earth. Approximately 2.3 billion years ago cyanobacteria invented photosynthesis, which transformed all subsequent biological history of Earth. Nowadays they live everywhere where sunlight is available and produce 30% of atmospheric oxygen; furthermore, they can convert inert atmospheric nitrogen to the forms digestible by other organisms. I will be working on transcription in cyanobacteria and its coordination with other major processes in the cell, such as DNA replication and translation.

Active centre of the T. thermophilus RNAP elongation complex with unfolded (inactive) and folded (active) Trigger Loop domain conformation.

Background: I did my PhD in the Institute of Molecular Genetics in Moscow and then my first PostDoc in the Waksman Institute in Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, USA where I performed structure-functional studies of bacterial RNA polymerase.  After moving to Newcastle University, I have been working on a variety of projects investigating the mechanisms of transcriptional regulation by bacterial RNA Polymerase.

 

New ICaMB Professor

In addition to our new young PIs, we have also recruited a new young(ish) Professor, Jonathan Higgins from the Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School 

Prof Jonathan Higgins

Research Interests: Cell division is a short but dramatic part of the cell cycle. To ensure precise inheritance of the genetic material, chromosomes must be disentangled, condensed, and then “bi-oriented” on microtubules so that they can be sorted properly into the daughter cells. My lab aims to understand fundamental processes that control these events: specifically, the post-translational modifications of histone proteins that dictate recruitment and displacement of regulatory proteins to and from chromatin during cell division. In particular, my lab has revealed the role of histone kinases such as Haspin in localizing key “error-correcting” proteins to centromeres in mitosis.

Haspin phosphorylates Histone H3 to create a binding site for the Chromosomal Passenger Complex (CPC) at the centromeres of chromosomes in mitosis. The CPC, which contains the kinase Aurora B, acts to prevent incorrect attachments of microtubules (grey lines) to kinetochores (grey ovals), to ensure the appropriate segregation of chromosomes during cell division.

Background: I was born in Stockton-on-Tees and grew up in North Yorkshire. During my postdoc with Michael Brenner at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), Harvard Medical School (HMS), I discovered a novel gene, which turned out to be Haspin, within an intron of the integrin gene I was studying. I started working on Haspin as a side project, and then more seriously when I joined the faculty at BWH/HMS to set up my own research group.

Jonathan will relocate permanently to Newcastle in July 2014

The next generation of ICaMB PIs and Research Fellows

Owen, Josana, Niall, Yulia and Jonathan join a growing group of new PIs in ICaMB, which include 2 further Royal Society URF award winners together with recipients of Wellcome Trust/Royal Society Henry Dale and Career Re-entry Fellowships. We are confident that their talent drive, and enthusiasm will ensure a bright future for research in Cell and Molecular Biosciences in Newcastle.

Dr Suzanne Madgwick: Suzanne is a Wellcome Trust Career Re-entry Fellow researching mechanisms of meiosis

Dr Heath Murray: Heath is a Royal Society University Research Fellow researching the Regulation of Bacterial DNA Replication Initiation

Dr Paula Salgado: Paula is a Lecturer in Macromolecular Crystallography studying the mechanisms of host-pathogen interactions

Dr Claudia Schneider: is a Royal Society University Research Fellow investigating nonsense mediated mRNA decay pathways

Dr Kevin Waldron: is a Wellcome Trust/Royal Society Henry Dale Fellow investigating the role of essential metal ions in pathogenic bacteria

 

ICaMB success in the Summer Sun

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Your ICaMBlog team would like to wish our readers, followers and colleagues a joyful and restful August. We have decided to take a well earned break over the next month to muse on new ideas for when we all get back into the swing of the new academic year in September.

Before we look forward we have some hot off the press news to pass on to the ICaMB community and those further afield.

We are sure everyone will agree that our current cohort of MRes students deserve a big pat on their backs for finishing their project assessments this week with some very professional project presentations and a brilliant Poster evening on Tuesday (30th July).

 

We are also very happy to inform you that Anna Stanton (Main supervisor: Dr Judith Hall) won the MRes Poster prize. Anna’s project explored the detection of bacteria in vaginal epithelial cells and how hormones influence this response. Anna, we assume, will be taking a short break to enjoy this wonderful summer before getting back into the lab to continue her project during her PhD studies.

