Category Archives: News

Abigail Tucker: the first to be awarded the BSDB Cheryll Tickle medal

tucker-abigailAs reported earlier last year, the BSDB has introduced the Cheryll Tickle Medal, which will be awarded annually to a mid-career, female scientist for her outstanding achievements in the field of Developmental Biology. The BSDB is proud to announce the inaugural awardee Prof. Abigail Saffron Tucker. The medal will be presented at the BSCB/BSDB Spring Meeting 2016 where Abigail will present the Cheryll Tickle Award Lecture. If you want to read more, please download the BSDB Newletter 2015.

The BSDB Newsletter 2015 is out

The BSDB Newletter 2015 is out! As you might have noticed, there was no BSDB summer newsletter this year. The reason for this is that the BSDB committee has taken the sensible decision to reduce them to one edition a year. Newsletters clearly do no longer play the same role as they used to. In times of the internet, they are no longer needed to update members on new developments of society matters or in the area of Developmental Biology. This is now done far better through the BSDB website and through The Node (also see page 9 of the Newletter). However, we feel that providing an overview of the year still is a service we owe to BSDB members, and which might provide an informative document also for future generations.

This year, the BSDB has implemented the new Cheryll Tickle Prize and we proudly announce Abigail Tucker as the well-deserved inaugural Awardee of 2016 (page 14). This prize is for outstanding women in their mid-career and our chair, Ottoline Leyser, explains the underlying rationale in her welcome note (page 2). As usual, this issue contains the reports by our secretary Kim Dale (page 3), meetings officer Joshua Brickman (page 4), treasurer Chris Thompson (page 7), communications officer (page 9) and, for the first time, a joined note by our graduate student rep Alexandra Ashcroft and postdoc rep Michelle Ware who explain to us their plans to improve services for young BSDB members (page 10). We congratulate all BSDB awardees of 2015 (page 6), introduce our new committee members (page 11) and present Ana Ribeiro’s report of the Autumn Meeting 2015 (page 5). Claudio Stern makes an important case for promoting developmental biologists for prizes and politically important memberships (to which the BSDB committee is responding already; page 16), and we explain our recent decision to become a full member of the Royal Society of Biology (page 23). Finally, we present four reports of the 2015 Gurdon/The Company of Biologists Summer Studentship awardees which clearly demonstrate the success of this scheme (page 17).

I hope you enjoy this issue and, in the name of the BSDB committee, would like to wish you a happy and successful new year 2016.

Andreas Prokop (Communications officer)

P.S. If you are interested in BSDB newletters of the last 10 years, they are archived on our website.

Beddington Medal nomination & Gurdon studentship reports

Beddington Medal nominations

Nominations are invited for the 2016 Beddington Medal for the best graduating PhD student in the field of Developmental Biology.
The eligibility period covers PhD dissertations which were defended during the calendar year previous to the award. Furthermore, applicants need to have at least one paper accepted or close to acceptance. The deadline for nominations will be announced after the autumn meeting and usually is around mid Janary. Further details about the nomination process can be found here. Please read these before submitting any nomination.

Gurdon Summer Studentship reports

The Gurdon summer studentship 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. Every year, 10 successful applicants spend 8 weeks in the research laboratories of their choices, and the feedback we received was outstanding. See the list of all successful awardees, and read the student reports, of which the last three have just been uploaded:

Postdoc and Postgraduate Survey Results

The BSDB postoc and postgrad representatives, Alex Ashcroft and Michelle Ware , undertook a survey with BSDB junior members to find out how our society could better serve their needs. The results are in! Read below the message from Michelle and Alex explainng the outcome and the conclusions and measures that will be taken.

Thank you so much to everyone who participated. We had a tremendous response of over 100 participants. We have collated the results which can be found here. Some clear trends emerged from the survey, namely a desire for more (transferable) professional development at the annual Spring Meetings and beyond. We are extremely excited to have now a basis on which to make changes that we hope will benefit the future generation of developmental biologists.

The survey results were discussed in detail at the most recent committee meeting, and we will be making the following changes:

  1. The 2016 Spring Meeting will now include a Sunday afternoon careers session. This will include sessions on non-academic career paths and transferable skills. We are liaising with the BSCB reps to invite a number of guests.
  2. We are liaising with the BSCB reps to revamp the graduate student and postdoc social.
  3. We will be investigating introducing science breakfasts/dinners so students and postdocs can have an informal group discussion with prominent leaders in the field and/or science clinics to get one-on-one training.
  4. The graduate student seminar will now include talks from transitioning graduate students and postdocs.
  5. Away from the Spring Meetings, we are investigating the logistics of introducing sustainable postdoc and graduate student training days.
  6. We will be working with the communications officer, Andreas Prokop, to create a graduate student and postdoc area on the BSDB website.
  7. We will be working with the 2017 Spring Meeting organising committee to bring other exciting changes that you have asked for.

As announced, there was a prize draw where parcipants could win a number of Kindles and £30 Amazon vouchers. Congratulations to the winners:

  • Maria Kotini (University College London) – Kindle
  • Harriet Knafler (University of Sheffield) – Kindle
  • Nestor Saiz (Sloan Kettering Institute, New York) – Kindle
  • Federica Berti, (University of Portsmouth) – Kindle
  • Monica Tambalo (Crick Institute, London) – voucher
  • Wendy Gu (University of Zurich) – vouncher

Please, feel free to contact Alex (student@bsdb.org) or Michelle (postdoc@bsdb.org) with any further suggestions or comments. We would really love to hear from you. And don’t forget to join us on the BSDB Facebook site.

Thank you again for everyone who participated in the survey.

Best wishes,

Alex and Michelle

Science on the Beach: the Autumn Meeting Report is out!

Autumn2015-logos

On 7-10 Oct 2015 the Joint meeting of the BSDB with the Spanish and Portuguese Societies of Developmental Biology took place on a sea side resort of the Algarve in Portugal, organised by António Jacinto, Domingos Henrique, Miguel Manzanares, Josh Brickman and Kate Storey. If you did not have the opportunity to attend or would like to relive the experience, please read the detailed meeting report by Ana Ribeiro which has now been published on The Node and features talks by Austin Smith, Sally Lowell, Berenika Plusa, Andrew Johnson, Kate Storey, Elisa Marti, Anna Philpott, François Guillemot, Alexandre Raposo, Cláudia Barros, Rita Sousa-Nunes, Leonor Saúde, Andrew Oates, Berta Alsina, Juan R. Martinez-Morales, Claudia Linker, Ana Pombo, Rui Martinho, Javier Lopez-Rios and Moisés Mallo.