Category Archives: Reports

News, Reports

Postdoc and Postgraduate Survey Results

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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

Meetings, News, Reports

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

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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.

Meetings, News, Reports

BSDB Medal Award lectures now on YouTube

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itemprop="image"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

Meetings, News, Reports

BSDB/BSCB Awardees and new BSDB committee members

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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.