But that’s not all, we have more success to report! As part of the prize giving the MRes team of the Graduate School also picked 10 runners up. In no particular order we must also therefore congratulate Pippa Harvey (Dr Jeremy Brown), Anthony Moore (Prof John Hesketh) and Sophia Valaris (Dr Jun-yong Huang) for their prizes.

Where next then? The coming months offer some interesting activities for ICaMB members. This year the British Science Festival is being held in Newcastle from September 7th – 12th and a number of us have projects being showcased. A particular highlight of the festival is on Sunday Sept 8th, called “University Family Challenge”.  Paula Salgado is leading a structural biology drop in activity looking at 3D puzzles of infections,while Phil Aldridge and Jeremy Lakey are inviting families to “Epifection: Build the Bug“, which involves lego! Moreover, our collaboration with Leading Edge is being highlighted through the perspective of the Year 9 participants.

Epifection is a digital interactive project developed by Phil and a number of other Academics across the University that will run through the entire festival. It explores the decisions we need to make in the face of a infection outbreak. It also exploits Phil’s addiction to his smartphone!

After the festival the next big event in the ICaMB calendar will be the Away Day on 14th October. The program of activities is looking rather exciting and will provide a great opportunity for ICaMB members to network and discuss the research we are all doing (and maybe go out for a beer or light refreshment afterwards!).

The Away Day compliments our summer social event, the famous “Boat Trip.” Floating down the Tyne enjoying the sun allowed many of us to relax, meet sometimes familiar characters as well as new faces.

 

 

Regarding new faces, over the next few months a number of new researchers will be moving to ICaMB. More on this when we return in September.

So on that note we wish everyone a superb break over August. For those staying, work hard but enjoy yourselves too: remember Science is Fun, even if it looks like 300 tubes or 10 96-well plates to process.

We hope the first few months of us running this blog have shown you both the fun and serious side of research in ICaMB. There will be more to come in the Autumn.

We leave you with this picture of St Mary’s Lighthouse at sunset….enjoy

Links

 

IPA Update: What’s it like to work for Nature?

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By the IPA committee

Thursday 23rd May saw the IPA’s second Science Lives Seminar. Following on from our first talk about the realities of establishing an independent research group in academia, the IPA wanted to explore what else a post-doc can do. What are our alternative careers?

To start answering this question, we invited Dr Andrew Jermy, a senior editor at Nature, to give us a talk on his career in journal editing.


Postdocs waiting to hear either (a) how to publish their papers in Nature or (b) how to work for Nature

Dr Jermy’s talk started by illustrating his personal experience. Like all of us, he completed a PhD in the biological sciences field and then did two short post-docs before he decided to leave academia to start a career in editing, first at Nature Cell Biology, followed by  Nature Reviews Microbiology and now more recently at Nature. To achieve this, he used his networking skills as he had met someone currently working for Nature at conference. Hint, keep building up your contacts! It was very interesting for us all to understand the motivations that brought him to try a new and alternative career. “Getting bored of waiting for westerns to come out of the developer”, he repeated several times.  Maybe he is not the only one?

Dr Jermy also described the several different job entry levels possible at Nature, something that applies generally to many of the larger scientific journals.  We now have a much better idea of what working for a scientific journal actually entails and where we could slot in. He pointed out that in this kind of career you need a keen interest in all science, as well as being constantly on top of the cutting edge research in your specific editing field. The ability assimilate information quickly and handle up to 40-50 papers per month, while travelling to conferences and universities is also a must. On the other hand, Dr Jermy underlined that his job is not a simple 9-5 job.  However, he can work from home and with the advantage of a permanent position as well as opportunities for career progression, this can make his career more family-friendly than what we post-docs are used to. Ultimately, this career seems ideal for those post-docs who no longer enjoy working at the bench, but still enjoy the other aspects of scientific life, such as reading, writing and networking at conferences.

Andrew demonstrates the Nature ‘secret handshake’

There was however much more to Dr Jermy’s talk than the career side… he gave practical tips to post-docs who want (or maybe its better to say wish) to submit a paper to Nature; from the title to the covering letter, from the abstract to the “style” of writing. Dr Jermy made a clear point that the philosophy of the journal is not to bin 90% of the papers they receive, but to focus on helping the top 10% of the articles emerge and get published. Finally, did you know you can send a pre-submission enquiry to Nature, asking if your scientific results are of interest before going through the long and painful online submission? Helpful for everyone!

