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.

The lectures of the two BSDB medal award winners announced on the 2015 Spring Meeting are now available on YouTube:

• the Waddington Medal lecture by Lewis Wolpert (UCL, London) who presented a talk about his seminal discoveries of concepts of positional information, and

• the Beddington Medal lecture by John Robert Davis who presented a talk entitled “Intercellular forces orchestrate cell repulsion and embryonic pattern formation“.

These two talks are embedded below. Information about all other awardees, links to interviews performed by The Node, and a meeting report can be found in an earlier post which has been updated accordingly.

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

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

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 meeting report 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.
• 1^st 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.
• 1^st 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

• BSCB Science writing Prize winner: Ross Harper (UCL, London) for an essay on antibiotic resistance which can be read here.
• The BSCB Image Award winners are listed here.

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.