14
EMBL etcetera The Newsletter of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory Issue 51 • June 2009 • www.embl.org/newsletter Science, posters, party: Lab Day! Top award for Reflect team A team of researchers from EMBL Heidelberg’s biocomputing depart- ment have won Elsevier’s prestigious Grand Challenge competition for Re- flect, an automated document anno- tation service. Their invention beat 70 other ideas to win the competition, which invites researchers to prototype tools dealing with the ever-increasing amount of online life sciences infor- mation. Freely available on the web, Reflect pinpoints the proteins and small molecules mentioned on a page – whether it’s an abstract, the full-text of a publication, a Wikipedia entry or anything else – and provides pop-ups containing all the annotations you need. See page 2 for more. Lab Day on 18 June this year took on a different format, with the scientific sessions in the morning featuring workshops and mini symposia on a variety of subjects suggested by EMBL scientists (see page 3). The afternoon included the now legendary poster session, with prizes going to the Pep- perkok, Surrey and Häring groups, the John Kendrew Young Scientist Award Ceremony, a recital by the EMBL music society and the Heidelberg University choir, and the predoc grad- uation ceremony, followed by a barbecue and a party with live music. All in all it was a busy week, with Lab Day sandwiched between EMBL’s fourth Career Day on 17 June and EM- BLEM’s 10th birthday party on the evening of 19 June. More pics on page 4. New fashion options for non-drivers 7 On the buses 6 Training officers join forces for courses 5 Goodbye to Dietrich Suck Two heads are better than one 3

Introducing modern science into schools - EMBL Monterotondo

  • Upload
    others

  • View
    3

  • Download
    0

Embed Size (px)

Citation preview

Page 1: Introducing modern science into schools - EMBL Monterotondo

EMBLetcetera

The Newsletter of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory

Issue 51 • June 2009 • www.embl.org/newsletter

Science, posters, party: Lab Day!Top award forReflect teamA team of researchers from EMBLHeidelberg’s biocomputing depart-ment have won Elsevier’s prestigiousGrand Challenge competition for Re-flect, an automated document anno-tation service. Their invention beat 70other ideas to win the competition,which invites researchers to prototypetools dealing with the ever-increasingamount of online life sciences infor-mation. Freely available on the web,Reflect pinpoints the proteins andsmall molecules mentioned on a page– whether it’s an abstract, the full-textof a publication, a Wikipedia entry oranything else – and provides pop-upscontaining all the annotations youneed. See page 2 for more.

Lab Day on 18 June this year took on a different format, with thescientific sessions in the morning featuring workshops and minisymposia on a variety of subjects suggested by EMBL scientists(see page 3).

The afternoon included the now legendary poster session, with prizes going to the Pep-perkok, Surrey and Häring groups, the John Kendrew Young Scientist Award Ceremony, arecital by the EMBLmusic society and the Heidelberg University choir, and the predoc grad-uation ceremony, followed by a barbecue and a party with live music. All in all it was a busyweek, with Lab Day sandwiched between EMBL’s fourth Career Day on 17 June and EM-BLEM’s 10th birthday party on the evening of 19 June. More pics on page 4.

New fashionoptions fornon-drivers7

On the buses

6Training officersjoin forcesfor courses5 Goodbye to

Dietrich SuckTwo heads arebetter than one3

Page 2: Introducing modern science into schools - EMBL Monterotondo

EMBL&cetera • June 20092

team of researchers from EMBL Heidel-berg’s biocomputing department have

won Elsevier’s prestigious Grand Challengecompetition for Reflect, an automated docu-ment annotation service.Their invention beat 70 other ideas to win

the competition, which invites researchersto prototype tools dealing with the ever-in-creasing amount of online life sciences in-formation. The group received the accoladeat the Experimental Biology Conference inNew Orleans in April. The chair of thejudges, Eduard Hovy of the University ofSouthern California, said that Reflect is“beautifully conceived and nicely executed...it has an exciting vision for extending its ca-

pabilities... it provides genuine and immedi-ate improvements in scientificcommunication and points the way towardinteresting new possibilities for the future”.Freely available on the web, Reflect pin-

points the proteins and small moleculesmentioned on a web page – whether it’s anabstract, the full-text of a publication, aWikipedia entry or anything else – and pro-vides pop-ups containing all the annotationsyou need. With Reflect, wasting timesearching for unfamiliar proteins and chem-icals that crop up in research papers is athing of the past; with just one click, all theinformation you need is there.How does it work?Well, Reflect’s core

component is aconsolidated ‘dic-tionary’ of 1.5 mil-lion proteins from373 organismsand 4.3 millionsmall molecules.Simply by pressinga button on yourbrowser, or typinga URL in Reflect’sweb page, theservice will auto-matically tag thenames of proteinsand small mole-cules – blue forproteins and or-ange for chemi-cals.A click on the hyperlink brings up win-

dows displaying the item’s domain structure,subcellular localisation, 3D structure, andinteraction partners in the case of proteins,and the chemical structure and interactionpartners in the case of small molecules, andallows the user to quickly link to more de-tailed information.“Reflect annotates proteins or small mole-

cules in just one easy step, while still main-taining the original page,” explains SeánO’Donoghue who, along with Lars Jensen,initiated and led the project. “Before, peoplewould have had to go to Google or Uniprotor any number of individual databases tocollate the information they needed aboutunfamiliar terms.”As information on proteins and small mol-

ecules can differ according to species, Re-flect first scans the page to determine theorganism that the text is talking about and

tailors the findings accordingly.“Reflect is useful for anyone who reads life

science literature on the web, including re-searchers, teachers and students. It is alreadybeing used by thousands of researchers, eventhough the method has only just been pub-lished,” explains Evangelos Pafilis, one of theSchnieder group’s implementors of Reflectalong with trainee Heiko Horn, MichaelKuhn of the Bork Group and Nigel Brownfrom BioQuant at Heidelberg University.Documents in PDF, Word, and Excel for-

mat can also be ‘Reflected’ using OnTheFly,an extension to Reflect built by GeorgiosPavlopoulos from the Schneider group.To give Reflect a try, simply go to

http://reflect.ws and type or paste a URLinto the search box at the top, then click ‘Re-flect’. The method was published in the 9June issue ofNature Biotechnology.

“Reflect annotatesproteins or moleculesin just one easy step,while still maintainingthe original page”

A

Action plan for admin survey resultsAt the beginning of the year EMBLlaunched an online survey in order to as-sess the efficiency and effectiveness of thepersonnel, finance, payroll, recruitmentand purchase departments. Now the resultsare available and will be used to continueimproving EMBL’s services to staff.“The reponse rate was 50%, which is ex-

cellent for this kind of survey,” says SeniorProject Officer Anna Efstathiou.

In broad terms, the results show that theareas in need of improvement are staff in-duction processes, probation and contractrenewal administration, accessing budgetinformation, grant support and use of theSAP Shopping Cart. On the plus side, itseems that EMBL boasts consistently help-ful staff across all work areas.Some action has already been taken, for

example the newWeb Budget View, the re-

organisation of the HR staff to give unitspecific support and the implementation ofa shopping cart catalogue. For a more de-tailed overview of Administration’s actionplan, visit http://intranet.embl.de/survey_results.pdf.Administration would like to thank

everyone who took the time to completethe survey and for the useful feedback theygave.

Reflect upon what youdon’t understand...

Top: the EMBL members of the Reflect team. Diagram: a Nature papergets the Reflect treatment. The highlighted terms are proteins and small

molecules; clicking on ‘p53’ in the title has brought up a new boxdisplaying information relating to the protein in humans, including

synonyms, sequence, subcellular location, interaction partners and 3Dstructure. The user can also link to related literature with one more click.