After the seminar there was an informal chat-session, useful for post-docs to ask questions in a relaxed environment, helped of course by a beer in our hands!

The IPA wishes everyone a nice Summer and we will see you all for our next social event: a barbecue in September, a perfect occasion to give a warm welcome to new post-docs joining ICAMB as well as for all the current post-docs and final year PhD students to get together for the beginning of a new academic year.

Updates will follow on the website.

IPA Committee

IPA is run by Postdocs, for Postdocs. Get involved!

Links

IPA Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/462376430446559
Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biosciences: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/camb/
Newcastle University: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/
Nature Journal: http://www.nature.com/nature/index.html
Andrew Jermy’s twitter page: https://twitter.com/jermynation

Leading the Way: Inspiring through science

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by Phil Aldridge

“I normally do not like science, but…”

Leonie, Science Set G2, Year 8, George Stephenson High School

This is the opening comment to one of the feedback statements from the 180+ Year 8 students at George Stephenson High School in Killingworth who participated in Leading the Way last week. Leading the Way was coordinated by Leading Edge in collaboration with ICaMB. Leonie’s comment sums up a very inspirational week a team of 15 early career scientists from the Faculty of Medicine had at her school.

Leading the Way was developed based on feedback I had received from Teachers involved in Leading Edge, who wanted to know if it was possible to develop something to work with their year groups rather than just 6 chosen students. After discussions with our Director Rob Lightowler it was agreed to run a pilot scheme to combine the requests of the Teachers involved in Leading Edge and ICaMB’s drive to explore alternative routes to promote our science to the wider community.

We were very lucky to find a school like George Stephenson High School. The School have been a brilliant partner, willing to work with us to develop a program to allow our young scientists to interact with Year 8 (12-13 years old) during one week of their science lessons. A note to worried supervisors and Institute Director – this may sound a lot but in reality each of us involved in running Leading the Way had 12 direct contact hours.

With the help of the science department, we split the year group into teams of 7-9 students based on their science sets.

Our timetable was as follows:

Day 1: Year 8 off timetable to experience “Science in Action”

Day 2-4: We used the timetabled science lessons (2 per set) to create a poster on the topic chosen for the week. Each group worked with one of our scientist team.

Day 5: There was a poster competition with the winning entry earning a day visiting ICaMB.

Some of the Day 1 high points included the isolation of DNA from strawberries, using the isolation of apple juice to experience enzymes in action and playing with alien blood (milk with blue food colouring – see above).

On Day 5, while their posters were being judged, each team built a tower out of 200 straws and sellotape. The goal was to build the tallest self standing straw tower capable of holding a 50 ml Falcon tube containing sweets. We had expected them to require some guidance. However, to everyone’s surprise, Teachers and Scientists alike, all offers of help were refused as the entire year group wanted to do this task alone.

Then the prize giving. We came up with a series of competitions: Best Team Name, Most Visual Experiment, Most Accurate Experiment, Most Volume of Juice isolated, Largest Tower, Best Poster Design and the Big one: Best Idea.

Accuracy and volume were decided on a bar chart and standard curve the teams were asked to produce. This was based on one meeting had with the Science department who suggested we explore data analysis with the students in some way.

Our Judges were ICaMBs own Dave Bolam, Kevin Waldron, Paula Salgado and GSHS Head Ian Wilkinson.

A highlight for the entire Leading the Way team was experiencing the enthusiasm for science from students of all abilities. The winning team who will be visiting ICaMB was Au from Set S1 with their very artistic poster on Mad Cow Disease.

A big thank you goes out to:

– the Leading the Way team: From ICaMB Kayleigh Smith, Simon Syvertsson, Lauren Drage, Martin Sim, Mark Turner, Sarah Billington, Lorna Young, Nichola Conlon & Pippa Harvey and from ICM, IAH, NICR and ION: Elizabeth Gemmel, Laura Mottram, Emma Woodward, Karen Fisher, Joseph Willet, Sanjay Vijay

– the George Stephenson High School Science Department:  lead by Andy Williams and our Liasons Dr James Henderson and Rachel Grimmer.

– the ICaMB supervisors: for allowing the ICaMB LTW team members for being part in this truly inspirational pilot: Mike Gray, David Thwaites, Colin Brown, Caroline Austin, Phil Aldridge, Leendert Hamoen, Brendan Kenny and Jeremy Brown.

