Crossroads in Biology 2014

Dear ‘Crossroads in Biology’ Participant,

The symposium is approaching so it is time to point out some items of the conference.

We are pleased to host two workshops: The companies Alcimed and Thermo Scientific/Fermentas will offer the seminars "Working at the interface between Science and Business" and "Optimize your Real-time qPCR", respectively. Feel free to join the workshops at the conference.

On the two conference days, students and young scientists have the opportunity to meet the invited speakers for lunch to discuss about science and more in a relaxed atmosphere. If you are interested, please check the participating speakers and dates on our website http://crossroads.uni-koeln.de/students_talks.php and write a mail to [email protected].

Finally we would like to turn your attention to the poster session (Kölsch and prezels will be provided for general public interest) and the dinner and party on Thursday evening.

News and more will be published on our website http://crossroads.uni-koeln.de/ and on Twitter https://twitter.com/Crossroads2014.

See you soon in Cologne

The CIB2014 organizational committee

Crossroads in Biology (CiB) - Meeting 2014 International Students" symposium in Life science in Cologne, Germany

Dear Crossroads participants,
if you are interested in meeting the speakers in a relaxed atmosphere to discuss about science and more, you are invited to have lunch on one of the two conference days. Please pick your favourite speaker and a date and send us a mail to [email protected]. Please check the table on which days the speakers are available! Only 3 students per speaker will be allowed.

Your CIB committee

Christiane Ritter studied biochemistry at the University of Hannover (1992-1997). Since her diploma thesis at the University of Zurich, she is interested in the molecular interactions that play a role during the folding and misfolding of proteins. In her Ph.D. thesis at the Swiss Technical University (ETH) in Zurich, she analyzed how cellular folding sensors can recognize structural defects in newly synthesized glycoproteins (1997-2002).

Afterwards, she moved to the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, USA, where she developed an NMR-based approach to determine the structural basis of function and infectivity of a fungal prion.

Since 2007, she is head of the junior research group „macromolecular interactions“. 2009 she was appointed professor for biophysics and NMR-based infection research at the Technical University of Braunschweig. Christiane Ritter is interested in inter-disciplinary activities and is member of the German Young Academy (Jungen Akademie an der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Deutschen Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina).

Marina Chekulaeva did her PhD at the EMBL Heidelberg, under the supervision of Anne Ephrussi and her Postdoc in the lab of Witold Filipowicz. Since October 2012 she is group leader at the Max-Delbrück Centrum in Berlin.

During her predoctoral study she obtain a fellowship from Louis-Jeantet Foundation of Medicine, than as Postdoc she was supported from the Engelhorn Stiftung, the Human Frontier Science Program and the European Molecular Biology Organisation fellowships.

In her lab the main focus is to understand the molecular mechanisms that regulate mRNA translation, localization and stability and role of non-coding RNAs in this process. Up to 90% of human DNA is estimated to be transcribed into, so called, non-coding RNAs that are not translated into proteins. One of her interests is to understand the mechanisms of miRNA function.

John van der Oost received his PhD 1989 at the Department of Molecular Cell Biology of the Free University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands). During his postdoc time he worked at Helsinki University (Finland) as well as at the EMBL in Heidelberg (Germany) before he returned back to Amsterdam on a fellowship of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences.

In 1995 he moved to the Wageningen University where he was appointed Professor in 2005.

In his work with Bacteria and Archaea, he studied the recently discovered CRISPR-Cas system that allows Prokaryotes to acquire resistance against viruses and plasmids. His work could show that adaptive immunity is not an exclusive feature of complex organisms.

George Kollias, born in 1958, received his B.Sc. in Biology from the University Of Athens, Greece and PhD training from 1980 to 1984 in Molecular Biology at the National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens, Greece.

He performed postdoctoral studies in the field of gene structure and expression at the Laboratory of Gene Structure and Expression, National Institute for Medical Research, Mill Hill, London, UK, and from 1990-2000 he established the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics at the Hellenic Pasteur Institute in Athens, Greece. From 2000-2002, he was appointed Director of the Institute for Immunology at the Biomedical Sciences Research Center "Alexander Fleming", and from 2002-2010 he has served as the Center's President and Scientific Director.