Page 3: Introducing modern science into schools - EMBL Monterotondo

EMBL&cetera • June 2009 3

Two heads arebetter than one

EMBL’s Gene ExpressionUnit has two new Joint

Heads, Eileen Furlong andLars Steinmetz, who havealready embarked on amakeover which includeschanging the unit’s name

Pho

to:M

ariettaSch

upp

Pho

to:C

hristin

ePan

agiotid

is

There was quite a buzz at this year’s Lab Dayon 17 June, with a number of very popularscientific sessions in the morning featuringworkshops and mini symposia on a varietyof subjects suggested by EMBL scientists.First, group leaders Maja Köhn, Carsten

Schultz and Edward Lemke asked ‘what canchemistry do for biology?’ and presented anew section of the EMBL website devoted tochemical biology (www.embl.de/research/chemistry/index.html), in preparation forthe rapidly expanding field eventually be-coming an EMBL Centre. Meanwhile, Jan

Korbel and Paul Flicek chaired two sessionsdemonstrating the many applications ofnext-generation sequencing – which werepacked with the growing community ofEMBL scientists using Solexa sequencing –which is also strengthened by activitieswithin the High-throughput Functional Ge-nomics centre.After the coffee break, EMBL-EBI’s

Christoph Steinbeck and Paula de Matosgave a tutorial on chemistry and cheminfor-matics at the EBI, Jan and Paul returnedwith a mini-symposium on genome varia-tion, and Ramesh Pillai and Dónal O’Carrollfrom Grenoble andMonterotondo respec-

tively hosted an exciting session on RNAand gene expression.“The scientific workshops and symposia

were very well received, with a full house forevery session,” says joint head of GenomeBiology Eileen Furlong who, together withRamesh Pillai and EMBL-EBI’s AlvisBrazma, organised the day. “Getting peopleinvolved in deciding the programme andrunning the sessions meant that time wasdevoted to the hottest topics in the lab. Wehope that these stimulating sessions willserve as a catalyst for future Lab Days with anew focus and a new spirit. We’d love tohear about your suggestions for next year.”

ars and Eileen are planning a change oftactic, moving towards high-through-

put, global approaches. “The leitmotif ‘fromgenome to biological systems’ will stay thesame”, Lars explains, “but the strategy willchange slightly. It will be like zooming out tohave a look at the bigger picture.”Eileen is keen to stress that this is evolu-

tion rather than revolution. “Our plans forthe unit won’t come as a surprise to anyone.What we have in mind is a natural progres-sion of the path already pursued by previouscoordinators,” she says. “The latest groupleader appointments have already broughtvaluable expertise in all the disciplines youneed for successful systems biology. Whatwe are doing now is expanding and integrat-ing those efforts. We also intend to continuethe recent trend of integrating more chem-istry and chemical biology.”“What we are planning also fits well into

the greater scheme of biomedical researchand medicine beyond the unit and EMBL,”Lars adds. “Medicine is moving away fromtherapies tailored to entire populations. In-stead, the trend is now towards personalisedtreatments, with a shift from reactive medi-

cine aimed at curing symptoms towards pre-ventative approaches that detect and treatdiseases at the molecular level.”Basic research and technology develop-

ments will be key to implementing such achange, so Lars and Eileen want the unit toengage more with technology development.“The questions we address are always re-stricted by what technology allows us to do,”Eileen points out. “Having engineers and

technology developers as part of the unit fa-cilitates direct exchange with the biologists.This way, new instrumentation can be cus-tomised to the researchers’ needs, so that re-search questions can shape technologyrather than the other way around.”As for what kinds of technology they’d like

to see developed, Lars says: “One prioritywill certainly be nanotechnology. For exam-

ple, developing custom ‘Lab-on-a-Chip’ ap-plications that combine all steps of a ge-nomics experiment in one device” – a veryuseful tool, but one which has so far eludeddevelopers.Eileen would also like to see synthetic biol-

ogy approaches that apply engineering prin-ciples to biology. “For example, constructingartificial circuits of molecular networkscould provide a very powerful mechanismto test hypotheses about the behaviour ofnetwork components and dynamics.”Perhaps the most visible change Lars and

Eileen are introducing is in the unit’s name:it will be re-baptised the Genome BiologyUnit, a move that was welcomed in 8 May’sSACmeeting. “We felt that Gene Expressionwas too narrow a description to encompassall the groups, even more so with respect tothe kind of people we’d like to recruit,” Larsexplains. “The new name stresses the focuson genome-wide studies and will make iteasier to recruit interdisciplinary staff.”Staff old and new can be sure that under

the guidance of its newHeads, their unit willcontinue to be at the cutting-edge of science.

L

“It will be like zoomingout to look at thebigger picture”Lars Steinmetz

A new look at Lab Day

PTO for Lab Day pics!...

Page 4: Introducing modern science into schools - EMBL Monterotondo

EMBL&cetera • June 20094

That ATC cake didn’t last long...

The 11th EMBL PhD sympo-sium at EMBL Heidelberg on29-31 October, ‘Puzzles inBiology’, will present plentyof questions to ponder andsome solutions, too.The annual event, organ-ised by EMBL’s PhD stu-dents, will “explore howbiologists piece togetherinformation from their

research and other resources,and use this to identify the one missing piecethat completes our understanding of the big-ger picture,” according to Peter Blattmann,chair of the organising committee. “Thesymposium is structured so that we learnpiece by piece, first focussing on particularbiological questions and then building up incomplexity to see how these areas come to-gether in understanding bigger puzzles suchas the molecular biology of disease.”Confirmed speakers include Leena Pelto-

nen (Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute), AriHelenius (ETH Zurich) and Stefan Hell(MPI Göttingen). A complete list of speak-ers and registration pages can be found atwww.phdsymposium.embl.org. Registra-tion closes on 15 July, so be sure to secureyour seat soon!

In a new initiative called the HeidelbergForum for Young Life Scientists, PhD stu-dents from EMBLHeidelberg are clubbingtogether with most major graduate pro-grammes fromHeidelberg, including thoseof DKFZ, MPI, ZMBH, HBIGS and CellNet-works, to arrange a symposium in October.“It will be a bit like the EMBL PhD sympo-

sium, just shorter and with a different topic,but with the same aim: to gather PhD stu-dents and other young scientists from Ger-many and abroad for some interesting talksand discussions,” says IbenMøller-Hansen,one of the organising committee.

The symposium will cover a broad rangeof topics, each institute having a separatesession with a theme important to its ownresearch. The EMBL session is entitled‘Through the looking glass: UnderstandingMolecular Biology through Evolution’. Moredetails are available athttp://forum09.mpimf-heidelberg.mpg.de.

A similar collaborative effort already in exis-tence between PhD students at EMBL-EBIand those from the Sanger Institute andCambridge University has just held its thirdsymposium. The SCAMPS (Sanger-EBI-Cambridge PhD) event took place at theuniversity’s Robinson College on 23 Apriland provided an opportunity for studentsfrom all the institutes to present their re-search to an audience of their peers, learnmore about research taking place elsewherein Cambridge and form stronger links andmore collaborations within the community.

Bigger, better, more! PhD symposia fill the calendar

Pho

tos:Hug

oNeves

(excep

twhe

reindicated

)

Pictures from Lab Day, 18 June, and 19 June’s EMBLEM birthday party (including a keepsake forReception Assistant Anna Maria Subosco, below left). Below centre: Graduating this year wereGulcin Cakan Akdogan, Boris Bryk, Iryna Charapitsa, Claudia Chica, Marcello Clerici, Elisa Dultz,Abdullah Kahraman, Esther Lenherr, Eugenio Mancera, Elena Mancini, Holger von Moeller,Gabriele Musumeci, Georgios Pavlopoulos, Evangelia Petsalaki, Sergey Prykhozhij, Helio Roque,Carolina Tängemo, Lieve Temmerman, Susanne Till, Guillaume Valentin and Rudolf Walczak.