Watch this space – we aim to have a second blog post in a few weeks describing their visit….

Spills and pills: thrills for a structural biologist

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One of the newest recruits to ICaMB is Professor Bert van den Berg, who arrived here in December 2012.  Bert is already off to a great start having been awarded a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award in April.  Here we have asked him to tell us why he decided to join ICaMB and the research that lead up to this prestigious award.

By Bert van den Berg


Bert, looking thrilled

I joined ICaMB in January, coming from the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, where I was a tenured faculty member in the Program in Molecular Medicine. While I had a great and productive time in this department, after eight years I felt increasingly isolated academically and started to look for another position. ICaMB seemed a great fit for my research interests, with a large number of scientists interested in bacterial biochemistry and cell biology. Since ICaMB was also looking to strengthen its efforts in structural biology, the decision to cross the pond and join ICaMB wasn’t a very hard one. I am happy to be here, and I hope and expect that my expertise in membrane protein structural biology will also be a benefit for the faculty within ICaMB and will lead to successful collaborations.

My lab has been studying protein channels (see below) for about nine years. Determining structures is really the only way to obtain deep insights into protein function. In addition, seeing a new protein structure for the first time is often an “aha!” moment and, at least for me, the closest thing to a true discovery in modern science. In any case, the importance of structural biology for science is clear from the large number of Nobel prizes awarded to the field over the years.

What do the cleanup of oil spills and the treatment of many bacterial infections have in common? The answer is that both processes depend on the efficient passage of bacterial membranes by small molecules.

Oil spills and antibiotics have more in common than you may realise

Gram-negative bacteria are surrounded by two lipid membranes, which are termed plasma membrane and outer membrane. The outer membrane borders the cell and is a very efficient and sturdy barrier that protects the cell from noxious substances in the external environment, such as bile acids in the case of E. coli bacteria living in the gut. However, since bacteria also require nutrients for growth and function, protein channels are present in the outer membrane to allow the uptake of such small molecules. In our work we use X-ray crystallography to determine the atomic 3D structures of the channels, most of which are shaped like hollow barrels. Based on the structures we propose transport models, which we then test by characterisation of mutant proteins.

Many Gram-negative bacteria are able to use industrial pollutants such as oil as food sources, a process called biodegradation. The enzymes that catalyse these remarkable processes are located inside the cell but not much is known about how the pollutants enter the cell in the first place, something that is clearly required before they can be degraded. We study the highly specialised channels that mediate the uptake of these water-insoluble (“hydrophobic”) molecules. In addition, we are interested in discovering cellular adaptations that allow biodegrading bacteria to grow on these toxic compounds. We think that this research may lead to insights that will aid the design of bacterial strains that are optimised not only for bioremediation but also for important other processes such as production of biofuels.

The other main focus of research in my lab is to understand how antibiotics “hijack” outer membrane channels to enter bacteria. Being water-soluble, antibiotics are dependent on protein channels for membrane passage. Bacteria that are under antibiotic pressure will often change or remove the channels through which antibiotics pass, resulting in resistance.

Movie showing ampicillin movement through E coli OmpF protein channel. The view is from the outside of the cell. Movie made by Matteo Ceccarelli (University of Cagliari).

In concert with other mechanisms such as enzymatic degradation and increased efflux by pumps, this acquired antibiotic resistance has the potential to become a huge and global problem in public health. New drugs are therefore urgently needed. The problem is that not nearly enough new drugs are currently in pharmaceutical pipelines, due to the costly and risky nature of antibiotic development. However, pharmaceutical companies are starting to realise that the fundamentals of drug design need to change, and that they have to collaborate with academic labs that are studying the basic biology of small molecule membrane transport.

My lab is participating in an exciting, EU-funded joint venture between big pharma, small biotech firms and academic labs aiming to understand the influx/efflux of drugs in a number of pathogenic Gram-negative bacteria. Beyond the potential benefits for drug design, it is hoped that this project will change the way in which industry and academia work together to benefit public health.

 

Links

Royal Society Wolfson Merit Awards: http://royalsociety.org/news/2013/new-wolfson-research-merit-awards/

Bert’s ICaMB homepage: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/camb/staff/profile/bert.van-den-berg

Newcastle Structural Biology website: http://sbl.ncl.ac.uk/people/bert_research.shtml

Structural Biologist Nobel Prize Winners: http://www.ebi.ac.uk/pdbe/docs/nobel/nobels.html

IMI TRANSLOCATION project: http://www.imi.europa.eu/content/translocation

Why PAN!C?