He is currently a Researcher and Director of the Immunology Division at BSRC Fleming. In May 2012 he was elected Professor of Experimental Physiology at the Medical School of the University of Athens. Dr. Kollias' work has contributed decisively to the development of major national infrastructures of scientific and technological excellence in Greece and to the support of a new generation of Greek scientists.

CROSSROADS in BIOLOGY

University of Cologne: Feb 13-14th, 2014

Present your work to an international audience - free of charge!!

ABSTRACT DEADLINE: Dec 1st, 2013

Dear Students & Colleagues,

We would like to inform you that on February 13th-14th, 2014, the 5th International Crossroads in Biology symposium will be held at the University of Cologne. Excellent speakers from around the world will report their recent work. This meeting is free of charge and is a unique chance for you to present your research to an international scientific audience. We encourage students and post-docs to participate in the poster session or give an oral presentation.

So register now and submit an abstract (300 words) of your project! One abstract per session will be selected for oral presentation, and poster prizes will be awarded. The deadline for the abstract submission period is December 1st!

Registered participants will also gain admission to the conference dinner & get-together on Feb 13th. Visit our homepage (http://crossroads.uni-koeln.de/ ) for more informations.

We are looking forward to welcoming you to Crossroads this February.

Crossroads in Biology (CiB) - Meeting 2012 International Students" symposium in Life science in Cologne, Germany

In 2001, Jernej Ule began his PhD work in Robert Darnell's lab at the Rockefeller University in New York City. After two years as a postdoctoral fellow at Rockefeller University, he started his research group at the Structural Studies department of MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge in 2006. In 2013, his group moved to the Department of Molecular Neuroscience at the UCL Institute of Neurology.

His group studies the role of protein-RNA and RNA-RNA interactions in the regulation of the mRNA life cycle during brain development or disease. They developed the individual-nucleotide resolution UV crosslinking and immunoprecipitation (iCLIP) method, which allows to identify protein-RNA interactions in intact cells and tissues. iCLIP enabled to determine the sequence and structural elements that specify the assembly of ribonucleoprotein complexes (RNPs), and to understand the function and evolution of RNPs. Currently, the group studies how dynamic remodelling of RNPs contributes to neuronal differentiation, and how defective RNPs can lead to neurologic diseases.

Stefano Casola from Milan will also attend the Crossroads in Biology Symposium.

Dr. Stefano Casola received his MD degree in 1993 and his PhD degree in 1999 from the University Federico II of Naples, Italy. After a post-doctoral experience in the laboratory of Klaus Rajewsky, at the Institute of Genetics, Cologne, Germany, he became Junior Investigator at the CBR Institute for Biomedical Research and Instructor in Pathology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA. Since 2006, he is a group leader at IFOM, the FIRC Institute of Molecular Oncology Foundation in Milan, Italy.

Dr. Casola main research interest is to decipher the genetic and epigenetic bases of B-cell development, with a particular emphasis given to the understanding of the mechanisms controlling B cell adaptive immunity. Another major focus of dr. Casola work is the dissection of the molecular mechanisms underlying B-cell lymphomagenesis.

Prof. Constance Scharff is a neural and behavioral biologist. Her group researches the cellular and molecular neurobiology of learned behaviors. Since 2005, she is head of the Department of Behavioral Biology at the Freie Universität in Berlin. In her talk she will focus on songbirds as a translational model to study speech and language disorders.

Patrick Cramer has confirmed his presence at the 5th Crossroad in Biology. Currently he is the director of the Gene Center and the Department of Biochemistry of the Ludwig-Maximillians-University of Munich. In his lab functional genomics techniques are applied to map protein-DNA and protein-RNA landscapes in the cell and to determine changes in the transcriptome. This appraoch contributes to the development of the new field of molecular systems biology.

We would like to draw your attention to the upcoming 1st International Symposium Cologne Excellent Women in Science CEWIS 2013 from July 18-19, 2013.

Of course it's open to everybody - males and females :)

http://cewis2013.uni-koeln.de/

Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät: Cologne Excellent Women in Science (CEWIS),... International Symposium 18-19 July 2013 Cologne, Germany. Cologne Excellent Women in Science (CEWIS)