Photo: Marietta Schupp

Page 5: Introducing modern science into schools - EMBL Monterotondo

EMBL&cetera • June 2009 5

EMBL Heidelberg’s longest-serving group leader, DietrichSuck, says goodbye at the end of May. In the 40 years he’sbeen a scientist, EMBL – and science itself – has changedimmeasurably...

never really had a concrete plan about howmy career should progress. I always thought,

let’s see what comes along and take opportu-nities as they arise,” says Dietrich, contem-plating his working life halfway through hisfinal month at EMBL. “After all, themost im-portant inventions in science weren’t reallyplanned. You should always be aware thatsomething new could be coming up.”Having said that, though, he certainly

never envisaged staying at EMBL for thislong. “My first contract was three years butit was only in 1987, when I became jointunit coordinator, that I had an open-endedcontract,” he says. “I thought I’d end upgoing to the university and have the usualcareer and habilitation and become a profes-sor.”Dietrich started at EMBL as far back as

1977, when the building wasn’t even fin-ished. “I came from the US, having done apostdoc at Purdue University inWestLafayette,” he says. “The structural lab wasn’tready at EMBL so for five years I was indowntown Heidelberg, as a staff scientist inthe group of Reuben Lebermann at the Max

Planck Institute for Medical Research.“One day in 1982 the DG, Lennart

Philippson, personally came down andasked me to become a group leader, on thecondition that I move up here.”The rest, as they say, is history – and now

Dietrich is saying goodbye to almost threedecades at EMBL, having seen manychanges along the way.“When I started, structural biology was a

relatively new and difficult field. We’d haveto use grams of protein to get a crystal,” hesays. “Now you can do everything with amilligram. In the old days, data collectionwould take weeks or months – I once did a32-hour shift in Hamburg, because it in-volved developing films in the dark roomand hand-mounting the crystals – but nowit takes a minute!“Nowadays, we work with much more dif-

ficult problems and have many more possi-bilities, of course – but there’s not such asense of achievement when you painstak-ingly produce your first crystal.”There have also been changes on the ad-

ministrational side. “It’s hard to imaginenow, but when I started, EMBL providedeverything. You weren’t supposed to getfunds from outside,” he recalls. “Nowadaysthat’s a huge part of the work of a groupleader. Also, it’s not so easy anymore to pur-sue projects when it’s not obvious thatthey’re going to amount to anything.”Dietrich can appreciate both sides of the

coin. “Competition is good – I think theuniversity should also have a system that en-courages people to move on frequently – buton the other hand, people have to write somany proposals, and this and all the otheradministration of funding takes too much

time now. It means that you can’t just get onwith the science.”It’s been the science, rather than any sense

of driving ambition, that’s kept Dietrich’s in-terest. “I’m not someone who really sells sci-ence, and I was never very fond of doinggrant applications and things,” he admitswith a smile. “I know it’s a bit old-fashionedto say this, with all the emphasis on compe-tition that there is today, but I was never re-ally interested in that side of things. I do thescience, and I really enjoy it, and that’s theimportant thing.”Dietrich feels there’s too much pressure on

scientists these days to be seen to ‘succeed’in the competitive sense. “It seems now thatpeople just count papers instead of lookingat the actual work that someone has done. Iwould advise young scientists to be deter-mined to involve themselves completely tosolve a problem.“Of course you have to write papers and

show results in the top journals if possible,but primarily you should really enjoy whatyou do. If you have something interesting,concentrate on it!”EMBL is, in his own word, “heaven” when

it comes to opportunities for scientists. “Ilove the fact that there’s so much independ-ence for group leaders here, even very youngones. You don’t find that anywhere else,” hesays. “The rather small groups here alsomeans that you have to interact very closelywith other people and share equipment,which promotes contact.“The PhD Programme is great – young

people coming from everywhere really con-tribute to the atmosphere of the place – andfor it’s size, there’s hardly any bureaucracycompared to other places. Most of all, EMBLis the only truly international place I know.”He’ll miss EMBL, but is quite content to

leave science behind. “I’ve now had 40 yearsin science, so that’s a good time to end thisparticular chapter,” he smiles. “Of course I’llkeep in touch and drop by for some greatlunch now and again, but it’s time to take aback seat and let the young people takeover!”

“EMBL is the only trulyinternational place I

know”Dietrich Suck

“I

“To enjoy your science is themost important thing”

Pho

to:M

ariettaSch

upp

Page 6: Introducing modern science into schools - EMBL Monterotondo

EMBL&cetera • April 20096

OnMarch 18-20 EMBLMontero-tondo’s ELLS (European LearningLaboratory for the Life Sciences) offi-cer Rossana De Lorenzi helped organ-ise a Brain Awareness Week 2009event at the Stazione Zoologica AntonDohrn (SZN, below) in Naples. Aimedat teachers, students and the public,the event included seminars, experi-ments, posters and videos for an in-depth look at the brain and its secrets.The first day was dedicated to brain

development, with scientific seminarsabout the evolution of the nervoussystem. The afternoon saw a sessionon the psychobiology of childhoodand on the role of music during earlydevelopment. Practical demonstra-tions during the day included stainingtechniques to analyse brain tissues todetect neuronal damage.The seminars on day two focussed

on brain and behaviour and the mech-anism of memory. The first explainedthe reciprocity between musical notesand the nervous system and was fol-lowed by one on mirror neurons,which are activated by the observationof actions performed by another per-son. The practicals included the obser-vation of squid and the wormCaenorhabditis elegans, model organ-isms for the study of neurons.The last day focused on neurodegen-

erative diseases, traumatic brain injuryand psychological disorders, with onesession examining artworks created byAlzheimer’s patients.Two small robots, a dog and a di-

nosaur, were the main attraction. De-veloped by the Scuola SuperioreSant’Anna as part of a project aimed atunderstanding biological processesusing bionics, such models can beused for the diagnosis of neonatal in-farction and rehabilitation of children.“The different ways of communica-

tion that coexisted during the eventgave the public the chance to approachnew and difficult themes from differ-ent perspectives,” says Rossana.

Raising the roofThe Proteomics Core Facility is going out ofits way to offer the best services possible –literally!The arrival in May of some state-of-the-art

new equipment meant Jeroen Krijgsveld’score facility having to take drastic measures;ceiling tiles had to be removed in order to fitthe two brand new Bruker mass spectrome-ters into the lab.“The new equipment will allow both an in-

crease in throughput and a more detailedcharacterisation of proteins, allowing identi-fication and quantification on a large scale,”says Jeroen, who joined EMBL as a teamleader in October last year and took over therunning of the Proteomics Core Facilityfrom Thomas Franz in April. “These mod-ern machines can handle complex samplesand are ideally suited for the analysis of post-translational modifications, as well as pro-viding more sensitive and reliable results.”As well as offering an improved service to

the core facility’s existing customers, Jeroenwould like to encourage other groups tocontact the Core Facility with their biologi-cal problems. “Mass spectrometry has manyapplications above and beyond solving

structural biology questions,” he says. “Justcontact us before sending your sample tofind out how we can help.”