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ICaMB’s PhD and Master students now have their own Network – PAN!C. Here they tell us about the network, its aims and activities so far, as well as plans for the future.

by the PAN!C committee

The idea for a Postgraduate Network in ICaMB – PAN!C – was conceived in Campus Coffee in November 2012 by Claire Whitworth and Kerrie Brusby in the hope of uniting the near 90 postgraduate students within the institute. Since then, the PAN!C committee has gained 5 more committee members: Beth Lawry, Monica Piatek, Jonathon Briggs, Max Temple and Adam Crawshaw. The aim of PAN!C is to strengthen the community of postgraduate students around the institute and, in particular, improve interactions between the Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology and Medical School building laboratories, enhancing both the academic and social experiences of students within the institute.

Jeff’s talk for PAN!C

Our first academic event back in March and was a real success, with a strong turnout of over 50 students to a career talk given by Professor Jeff Errington. His talk was based on his journey from being a student through to becoming an academic at the very top of his field and balancing his thriving business ventures with the stresses of academia.

We are currently planning our next academic event, again about careers but from a new perspective, which we’ll have more information about soon. We are hoping over the next few months to invite more speakers and if you have any suggestions of whom you might like to hear from or a subject that you would like to see covered, please email us!

Over the past 4 months we’ve also had a number of social events ranging from pub quizzes to laser questing, events which have had a good turnout and positive feedback from students. We have plenty of more events up our sleeve so keep an eye out for emails and posters advertising them soon!

 

PAN!C are currently applying for support from the University so that we can have more great events in the future, particularly for academic events, such as talks, workshops and more. To help us obtain this support we would really appreciate it if you could complete our very short survey, it takes less than 2 minutes.

For any questions about PAN!C or to suggest an idea for an event, be it academic or social please get in touch  with the PAN!C committee. We want PAN!C to be all about the postgraduate students in the Institute so we want students to have influence on what we do, get involved with our events and have fun! We are really grateful for the support shown by students, academics and the institute as a whole and hope that this continues so that an even bigger PAN!C ensues.

 

Links

PAN!C: https://www.facebook.com/pages/PANIC/522401521125495?fref=ts
Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biosciences: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/camb/
Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology : http://www.ncl.ac.uk/cbcb/
PAN!C survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PLHLBHC

IPA Update: Pub Quiz and Nature Editor visit

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April 27th saw the ICaMB postdoc association (IPA)’s second social event with a Friday Night at the North Terrace pub.  Here the IPA committee describes the evening and upcoming VERY IMPORTANT EVENT

By the IPA

All those involved with the IPA social evening and pub quiz thought it was a terrific success, with a good turn out of Postdocs and final year PhD students letting off some steam after their hard week at work.


The pub quiz. Postdocs hard at work.

It was a great night and we all enjoyed the drinks and delicious North Terrace food, including generous portions of tasty potato skins and pizzas, which were very much approved of (even by Alessio). While some got serious over a game of darts, others chatted over pints – however the best part of the night was by far the PUB QUIZ.


Who is this man? One of the tough questions at the IPA pub quiz. Fortunately everyone got this one right.

The IPA committee prepared the questions with an international angle that went down well with our multi-national postdoc community.  It was amusing to see the quality team-work used to answer questions on intercontinental cuisine and different languages. Particularly with the question “how does a Geordie spell the word home?”* Although the Italian Quiz Master occasionally struggled to read the questions in a ‘proper’ English accent, this just kept the postdocs on the ball! We had 4 competing teams, with every team randomly formed with different lab members, so everyone got to know and chat with new people.

Victory went to the ‘baby PINK team’ after winning the tie break question with their closest answer to “What is the length of the River Nile?”** Not easy! Their 1st place prize was North Terrace Deli sandwich vouchers. Yummy!


The result. A close run thing.

The IPA committee is looking forward to our next social; a barbecue in September!  We are in the process of seeking a good venue!

