The 3rd CLSS-UK North UK Life
Science Symposium Successfully Held in Dundee
The 3rd CLSS-UK North UK Symposium
was held on June 5th, 2010 at the
Tower Building, University of Dundee. More than
30 Chinese life science researchers working and
studying in Scotland and a few from England
attended this meeting.
The meeting consisted 5 sessions: Genetics &
Genomics, systems biology, computational
psychology, bioinformatics and Bio-engineering.
Prof Ke Ning from University of Sheffield and
Prof Hong Yue from Strathclyde University have
delivered the two keynote talks. Prof Ning
presented the research carried in his lab on
PTEN and its applications for potential
therapies for spinal muscular atrophy, while
Prof Yue gave an overview of what is systems
biology and how it can help in making biological
discoveries. All the rest of the talks were also
of very high quality, which covered the newest
developments in different fields. The topics
were diverse and cutting-edge, ranging from
applications of Next Generation Sequencing, to
computational models in yeast, to qualitative
methods for measuring happiness, to applying the
laser technologies to detect skin abnormalities.
The participants were very active and get
involved with the lectures throughout the
sessions. A lot of heated discussions were
carried out during the meeting. A
self-introduction session in the beginning
helped participants get warmed-up quickly and
the discussions were carried out through lunch
and tea-break sessions.
At the end of the meeting, a Career Q&A was
organized to answer questions from young
researchers on career planning. Prof Yue, Prof
Ning and Dr. Kaixin Zhou have given very sincere
and practical advice, using their experiences as
examples, in answer to the questions. All
participants have enjoyed this session and also
benefit greatly from these suggestions. The
relationship and links between members were
strengthened on both professional and personal
levels.
Finally,
special thanks to committee members for make
this symposium a successful one: Dr Runxuan
Zhang (Chairman), Dr Hong Yue (Vice Chair), Dr
Kaixin Zhou (Vice Chair), Dr. Haihui Liao
(treasury), Dr Hongwu Ma, Dr Tao You, Dr Le Yu,
Yajing Liu, Huaqing Cui, Han Xiao.
All participants were looking forward to another
successful CLSS-UK north meeting next year!
(by Dr Runxuan Zhang) |