Science on the brain

Jeroen and research technician Sophia Foehrget to grips with the new hardware

Training officers join forces for coursesScientific Training Officers at the EBI andEMBL Hamburg have been exploring waysto join forces and collaborate on differentprojects, having pinpointed areas in whichboth units have expertise and offer courses.The first step towards increased collabora-

tion and streamlined efforts was the visit bythe EBI Roadshow to EMBL Hamburg inMarch. Among the 20 participants, mainly

from EMBLHamburg butalso from otherinstitutes on theDESY campus,was one studentwho came all theway fromCologne for thetwo-day course.“Although they

were a mixedgroup of partici-pants with awide range ofabilities and ex-pectations, Ithink everyonegot something

out of the course,” said Sanchayita Sen, oneof the trainers from the PDBe."We hope this will become a regular

event,” said JamesWatson, Scientific Train-ing Officer at the EBI.The roadshow was also an opportunity to

discuss potential collaborations togetherwith others members of the Hamburg unit.“Following on from these discussions, weare now putting together a plan for a futurecourse integrating expertise fromHamburgand the EBI, possibly as part of the EBI’shands-on training programme for 2010,”says James. The course will start from adataset of raw diffraction data and teach thestudents how to interpret this informationand build a model of the protein structure.They will then be taken through a range ofstructural validation and analysis tools toshow how the protein’s structure can be usedto provide biological insights.“Considering the enthusiasm everybody

contributing to this event has shown, we arecertain this will be the first of many trainingcollaborative efforts across EMBL,” saidVicky Schneider from the EBI.

– Rosemary Wilson

Pho

to:C

hristin

ePan

agiotid

is

Page 7: Introducing modern science into schools - EMBL Monterotondo

EMBL&cetera • June 2009 i

www.embl.org/alumni

n extremely well-attended part ofEMBL’s labday (see page 4) was the

John Kendrew Young Scientist Award Cer-emony. Ken Holmes, former Head of Unitat EMBL Hamburg (1975-1977) and closefriend and advisor to the late JohnKendrew, presented the award to the win-ner, Julius Brennecke. Formerly an EMBLpredoc in the Cohen Group (2001-2006),Julius is now group leader at the Institute

of Molecular Biotechnology in Vienna.

Giulio Superti-Furga, chair of theAlumni Association board and formerEMBL team leader in the DevelopmentalBiology Unit (1991-2004) hosted the cere-mony. Now Director of the Centre for Mo-lecular Medicine in Vienna, Giulioencouraged EMBL staff to stay in touchwith the “formidable brain pool of alumni

out there by joining the alumni parties,local chapter meetings and reunions, andto use the alumni members directory andwiki to help in networking and making ca-reer choices.” Both services are accessibleto staff via the EMBL intranet. In addition,Giulio reminded staff to provide the Asso-ciation with ideas about new alumni ini-tiatives they feel would be of benefit tothem.

John Kendrew would have been proud...

A

Tell us about your career path afterleaving EMBL.I’ve always been thrilled by the idea of liv-ing in New York, so after completing myPhD at EMBL in 2006, I worked as a post-doc at the Rockefeller University in Man-hattan. Once there, though, I realised thatmy research interests didn’t tie in with thefocus of the lab, so after three months Idecided to leave again.After visiting Greg Hannon’s lab at the

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), Iknew instinctively that this was the placefor me. In fact, the next two years provedto be the most productive of my career, es-pecially after we discovered the patterns inthe piRNA pathway. This also helpedcompensate for my rather isolated exis-tence in a small room on campus over-looking the harbour and without a car!In late 2007, with Greg’s approval, I

moved to the Norbert Perrimon lab inBoston for a year, but continued to workwith a predoc and diploma student fromhis lab. We decided to move back to Eu-rope after the birth of my son in 2008.What has been the highlight of your ca-reer so far?Since my predoc days I’ve been exploringthe world of small regulatory RNA path-ways in flies using genetics and bioinfor-matics; we were mostly interested inmicroRNAs, their regulatory targets and

their in vivo functions. During my post-doc years I focused predominantly ondeep sequencing, working on the othertwo classes of small RNAs inDrosophila:the siRNAs and the piRNAs.This essentially yielded a big puzzle,

which we assembled into distinct mod-ules. By studying the piRNAs, we discov-ered that the past 30 years of fly geneticson transposon control could be molecu-larly explained with features of our piRNAbiogenesis system. This was probably themost significant finding in my career. Weessentially discovered the backbone of atransposon silencing system in flies whichacts like an RNA based genome immunesystem.At the award ceremony you dedicatedyour prize to Alex Stark.My collaboration with Alex dates back to

the early EMBL days. We realised that inthe field of small RNAs, the combinationof genetics and molecular biology on theone hand and bioinformatics with strictstatistics on the other is extremely power-ful. The entire success of our work onmiRNAs at EMBL was based on this syn-ergy which we tried to keep up after leav-ing. Alex explored the genomics side,while I generated the piRNA and siRNAdata for which I needed strong computa-tional support. The computational workon piRNAs was done by the two computerscientists, Alex and Ravi Sachidanandamat the CSHL. They deserve equal credit.In my speech, I dedicated half of the

prize to Alex to show howmuch of an im-pact he had on my career. Interestingly, hislab is now only 50m away frommy re-search group.How was your time at EMBL, and howwas it to come back after three years?Coming from a German university, I re-ally appreciated the open culture at EMBL,where you could speak frankly to everyone, including group leaders; where peo-ple lit their cigarettes with portable bunsenburners and the elevator was covered withposters and ads. It was – and still is – a re-ally cool place; even the Operon and theseminars have a special feeling aboutthem. It was really exciting to be here andto absorb the atmosphere.Having seen some of the major research

institutions in the US, I am certain thatthis place is unique and very special,though it is hard to pinpoint what reallymakes it so. I had a great day at the awardceremony and now understand more thanbefore howmuch I owe EMBL and what aprivilege it was to be here.

John Kendrew Young ScientistAward winner Julius Brenneckeanswers questions about hiscareer since EMBL, his scientificinspirations and his personalachievements

Julius during his field research in theGalapagos

Page 8: Introducing modern science into schools - EMBL Monterotondo

EMBL&cetera • June 2009ii

www.embl.org/alumni

The Alumni Association held their thir-teenth board meeting on 11 May at EMBLHeidelberg. This was the first meeting tobe chaired by Giulio Superti-Furga, whomade it all the sweeter with an originalSachertorte from Vienna!A major item for discussion was the fu-

ture of the John Kendrew Young ScientistAward. The board are very proud of theextremely high standard of applicationsthis award has attracted since its launch in2007, and have received praise and posi-tive responses from EMBL staff andalumni for their support of young scien-tists. They unanimously agreed to offerthe award beyond the three years forwhich it was generously funded by theEMBL Pensioner’s Association throughthe efforts of former Head of Personnel

KonradMüller(1975-1995). Tothis end,they willlaunch amajorfundrais-ing campaign in autumn, dedicated to se-curing the future of the award. Moreinformation on this will be sent to alumniin due course.Also of great importance was the plan-

ning for the alumni reunion of 2010,scheduled for 12-13 March. The boarddrafted a very attractive two-day pro-gramme and will contact alumni with in-vitations in the next few months.

The board were delighted to see a steepincrease in membership; 96 former staffjoined in the last six months, of which 15were faculty. The largest body of alumnito join this time came from the Structuraland Computational Biology Unit. To con-tinue raising the profile of the associationwith EMBL staff, especially at the outsta-tions, the board will hold the next meet-ing on 14 December at EMBL Hamburg.