Before this we have our next Science Lives Seminar with the invited Nature Microbiology senior editor Dr Andrew Jermy giving an exclusive talk to our Postdocs and final year PhDs. Get Thursday 23rd May 4pm blocked now in your busy diaries – you can’t miss hearing about how this former postdoc established a career in editing for one of the most renowned journals in our field. We, as postdocs, need to keep our career options open, and this does not seem like a bad one! The PIs are perhaps even more excited than us about his visit, not that they are invited to the seminar (haha unlucky), but we can expect some serious sweet-talking in Andrew Jermy’s tight schedule of meetings with ICaMB academics the following day! We all know that PIs don’t have much time, but all of them have managed to rearrange their outlook calendars for this guest!

* Answer is ‘yem’
** Answer is 6,650 km (4,130 miles)

If you have any suggestions for themes for future events please  get in touch with the IPA committee.

 

Links

IPA Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/462376430446559
Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biosciences: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/camb/
Newcastle University: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/
Nature Journal: http://www.nature.com/nature/index.html
Andrew Jermy’s twitter page: https://twitter.com/jermynation

The Great Bacterial Bake Off

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Ready, Study, Bake! Phil Aldridge set out this challenge for his students and tells us all about the amazing results – and how it is all about engaging with students in innovative and fun ways.

@ScoobyWaffs: I am loving the #GreatBacterialBakeOff tweets! I’ve never wanted E. coli in my belly as much as I do now! #cake

@jeanmadams: Who would have thought lab scientists could have so much fun with cake! Definitely look at #GreatBacterialBakeOff

If you ask a scientist to do something outside their defined barriers they come up with creations that look amazing.

The pictures and quotes in this post were all generated after I challenged our Stage 2 Medical Microbiology students to a “Great Bacterial Bake Off”, which took place at lunchtime on Friday 26th April.  After the very positive response to tweeting pictures of these creations, we have uploaded an album of the creations to both the ICaMB and School for Biomedical Science (in progress) Facebook pages and collected the twitter action on storify. The quotes and images speak for themselves.  This was a nice, and hopefully successful, way to make some noise about Microbiology studies at Newcastle University, not strictly through our academic exploits but through CAKE!

The Background:

There was no criteria set for this challenge except they had to focus on bacteria that they had come across in their course. Wow, did they deliver! Well done all of you.

Since advertising this event, there was a clear buzz on the grapevine asking what I was up to. The occasional probing question to a student brought forth comments “Oh this is going to get competitive” and “someone has bought chickenwire!” (Chickenwire???)

I will admit the decision to tweet the results was a bit of an experiment in itself as I had not tried something like this before. Since I was lecturing the Stage 2 students on Diagnostic Microbiology earlier in the week, I checked if they were fine if we went online with this experiment. One student got the ball rolling on Thursday evening with a proud tweet of one entry, which gave us the hashtag #GreatBacterialBakeOff. The rest is now history…

The reason:

I was looking for a way to drive what could have been a rather dull discussion about our Medical Microbiology degree, into something with a fun twist.  Not enough experiments in the lab result in edible end products (at least if you are obeying all health and safety instructions) so a bake off seemed like a way to make people think while overcoming this scientific shortcoming.

We can, at times, forget the need to not only teach our undergraduates but also engage with them. In fact, a workshop has been organised for the Higher Education Academy here in Newcastle on Student Engagement in Education. Being able to interact, in an informal manner, can have great benefits for everyone involved. This does not have to be only at the Academic-Student interface. Indeed this is partly what both PANIC and IPA are doing in ICaMB at the moment. What is important is that it is fun, works both ways and you can get a chance to communicate.

ICaMB Academics mainly lecture on the portfolio of undergraduate degrees offered through the School of Biomedical Sciences. I have recently taken over the coordination of Biomedical Science with Medical Microbiology (UCAS BC95). The custodian of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, this week proclaimed that lectures are doomed. I disagree with this statement. Yes, not everyone is going to be able to deliver the perfect lecture but we can sure try to find complimentary ways in which to engage with our students at the undergraduate and postgraduate level to inspire them to learn and hopefully stay in a Science related career.

The winning cake

Health Warning: Having such a bake off creates quite a few cakes – eating said cakes (it was part of the competition for best effort) means you end up eating a serious amount of sugar. A number of participants, me included, suffered from “icing” overdose! So, if you do think about doing something similar, you may want to co-ordinate it to be a cake sale so you do not end up trying to eat all the entries!

The IPA: Run By Postdocs, For Postdocs!

