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BSDB/BSCB Awardees and new BSDB committee members

The joint BSDB/BSCB spring meeting has again been a great and most successful event. For those who want to relive the BSDB/BSCB Spring meeting, and those who could not make it but would like to know what happened: read a lively by Nestor Saiz which has recently been published on The Node. As every year most of our Awards are announced on this meeting and the BSDB would like to congratulate all prize winners and awardees:

Main Awards

  • BSDB Waddington Award winner: Lewis Wolpert (UCL, London) who presented a talk about his seminal discoveries of concepts of positional information. You may watch his Waddington medal lecture either on YouTube or below, and read the interview performed by The Node on the day which was published in the July issue of Development (LINK).
  • BSCB Hooke Award winner: Kairbaan Hodivala-Dilke (Barts Cancer Inst, QMUL, London) who presented a talk entitled: “From the Garden to the Lab” about using angiogenesis as a target for cancer treatment either on YouTube or below.
  • BSCB WICB Award winner: Victoria Cowling (Univ. Dundee) who presented a talk “Regulation of mRNA capping in embryonic stem cell pluripotency and differentiation” You may watch the WICB Medal lecture on YouTube or below.
  • BSDB Beddington Award winner: John Robert Davis (then at Kings, London with Brian Stramer, now at CRUK/Crick, London, with Nic Tapon) who presented a talk entitled “Intercellular forces orchestrate cell repulsion and embryonic pattern formation“. You may watch his Beddington medal lecture on YouTube or below, and read an interview with John performed by The Node.
  • 1st BSDB PhD Poster Prize winner (visit to 2015 SDB meeting, Utah): Wendy Gu (Univ Cambridge, with M Landgraf) – “The role of Wnt5 ligand and the Ryk family Wnt receptors in positioning neurites along the anteroposterior axis of the developing Drosophila ventral nerve cord“. Please, read an interview with Wendy here.
  • 1st BSCB PhD Poster Prize winner (visit to 2015 ASCB meeting, San Diego): Sam Crossman (NIMR/Crick, London, with JP Vincent) – “Apoptosis in Drosophila patterning mutant embryos occurs in regions with low epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) signalling

Please, note that the calls for nominations for next year’s awards have been announced in other news item, and that these will included for the first time the Cheryll Tickle award for women in their mid-scientific career.

Runners Up for PhD Poster Prize (sponsored by Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol)

  • Sebastian Judd-Mole (£200 prize; Monash Univ, with RB Burke) – “Functional characterisation of voltage gated chloride channel proteins in Drosophila
  • Jingchao Zhang (£150 prize; SCRM, Univ Edinburgh, with I Chambers) – “Interactions between Otx2 and Nanog regulates self-renewal network
  • Hannah Roddie (£150 prize; Univ Sheffield, with IR Evans) – “The apoptotic cell receptor Simu is required for normal inflammatory responses in Drosophila embryos

PostDoc Prizes (Sponsored by Gene Tools)

  • Monica Faronato (£150 prize; Imperial College, London, with L Magnani) – “DMXL2 regulates Notch in endocrine resistant breast cancer
  • Andrew Bailey (£150 prize; NIMR/Crick, London, with AP Gould) – “An antioxidant role for lipid droplets in a stem cell niche of Drosophila

Others

See the Lectures of all Medal winners

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pAvvGo3np8; w=520; h=405

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrVr64IKQyU; w=520; h=405

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEn55Co8jPw; w=520; h=405

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ls9bp98TxOo; w=520; h=405

 

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New BSDB committee members

Five of the BSDB commitee members, Malcolm Logan (2008-2015), Jenny Nichols (2010-2015), Lynda Erksine (2010-2015), Andrew Chalmers (2010-2015) and the Graduate Representative  Magdalena Stasiulewicz (2013-2015), will end their term this autumn and we would like to thank them for their outstanding service to the BSDB.  We are glad to be able to announce that four excellent successors have been elected on our AGM who will officially take term in autumn but will already respond to your queries or requests.

  • Alistair McGregor (Oxford Brookes Univ) – Evolution of animal development and morphology – arthropods including Drosophila
  • Berenika Plusa (The Univ. of Manchester) – Early mammalian embryogenesis – mouse
  • Tristan Rodriguez – (Imperial College, London) – cell fate decisions and cell survival in the early mammalian embryo – mouse and ES cells
  • Rita Sousa-Nunes – (Kings College, London) – Neural Proliferation and Tumourigenesis – Drosophila

Please, read about their research career paths and interests in another blog post. A call for nominating the postgraduate representative has been announced in another news item, so please, start to think about candidates.

 

 

 

 

How important is Developmental Biology?

BSDB members are encouraged to voice their opinion about the importance of Developmental Biology. A great opportunity is now provided by The Node.  They started a debate documented as a Storify based on the following rationale:

In the current climate of budget constraints and political pressure there is a noticeable shift in the type of science preferred by funders, with funding increasingly going to projects with clear translational potential. Developmental biology is a basic science, but it feeds into our understanding of disease and regenerative medicine. But do funders recognise this? In other words: Is Developmental Biology at risk because of the increasing emphasis on applied science?

We encourage you to participate in this debate. If you want to leave comments, just go to the Blog post or tweet your opinion copying @the_Node in.  Contributions will reveal an insight into the current thoughts within our community but also provide arguments and facts that can be used for a science communication and outreach campaign promoting Developmental Biology, as it was decided by the BSDB committee on its last meeting.

BSDB Gurdon Summer Studenships – DEADLINE!

End of March is the application deadline for the Gurdon Studentship scheme. This scheme provides financial support to allow highly motivated undergraduate students an opportunity to engage in practical research during their summer vacation. We look for students with a strong academic record and clear career vision, who have taken the initiative to establish contacts with a research laboratory where they can perform projects in the area of Developmental Biology. We expect this experience to enrich and complement their portfolio of expertise and to inspire them to pursue a career in research.

In 2014, 10 successful applicants spent 8 weeks in the research laboratories of their choices, and the feedback we received was outstanding. Please, read the student reports kindly sent to us by Benedetta Carbone, George Choa and George Hunt.

BIG grants, BIG papers! The dark side of research

On the 15th of January Times Higher Education published an article by Dorothy Bishop entitled “The big grants, the big papers: are we missing something?” This article is an important reflection on current grant funding and research evaluation strategies in the UK. It also refers to important statements by the BSDB chair Ottoline Leyser summing up results from a survey by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics about scientific research in the UK (see THE CONSERVATION). Dorothy Bishop’s conclusion in THE article is bleak: “If our focus remains so narrow, we … risk losing sight of the purpose and meaning of science itself.” However, she also hints at a new path of communication with major UK funding organisations. If you would like to contribute to this discussion, please, leave your comment below.