Want to help school leavers in yourcountry pursue a career in science? TheEuropean Learning Laboratory for theLife Sciences (ELLS) has been helpingalumni do just that.Barely had ELLS been established at

EMBL in 2003 when the first alumni re-quest came from the University ofMilan, asking to share know-how andhelp set up a similar education facility inItaly. A year later, CusMiBio waslaunched and has now become a well-es-tablished education and outreach facility,providing thousands of Italian studentsand teachers opportunities to get hands-on experience and learn about cutting-edge science.In the meantime, ELLS staff have dealt

with additional requests from alumni inGreece, Portugal, Spain and the Ukraine,where they have helped set up similarprogrammes.As part of the EMBL International

Centre for Advanced Training (EICAT),ELLS plans to expand these activitiesfurther. Their first focus is to identifyalumni in the Scandinavian countrieswho would like to establish similar edu-cation projects, though they remainopen to requests from all countries. Visitwww.embl.org/ells.

Share the knowledge

EMBL alumni in Greece focussed on en-couraging young people to pursue scientificcareers when they met for a weekend breakin Dilofo on 13-15 June. Former EMBL pre-doc Haralabia Boleti presented the activitiesof SET-Routes and ELLS as a successfulmodel, and this and the experiences inschools of other participating alumni in-spired the local chapter to support an or-ganised network of students and teachers.They’ll prepare scientific presentations andactivities to give classes a chance to gethands-on, and this year the focus will be onevolution.A second topic of discussion was the de-

velopment of the Greek section of thealumni wiki (www.embl.org/alumni/wiki)to help EMBL staff and alumni consideringa move to Greece. Text was drafted andadded to these pages after the meeting. Aneditor for this section is yet to be identified,and the local chapter organiser and board

A weekend in Greece

Thirteen at the table

Please mark your diaries:

• 11 July: German Local Chapter meet-ing at EMBL summer party, HD.

• 11 September: Application and nom-ination deadline, John Kendrew YoungScientist Award 2010.

• 2 October: local chapter meeting atthe University of Porto, Portugal.

• 14-15 December: 14th Alumni Asso-ciation board meeting, EMBL Ham-burg. E-mail [email protected] by 26November with any issues you wouldlike the Board to consider.

• 12-13 March 2010: Alumni Reunion.

We want to hear from you! Tell usabout your personal or scientificachievements, an interesting eventin which you are involved or give usfeedback on alumni matters [email protected].

member Anastasia Politou (formerEMBL postdoc, 1991-1995) will be con-tacting alumni for this purpose.The next local chapter meeting in

Greece will take place in November dur-ing the annual meeting of the HellenicSociety for Biochemistry andMolecularBiology (HSBMB).

Apologies to alumna Kathryn Howell for getting her name wrong in the February 2009 edition of EMBL&cetera.

Page 9: Introducing modern science into schools - EMBL Monterotondo

EMBL&cetera • June 2009 7

The Land Down Under officiallybecame EMBL’s first associatemember state on 1 March lastyear, and now vice-chancellor of

Monash University RichardLarkins, who visitedEMBL Heidelberg inMarch, has been cho-sen to chair the offi-cial EMBL AustraliaCouncil, starting inJuly.There’s also a new

On the busesMonday 4 May was a great day for EMBLHeidelberg; for the first time in history, pub-lic transport users were able to take the busall the way to EMBL’s door.For years, non-drivers had to trek accross

the Max Planck campus in all weathers tocatch the hourly downtown service. Now,though, EMBL boasts its own bus stop and asix-times-a-day service to supplement theexisting 39 route to Königstuhl.“Before, I always had to wear flat shoes or

bring my sneakers with me, because I neverknew when I would have to run for the bus,”enthuses Maria Pia Becker from the Direc-tor General’s Office (right). “Now I can wearhigh heels to work!”

“It beats having to walk across MaxPlanck,” agrees Adrian Neal of the Schultzgroup, “though I don’t know if it will reallyimprove the overcrowding on the 39, be-cause the new buses are very early and un-less you want to get to EMBL before 9amyou would still have to take the other ones.”However, some users still feel there’s room

for improvement. “My biggest complaintwas never the walk across Max Planck butthe infrequency of the buses throughout theday, which means if you have a dentist ap-pointment or something, you lose half amorning of work,” says another user. “Thebuses after 6.15pm are just as packed as theyused to be, as people work late and there’s

still only one bus an hour after that time.”Administration and the Staff Association

are still looking at ways to improve the pub-lic transport possibilities to and from EMBLwith a view to subsidising season tickets forstaff.

First Indian users benefit from BM14Just a few months after the sealing of anagreement with the Indian government for apart share in the ESRF’s beamline BM14, In-dian users are already benefitting frombeam time.Hosted by EMBL Grenoble Staff Scientist

Hassan Belrhali, three Bangalore-based re-searchers (pictured) enjoyed four days of

beam time at the end of April after Indiajoined a consortium to fund the bendingmagnet beamline. More visits from scien-tists from other parts of India are alreadyscheduled for June and July.For BM14, 2009 is a transition year in

which the Medical Research Council(MRC), EMBL and India share the beam

time. When the MRC contract finishes, it ishoped that India will take on a larger ratioin a new consortium with EMBL and ESRFfor an initial period of five years starting in2010.

“This first visit was a very intense fourdays of experiments and cultural exchanges,”says Hassan. “The visitors were very happyabout the outcome – three ab initio struc-tures and several enzyme inhibitor com-plexes of medical importance – and were alllooking forward to coming back.”

“Dedicated access to the BM14 beamlineat ESRF will enhance the scope andbreadth of the problems in biochemistrythat we can address in India,” says Dr Nair.

Left: Deepak Nair from the National Centrefor Biological Sciences, and Krishan Gopaland Koustav Maity from the Indian Instituteof Science, all in Bangalore, enjoy theirspring visit to Grenoble

Australia’s associatemembership comingalong... in leaps andbounds!

website, www.emblaustralia.org, and itwas announced in May that the Aus-tralian government will provide $8 mil-lion over four years to support theestablishment of the new new EMBLAustralia facility. The Australian Regen-erative Medicine Institute (ARMI)opened in Melbourne in April and willbe the headquarters of EMBL Australia.Here in Europe, the first faculty posi-

tion has been filled by Marcus Heisler inthe Developmental Biology Unit, and thesecond will be selected soon.

Pho

to:H

ugoNeves

Page 10: Introducing modern science into schools - EMBL Monterotondo

EMBL&cetera • June 20098

EMBL Hamburg held its first Science andSociety event on 15 June when JoachimMnich, head of Research at neighbouringDESY, talked about the Large Hadron Col-lider Project at CERN (pictured) to an audi-ence of about 40 people.Hamburg’s involvement began with a visit

by EMBL Heidelberg’s Science & SocietyProgrammeManager, Halldór Stefánsson,on 13 January. “Halldór gave a seminarabout the programme and had a brain-storming session with the newly foundedScience and Society committee to discuss

possible ideas and plans for Hamburg,” saysRosemaryWilson, EMBL Hamburg’s Scien-tific Training Officer. “We hope to startwith two talks per year and attract scientistsand non-scientists alike from across theDESY campus and neighbouring institutes.”

“I’m delighted that Hamburg is getting in-volved in the programme,” says Halldór. “It’svery important that such activities can ben-efit the outstations.”

EMBL Hamburg’s Science and Societycommittee is now planning the next event.