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The ICaMB Postdoc Association (IPA) was created in 2012.  It’s motto is ‘Run by postdocs, for postdocs’.  Here we have asked the IPA committee to describe what they do and some of the events they have been organising.

 

by the IPA

Post-docs are the engine room of any lab. Let’s face it, we are the ones at the bench doing the experiments that get into those high impact publications (hopefully!). However, in many institutes we are also the forgotten proportion of the scientific workforce. This is something we, the post-docs of ICaMB, are trying to change. Six of us (Alessio, Claire, Jackie, Jill, Luisa and Matt) formed the ICaMB Post-doc Association (IPA) in mid-2012 with a view to bringing the post-docs of our institute together and giving us a voice.  Yes, we want to talk to each other about our science and share our ideas and expertise but the IPA is also about establishing new friendships and having a laugh too.

One of the main aims of the IPA, is to address some of the challenges faced by post-docs today – realistically we know that not all of us will make it to Principal Investigator (PI), or even necessarily want to. So, we have started a seminar series looking at ‘Science Lives’ in which we invite speakers from diverse jobs to talk to the post-docs about their career choices after post-docing. Our first speaker was ICaMB’s very own, Heath Murray, a Royal Society Fellow based in the CBCB. He gave a very honest account of making that transition from post-doc to PI. Heath discussed his personal highs and his love for science, but also the difficulties he faced when applying for Fellowships, together with  the challenges he now faces when carving out his own independent lab.

The next speaker in the series is Andrew Jermy on May 23rd at 4pm. Andrew is the senior microbiology editor at Nature and will come to talk to us about a career in editing and publishing at pretty much the biggest journal in our field. Many of the post-docs in ICaMB have told members of the committee that editing is something they would like to learn about as they consider other career options in science. On the other hand, many of the academic staff are also very excited by the prospect of Andrew coming to ICaMB so they can all show off the great science being done here!

 

An IPA Social

The IPA is also about the post-docs getting to know one another away from the lab…we all like to let our hair down by having a party and some of us even enjoy a glass of wine (or two!). Our first event was a social held at the Forum Café in the CBCB where the ICaMB post-docs based in the Medical School and those in the CBCB could get to know each other. We don’t often get lots of time to interact, being in separate buildings, and everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves!

Our next social event will be at the North Terrace Pub on April 26th starting at 5pm – expect lots of food, drinks, a pub quiz and lots of other fun and games!

The IPA Committee, from left to right, Alessio, Claire, Luisa, Jackie, Jill and Matt

 

If you have any suggestions for themes for future events please get in touch with IPA committee (ipda@newcastle.ac.uk).

 

 

 

 

 

Find the IPA on facebook and look out for the new look ICaMB website coming soon where the Post-docs will have their own section!

IPA is run by Postdocs, for Postdocs. Get involved!

 

Welcome!

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Welcome to the ICaMB Blog!

One of the most important things we need to do as scientists is communicate, both with each other and with people outside academia and research.  To help this, we will be starting a range of new, interconnected social media activities in ICaMB.  In addition to this blog, we now have a Facebook page and regular updates on ICaMB activities via Twitter.

Here, we hope to have contributions not only from academics in ICaMB but also from our students, postdocs and other key members of the Institute, as well as  some guest bloggers.  We plan to have regular blog articles appear every two weeks but this will be supplemented with the thoughts and opinions of a range of contributors as well as updates on events as they happen.

Our plan is to inform but also hopefully entertain.  We will highlight some of the great research that is going on in ICaMB but also discuss some of the important issues that affect all of us as scientists.  We will value your contributions so if you have something you would like to say, please get in touch!

This is an exciting time in ICaMB.  Although we, like everyone else, are having to weather the economic storm, there is also plenty of great science being performed and new initiatives that make this a great place to work and perform research. The new ICaMB postdoc (IPA) and postgraduate student (PANIC) associations will provide a new voice for some of our most important members of staff. We also have the new IRES, Independent Researcher Establishment Scheme that will bring new principal investigators and ideas to the Institute (more on this later).

Check out the Facebook pages for photos of ICaMB activities and scientists.  Feel free to contribute your own (embarrassing photos of Professors are always welcome). Check out Twitter for all the latest up to the minute information and news about ICaMB activities. We hope you will enjoy reading this blog.

Please join in and tell us what you are thinking!