ISMB Postgraduate Symposium 2022
The ISMB PG symposium 2022 was held on May 5th-6th in the JZ Young lecture theatre at UCL. More than 80+ people attended this event with an equal distribution of face-to-face and online participants. This event also marked our successful transition back into the real world of human interactions, after more than two years of Covid-19 enforced online meetings.
As scientists we leave two types of legacies: the articles we publish and the people we train. And the latter are longer lasting than the former, and more often withstand the test of time better, introduces Finn Werner, interim director of the ISMB. Training the next generation of scientists is an important part of the core ISMB business, and the annual PG symposium always represents a highlight of the year as we learn about the full breadth of the ISMB’s research activities.
Over two days in six speaker sessions, our PhD students reported on important contributions made by structural-, molecular-, chemical- and computational biology approaches to push the frontiers of science! From protein interaction networks and drug discovery in viruses, function and regulation of ion channels, protein folding, unusual expression systems fit for space travel, unorthodox gene expression control in mycobacteria, to methyl transferases as tools for the synthetic biologist. In addition to the talks, the symposium included a poster session and a keynote lecture that this year was provided by Prof Ramesh Wigneshweraraj, the campus dean of Imperial College London. During the first part of his lecture, Ramesh presented pioneering research about ‘Phase condensation as an adaptive response to nutrient starvation in bacteria’. In the second part, he outlined the path of his own career, and a few personal ‘pearls of wisdom’ with our students including the following:
• Take ownership, and leadership, of your project and…
• Act on feedback from your supervisor
• Listen to people and read papers outside your area too
• Don’t be ‘economical’ with your experiments – do the extra experiment on a Friday afternoon
• Look out for the unexpected
• Remember to have fun in the lab
• Be bold and be brave, and be grateful
The ISMB prizes were awarded by our keynote speaker: the best poster prize was awarded to Debbie Woods for ‘Visualising SWI/SNF, a chromatin remodeller, in action’; the prize for the best 1st year talk was awarded to Mollie Virgo for ‘Investigation of microbial community dynamics using in vivo zebrafish infection models’; and the prize for the best 3rd year talk was awarded to Ivana Vujkovic Bukvin for ‘Paramagnetic relaxation enhancement NMR reveals the structures and ribosome interactions of nascent chains during biosynthesis’. Congratulations!
Ramesh Wigneshweraraj and Debbie Woods
Ramesh Wigneshweraraj and Mollie Virgo
Ivana Vujkovic Bukvin and Finn Werner
Finally, I’d like to express my gratitude for secretarial support during the organisation of this event, in particular to Manu Davies, Andrew Service, and Uzma Uddin for tech support.
I’m looking forward to seeing as many as possible of you at the ISMB symposium 2022 on June 16th/17th, the organising committee has assembled a very exciting programme we can look forward to!
Best wishes,
Finn