First science and society event for Hamburg

Two of six biomedical and life sciences proj-ects with EMBL participants that are part ofthe European Strategic Forum on ResearchInfrastructures (ESFRI) Roadmap,INSTRUCT and ELIXIR, have both heldimportant meetings recently.The first INSTRUCT (Integrated Struc-

tural Biology Infrastructure) annual meetingtook place in Florence on 29-30 April. 130participants from 19 countries, includingscientists, managers and goverment officials,discussed the work of the first year of thepreparatory phase of the project and theplans for the future. EMBL’s Structural Biol-ogy units in Grenoble, Heidelberg andHamburg comprise one of the core partnersof INSTRUCT.The first day started with updates from the

work packages covering the legal and finan-cial planning, the access rules to infrastruc-tures and building facilities and datamanagement, before moving onto updatesfrom the scientific working groups. Day twocontinued with several talks outlining anumber of feasibility studies which are beingcarried out within the framework of IN-STRUCT to address bottlenecks in existing

methodologies and technologies and toevaluate potential solutions. INSTRUCTwill now enter the second project year, withimportant requirements to make decisionson supported activities and partnerships.ELIXIR (European Life Sciences Infra-

structure for Biological Information) had itssteering and stakeholder meeting at the Uni-versity of Copenhagen, Denmark on 19-20May. ELIXIR has 32 partners in 13 memberstates and aims to construct a sustainable in-frastructure for biological information inEurope, supporting life science research andits translation to medicine, the environment,industry and society.In July the project will enter its ‘documen-

tation and negotiation’ phase, during whichan International Consortium Agreementwill be developed and funding will be de-fined. The meeting recognised that coordi-nation and prioritisation, as well as stablefunding, is needed for many of the data re-sources provided by the partners.“It is significant that bio-medical projects

are part of the ESFRI Roadmap, as this is thefirst time that it has been recognised at thislevel that biology needs infrastructures in

the same way that the physical sciences do,”says EMBL-EBI’s Andrew Lyall, ELIXIR’sProject Manager. “The nature of biologicalresearch is changing, thanks to the availabil-ity of high-throughput technologies such asnext-generation sequencing. Rather thancontinuing to be an activity engaged in byindividuals and small groups, it is becomingone in which large coordinated projects willmake much more significant contributions.”www.instruct-fp7.euwww.elixir-europe.org

Biology goes greenAs key molecules tend to have limitedavailability, recycling is important.Now, the Molecular Medicine Partner-ship Unit (MMPU) of EMBL and Hei-delberg University has uncovered thefirst step in the recycling of a crucialmolecular tag that ensures correcttranslation, helping protect against ge-netic diseases.During translation from gene to pro-

tein, control mechanisms check formistakes. One, nonsense-mediateddecay (NMD), is based on the molec-ular tag exon-junction complex (EJC),which indicates whether an RNA isfaulty, potentially dangerous or shouldbe degraded. Overall, a cell wouldneed to mark around 400,000 siteswith EJCs, but it only has 10,000 – soEJCs must be broken down as soon aspossible and re-used. The MMPU re-searchers have discovered that a pro-tein, PYM, is responsible for thedisassembly and recycling of EJCs.“It was assumed that ribosomes,

which carry out protein assembly,simply iron out the EJCs as they pass,”says EMBL’s Niels Gehring, who car-ried out the research, published in the1 May issue of Cell. “Now we see thatwithout PYM, EJC disassembly is im-paired.”PYM could also ensure that EJCs are

not removed too early, which wouldcompromise NMD; in turn, thiswould affect how diseases such as tha-lassaemia and cystic fibrosis manifestthemselves. “Ultimately we would liketo find ways to modulate NMD phar-macologically to influence the devel-opment of genetic diseases,” saysMatthias Hentze, EMBL’s associate di-rector, whose group works with that ofAndreas Kulozik at the UniversityClinic Heidelberg in the MMPU.

INSTRUCT and ELIXIR move forward

Pho

to:C

ERN

Page 11: Introducing modern science into schools - EMBL Monterotondo

EMBL&cetera • June 2009 9

Researchers at EMBL Heidelberg have be-come the first to uncover how polyphos-phate – a long chain of phosphate whichserves a multitude of purposes, includingenergy storage, stress response and bone cal-cification – is assembled in eukaryotes.Klaus Scheffzek and his group, who car-

ried out the research at EMBL in collabora-tion with the Département de Biochimie atthe Université de Lausanne, Switzerland andothers, have shown in yeast that a proteincalled Vtc4p is responsible for the produc-tion of polyphosphate, a molecular ‘jack-of-all trades’ which is found in all life formsand serves a multitude of purposes. Vtc4p ispart of a protein complex, vacuolar trans-porter chaperone complex (VTC), that isusually found in the membranes of vacuoles

– pouches in which cells store molecules forlater use, transport or destruction.

“Vtc4p is partly embedded in the mem-brane and has a ‘tail’ hanging into the cell,which removes a phosphate molecule fromATP, an energy carrier in the cell,” saysKlaus. “Vtc4p uses the energy that is re-leased by that cleavage to add the newly-ac-quired phosphate to a growing chain.” Sincethe rest of Vtc4 straddles the membrane, thescientists suspect this protein probablytransfers the polyphosphate chain to thevacuole as it produces it.

The researchers determined Vtc4p’s func-tion by looking at its 3D structure. “Thisstudy emphasises the importance of struc-tural biology not just to show what mole-

cules look like and how they work but alsowhat that function is,” says Michael Hothornfrom the Scheffzek group at EMBL, who ispresently at the Salk Institute for BiologicalStudies in California.The study, published on 24 April in

Science, has a wide range of potential impli-cations, as polyphosphate is a ubiquitous,multi-tasking molecule with many differentfunctions. Although Vtc4p is not present inplants, polyphosphate is important forgrowth, and the scientists suspect Vtc4pcould play an important role in making itavailable to plants that have fungi living intheir roots. The research could also pave theway for new treatments for diseases such assleeping sickness, as the parasites that causethem need polyphosphate chains to survive.

Revealed: the protein that makes phosphate chains in yeast

Keep on running26 April saw several EMBLers achieve greatresults in the Heidelberg Halbmarathon, ahilly course considered to be the most diffi-cult of its kind in Germany. Victoria McPar-land, technician in Maja Köhn’s group,finished in second place in the overall wom-

ens’ competition witha time of 1:26 – thesecond fastest timeever run by a womanon the course – andIT’s Matthias Helm-ling (left) came 20thout of more than3,500 starters. Addi-tional runners in-cluded HalldórStefánsson, Julien

Gagneur, Chad Davis, Maria Hondele,Matthias Hentze, Cathryn Gould – who rana personal best of 1:38:30 – and Cellzomestaff Mikhail Savitski,Andreas Hoefert andVincent Wolowski.“I was really pleased

with the race and I re-ally enjoyed it, becausealthough it’s a toughcourse I actually likerunning up hills!” saysVictoria (right). “The atmosphere after anevent like this is always great, too.”Victoria, Cathryn, Matthias Helmling and

the three Cellzomers train informally to-gether for events such as this one and theupcoming Heidelbergman Triathlon. Ifyou’d like to join them, e-mail [email protected] to be added to the mailing list.

In recognition of Cambridge University’s800th birthday this year, the biology ofageing was the theme of the third annualEMBL-EBI Science and Society Sympo-sium on 8May at the university’sFitzwilliam College. More than 70EMBL-EBI staff members, academicsfrom the university and several researchorganisations and members of the publicattended the predoc-organised event.Over the course of the afternoon, scien-

tists and sociologists surveyed the histori-cal problems and scientific possibilitiespresented by the extension of human life.David Gems from the Institute of HealthAgeing at UCL presented the goals ofageing research, including the ethics ofvampire immortality. John Harris fromthe University of Manchester gave aphilosopher’s perspective, while TomKirkwood of the Institute for Ageing andHealth in Newcastle gave an overview ofhis institute’s work. Cambridge Univer-sity’s Richard Smith concluded the pres-entation session using past demographicsto predict the future impact of extendedlifespans.The four perspectives were drawn to-

gether in a panel session, where the fourspeakers agreed that in the end, despitegreat scientific advances over the past 50

years (as well as significantly increasedlife expectancies), we still know relativelylittle about the underlying biologicalprocess of ageing. Tom Kirkwood advo-cated a programme of accelerated re-search into the fundamental causes ofageing, and – perhaps more importantly– to increase awareness of the rapidly-growing elderly demographic.

