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Organisers
Federico Rossi, EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany
Aino Järvelin, EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany
Introduction
The International EMBL PhD Student Symposium is an annual event organised by students for students. This year, the 12th PhD Symposium, which is entitled “From science fiction to science fact: what’s next”, will be held at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany from the 21st to the 23rd October 2010.
Science fact and science fiction are closely linked. Scientists are often inspired by the imaginative possibilities introduced in the world of fantasy, and vice versa: real scientific discoveries often shape the creations of science fiction writers. Even though scientists – unlike science fiction writers – are bound by the laws of nature, the inventions of the fictional world sometimes cross over to reality through their persistent work. This poses the question: where is the borderline between fiction and fact today? Where will it be in the near future?
These are the questions we will address during the 12th EMBL PhD symposium. The current boundaries in different fields of life sciences will be investigated, in light of how past frontiers have been overturned. Renowned speakers have been invited to share their ideas on latest technological breakthroughs, achievements and future developments with the young generation of scientists. Participants will have the opportunity to present and discuss their own work in poster sessions and short talks. We aim to provide young researchers from different international research institutes with an opportunity to interact with leading scientists in an informal and relaxed environment.
The symposium will be divided into four sessions: Cell and Structural Biology, Medical Research, Omics, and Science Fiction. These sessions will be introduced by a talk on the progresses of science in these last decades. As history shows, “science fiction” in a given moment can be turned to “science fact” in a few years time.
Before moving to novel technologies, we would like to start from the foundations of biology. Structural and cell biology are continuously converging. Research areas that are difficult to access, including membrane-related processes, the architecture of cell organelles and their communication with the cytoplasm, and chemical processes within the cell, could profit from a variety of quickly evolving interdisciplinary techniques, thus expanding the possibilities to investigate structure/function relationships in vivo or close to in vivo. Our structural and cell biology session will bring together experts from various disciplines and cover a broad range of techniques: single-molecule fluorescence and force spectroscopy, vibrational spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, and mutational and molecular biology analysis. Since all the speakers are working on different biological problems, this session will offer a very diverse perspective into cutting-edge research at the interface of structural and cell biology.
Two of the sessions will be dedicated to medical and high-throughput biology research.
Medical research has a major impact on our health and us as human beings. With the
advent of “systems” approaches this research field has started to study diseases in their
complete physiological and genetic environment rather than separately. Empowered with
genomics and other technologies, measurements can be made in a comprehensive
manner on many different biological levels of information and integrated to form a
blueprint of the system. A current viewpoint to complex diseases is that they are elicited
by multi-factorial combinations of genetic and environmental perturbations insidiously
driving a disease state in molecular networks. Appreciating the intricate yet robust nature
of this web of interactions has important impact on the development of therapeutics to
target disease and promote health. Several recent publications report genome-wide
association studies leading to better understanding of the impact of genetic variation on
human health and disease phenotypes, and molecular profiling aiding in disease subclassification and developing biomarkers to monitor disease onset and progression. The
ambition of P4 medicine is to put such approaches together for better clinical diagnostics,
enhanced prognosis and personally tailored therapy.
Seemingly science fiction some years back, all this has become closer and closer to reality thanks to technological breakthroughs capacitating the examination of molecular space in larger scale, higher through-put and reduced expenses. In the Omics session of our symposium, we want to discuss such technologies in the context of basic and applied bioscience. Coupled with the Medical Research session, we want to highlight some of the most recent developments in medical research and to introduce our participants to some concepts that might become everyday medicine in the future. We are hoping to raise discussion on how high-throughput methods may aid in understanding human disease and how they could lead to the development of sensitive and cost-effective diagnostics in the clinic.
To finish our symposium, we will dedicate a session to science fiction, where we will set out to increase the visibility of areas of the life sciences of which the general public has a poor understanding and often perceives as science fiction, if not as danger. Yet, most recent advances have overcome some knowledge and technical boundaries, which are valued greatly by scientists. Ageing research has fascinated mankind for a long time, but still faces questions over its real purpose and achievements. Optogenetics is a recent method to control individual cell function in vivo and is considered by researchers as a way to future experimental design. Recent advances in both areas will be presented by leading specialists.
Our symposium will also include a panel entitled "The interplay between Science and Science Fiction" on the crosstalk between science and fiction, and the ethics of research. We are hoping the participants of our symposium leave with a feeling of what could be the next fiction to be realised.
A pdf of the draft programme is available here.
Peter Hildebrandt
Paul Jarvis
Angus Lamond
Rudi Balling
Fabrizio d'Adda di Fagagna
Len Pennacchio
Gero Miesenboeck
Miroslav Radman
Antonio Siccardi
Ruedi Aebersold
Jeroen Raes
Jon Turney
Christian Haas
Azim Surani
The conference will be held at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg, Germany.
Registration
Registration is closed.