For the first time, the event was broad-cast to an external audience by providinga live video stream of the talks. Like themain event, the new online componentwas deemed a great success: “We had 120total viewers and an average of 20 peoplewatching at any given time,” said organis-ing committee member Michele Mat-tioni. “We would definitely be in favourof the use of video-streaming for otherEMBL and EBI events.”

For those who missed the event, videorecordings of the symposium are avail-able online at http://tinyurl.com/mor-tal-immortal. – Louisa Wright

The promise ofmedicine...and theethics of vampires

Pho

tos:Ann

-MarieLa

wrenc

e

Page 12: Introducing modern science into schools - EMBL Monterotondo

EMBL&cetera • June 200910

o Erich Schechinger, networking doesn’tmean Facebook or MySpace – it means

setting things up so that the whole of EMBLis connected safely and efficiently.“When I get up in the morning, the first

thing I do is look at my laptop to see howthe network is at EMBL. If everything’s OK,then I can go for a walk with my dog beforeI come to work,” says EMBL Heidelberg’sNetwork and Security Engineer. “I monitorthe entire network on my laptop, so I knowexactly what’s going to happen when I arrivehere.”What does he do, exactly? “In three words,

my job is routing, switching and security,”says Erich. “With the help of Carmelo(Lopez-Portilla), I set up and take care of therouters connecting us to other sites; I doswitching, which is actually connecting eachindividual machine in the building; and Itake care of the firewall which protects our

network against the outside world – andwhich protects us from each other!”Erich says EMBL is a very special place tocarry out such a task. “If I talk to myfriends in industry, it’s really different.EMBL is unique in that we alwayshave the budget to be at the front edgeof technology, and that’s superb. Inindustry, you invest in a certain hard-ware, and then you have to live with itfor a long, long time. Here we can al-ways move to the latest hardware in apretty short time.”But he admits there’s a downside. “In

industry, they’re really frightened of in-truders in their network, so they have acomplete lock-down. At EMBL, wehave to guarantee that our scientists’servers can access the network from out-side. But if you open a connection to a

server, you always risk intruders trying toattack. I watch it on the firewall: we get at-tacked daily, hundreds and thousands oftimes. It’s very, very difficult to have security

coverage over the whole thing, but still haveso many possibilities for scientists to be ableto communicate with their colleaguesworldwide, and offer their services world-wide.”Whether it’s a new building going up or a

lab or office being remodelled, Erich is sureto be called upon. “I’m always involved attwo stages: in planning the layout for thenetwork – where the cables will run, howmany outlets are needed where, that kind ofthing – and then once the building work is

all done I’m involved in making things golive.”For the Advanced Training Centre (ATC),

the planning stage started about two-and-a-half years ago. “We have to make sure every-thing is connected to one data room in thebasement: all the computers, the card read-ing machines in the canteen and the trans-mitters for the wireless networks,” heexplains. “That was the greatest challenge –there will be two wireless networks, one forstaff and another for guests, and that throwsup lots of security issues. When EMBL em-ployees connect to wireless, they should getinto our normal network, but guests shouldstay in an extranet, outside EMBL. We haveto have careful filters, to ensure that theyonly visit proper destinations.”While building work at the ATC contin-

ues, Erich is already moving on. “For us, theATC work is mainly over. There’ll be an-other peak from August to October, when itgets filled with people and goes live, but I’malready focussing on the next project – thenew location of the computer centre. This isreally a much bigger issue for us, because wehave to change the whole network backbonestructure in order to move.”Alongside all that, it’s business as usual:

“Adding and updating software, addingservices by the scientists, working on fire-wall routes, connecting newmachines,monitoring the manufacturers to see howwe can move forwards... I do lots of thingsin the background, without anyone noticingwhat’s going on,” Erich says, and he’s happyto keep it that way. “A good day is when wehave no major failures – which is actuallyabout 90% of the time. But,” he smiles, “it’salways nice if I go home and nobody calls.”

– Sonia Furtado

EMBL’s knight in shining armour

“EMBL gets attackeddaily – hundreds andthousands of times”

T

Photo: Hugo Neves

Framework Agreement signed with Heidelberg UniversityOn 4May EMBL’s Director General IainMattaj and the Rector of Heidelberg Univer-sity, Professor Bernhard Eitel, signed aFramework Agreement to formalise scien-tific cooperations between the two institutes.While formal collaborations between the

university and EMBL have long been in ex-istence – the Molecular Medicine Partner-

ship Unit (MMPU), the Chemical Biologycore facilty operated together with DKFZand the joint awarding of PhDs from bothinstitutes, for example – the agreement willlay down conditions for existing and futurescientific collaborations and help continueand build upon the links between the two.Interdisciplinary and interdepartmental,

the agreement will apply to partnerships, theadvanced training of PhD students andother formal collaborations on an institu-tional level.Iain and Rector Eitel will meet at least once

a year to exchange information about exist-ing projects and, when applicable, initiatenew ones.

behindthescenes

Page 13: Introducing modern science into schools - EMBL Monterotondo

EMBL&cetera • June 2009 11

newsinbrief� Registration is now open for the fol-

lowing EBI hands-on bioinformat-ics training courses to help youmake the most of your data: ‘A dipinto EBI resources: understandingyour data’ will be held from 19-22October (registration deadline 21September) and the joint EBI/Well-come Trust proteomics workshopwill be held on 9-13 November (reg-istration deadline 24 July). Seewww.ebi.ac.uk/training/handson forprogramme details and to register.

� On 26 June EMBL, the Unit of Virus-Host Cell Interactions partnersEMBL, CNRS and the UniversitéJoseph Fourier in Grenoble will meetto form a Unité Mixte Interna-tionale (UMI). EMBL provides the‘international’ part of this joint re-search unit, only the fourth of itskind in France.

� Arnold Munnich of the HôpitalNecker-Enfants Malades in Paris,who’s also science advisor to presi-dent Sarkozy, paid a visit to EMBLHeidelberg on 15 April and gave aDistinguished Visitor Lecture on ‘Ad-vances in human genetics: is thereany benefits for patients?’. He also en-

joyed a tour of the laboratory andmet some PhD students.

� In 2009 EMBL and Marie Curie Ac-tions will co-fund up to 20 EMBLInterdisciplinary postdocs(EIPODs). Successful candidates willpursue interdisciplinary projects,transferring techniques to a new con-text or connecting scientific fieldsthat are usually separate. The call forapplications begins on 1 June andruns until 31 October. Details can befound at www.embl.org/eipod.

� Upcoming free courses in the non-scientific training programme in-clude:

Please see http://intranet.embl.de/personnel/training_development/index.html for further courses.

fromtheStaffAssociation

� 30 June – Meet the Delegates: Heidel-berg staff can meet the Council delegatesin the canteen between 12.00pm and1.30pm on 30 June. The next Meet theDelegates lunch will be in Monterotondoon 24 November.

� 11 July – Summer Party (EMBL Heidel-berg): Free to all EMBL staff and their fam-ilies (please remember to bring your IDcard). Activities for kids include bouncycastles, pony riding, face painting, a puppettheatre and science games. The Walldorfbrass band, the Alptraumboys and theFreddyWonder Combo will perform.

� Tombola tickets will be on sale soon tohelp raise money for the Waldpiratenchildren’s camp. Prizes include iPods,hotel and restaurant vouchers, a personalstyling day, a golf day andmore. The win-ners will be drawn at the Summer Party.

� Keep up-to-datewith events atwww.embl-heidelberg.de/~staff (site for EMBL pen-sioners:www.embl-heidelberg.de/~staff/pensioners). – Catherine Floyd

Course Date / site

Effective Writing 2 4 Sept (EBI)

Personal Effectiveness 16 Sept (HD)

Negotiating Skills 17 Sept (HD)

Conflict Management 18 Sept (HD)

Effective Team Leader 117-18 Sept(EBI)

Introduction to Meetings,Events and Conferences

23 Sept (HD)

obituaryDr. Helen Louise Francis-LangIt is with sadness that we announcethe death of Helen Francis-Lang on20March 2009 after an illnessfought until the end with courage.Helen did her PhD in Roberto Di

Lauro’s group at EMBL Heidelbergfrom 1988-1991. She went on to have anoutstanding career, first working as a post-doc in Oxford (Dr. D. Ish-Horowicz) andthen at the RNA Center at Santa Cruz, Cali-fornia (Prof. B. Sullivan) before enteringinto biotechnology. She first worked at Ex-elixis, where her projects included organis-ing theDrosophila mutant bank andfinding disease target candidates. In addi-tion to setting up a molecular biology sta-tion on the Galapagos Islands to protectspiny lobsters, Helen held a key position inAffymetrix before joining Nodality as an as-sociate director, where she patented severalnovel peptides modifying key pathways in-volved in cancer, as well as an invention formethods for diagnosis, prognosis and deter-mining methods of treatment.We all enjoyed her openness and cheerful

personality, and valued her scientific adviceand support. Helen was a lively, enthusiasticand intelligent scientist and a loyal and lov-ing friend. She was lots of fun and lived lifeto the full. We will miss her.– Melanie Price, Maria Polycarpou-Schwarz

Everything You Always Wanted to KnowAbout the EIPP* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)Did you know that the EMBL InternationalPhD Programme attracts around 900 appli-cations per year? Our most powerful adver-tising tool is word of mouth; the weakestone is advertising inNature. Therefore, werely on all EMBLoyees to spread the word!For anybody searching – or is it ‘googling’?

– for a PhD in the field of molecular biology,the EIPP is listed on the first page of Google.As for our faculty members looking forphysicists, chemists, mathematicians and in-formaticians, despair not: we’re working ongetting you up there as well, knowing that

the programme needs applicants from vari-ous disciplines to enrich EMBL’s colourfultapestry. Besides interdisciplinarity, interna-tionality is the EIPP’s other forte; with 36nationalities currently represented, EMBL iscertainly an exciting community to join!Would like to find out more? Contact

Helke, Lars or Milanka who will answermost of your questions without blinking or,failing that, will dig deep in their collectivememory to satisfy even the most demandingcustomer.

– Milanka Stojkovic and Helke Hillebrand

fromthePhDProgramme

Page 14: Introducing modern science into schools - EMBL Monterotondo

EMBL&cetera issue 51, June 2009.Published by EMBL’s Office of Informationand Public Affairs, Meyerhofstrasse 1, D-69117 Heidelberg. e-mail: [email protected] online: www.embl.org/newsletter.Editor: Vienna Leigh. Editorial support:Lena Raditsch, Silke Schumacher.Contributors: Louisa Wright, MehrnooshRayner, Anna-Lynn Wegener, RosemaryWilson, Rossana De Lorenzi.Graphic support: Petra Riedinger.Photographic support: EMBL Photolab.Printed by ColorDruck, Leimen.

Anna Efstathiou is a new Senior Project Officer at EMBL Hei-delberg, and will be involved in a broad spectrum of adminis-tration activities. She previously worked for the GreekMinistryof Culture in a variety of roles including project management,proposal and script-writing, press and public relations and or-ganisation of events. In 1999 she went to Edinburgh to study foranMSc in nationalism studies and a PhD in sociology. Marriedto an Irish neuroscientist, Anna has two bilingual children whoare quickly becoming trilingual at the EMBL Kinderhaus.

Ulli Weida is the new Personnel Officer at EMBL Heidelberg.Originally from Karlsruhe, Ulli studied Economy/Human Re-sources Management in Pforzheim and Deventer, the Nether-lands. He spent six months’ placement at DIS AG in Düsseldorf,a subsidiary of Adecco Group, while he completed his diplomathesis, and since then he hasworked on various recruitment proj-ects which included a four-month visit to the Ukraine. Ulli spentsevenmonths travelling in LatinAmerica before coming to EMBLHeidelberg.

events@EMBL people@EMBL24 June EMBL HeidelbergEMBL Distinguished Visitor Lecture:Dissecting microRNA mechanisms ofaction in vitro. Nahum Sonenberg,Rosalind and Morris Goodman CancerCentre, Montreal

24 June EMBL HeidelbergScience and Society: A long road yetto travel: building scientific capacity indeveloping countries. EmmanuelReynaud, School of Biology & Env.Science, University College Dublin

24 June EMBL HeidelbergEMBL Distinguished Visitor Lecture:Regulation of membrane fusion insynaptic transmission and hormonesecretion. James Rothman, YaleUniversity, New Haven

29 June-2 July EMBL HeidelbergSummer Council Meeting

30 June EMBL HeidelbergMeet your council delegate overlunch

30 June-3 July EMBL HamburgCourse: Practical workshop oncharacterisation of protein complexesin structural biology

1-3 July EMBL HeidelbergCourse: ELLS LearningLAB: Thepower of DNA technologies

6 July EMBL HeidelbergEMBL Distinguished Visitor Lecture:Structural insights into microtubuledynamics and kinetochoreengagement. Eva Nogales, HHMI,Univ. of California, Berkeley

11 July EMBL HeidelbergEMBL Summer Party

14 July EMBL MonterotondoEMBL Distinguished Visitor Lecture:Pathways regulating stem cell self-renewal. Leonard Zon,HHMI/Children's Hospital, Boston

15-17 July EMBL MonterotondoCourse: ELLS LearningLAB:L'evoluzione della teoria di Darwin

For more details about these eventsand more, visit www.embl.org/events

Jo McEntyre has joined EMBL-EBI as the new team leader forLiterature Services. Jo spent the past eleven years at the NationalCenter for Biotechnology Information in Bethesda, USA, whereshe has been involved with several projects to make the bio-medical literature available online and link it to public data-bases. Prior to this she was an editor for the journal Trends inBiochemical Sciences, based in Cambridge, UK. Jo orginallytrained as a biologist, and holds a PhD in plant cell biotechnol-ogy fromManchester Metropolitan University.

NEWAT EMBO... Howy Jacobs is new Senior Editor of EMBO reports. AnEMBOMember since 2001, Howy received his PhD from the University ofGlasgow in 1981 and is Academy Professor and Professor of Molecular Bi-ology at the University of Tampere’s Institute of Medical Technology. His re-search focuses on the role of mitochondria in ageing and disease.

Science in School site revamped www.scienceinschool.org

Science in School, the European journal to promoteinspiring science teaching, has a new-look websitewhich now features rotating science highlights,readers’ forums and feedback and an improvedsearch facility. “Articles are sorted by language andsubject, with directions to related stories, and thereare RSS feeds available according to topic,” saysEMBL-based editor Eleanor Hayes. “We’re alwayslooking for people to write and translate articles, soplease get in touch!” ([email protected])