08/07/15
Guy’s Campus Postgraduate Research Symposium 2015
What a great day of inspiring scientific research and networking! On July 7, over 250 staff and students from Guy’s Campus attended the 6th Postgraduate Research Symposium. Running since 2008, and organised by the MRC Centre for Developmental Neurobiology, CHAPS, Randall Division and Wolfson CARD, this event provided a unique opportunity for students to showcase their research to their peers as well as to senior researchers. A total of 100 students participated, with oral presentations from final year students and poster presentations by 1st and 2nd year students.
The event was preceded, on July 6, by a pre-symposium lecture given by Naomi Weir, acting director at the Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE), who talked about the numerous ways politics can affect scientific research and the role played by CaSE in raising the political profile of science in the UK.
The MRC CDN was very well represented by 26 of our PhD students with a contribution of 9 talks and 17 poster presentations. Several Postdoctoral researchers also participated by chairing sessions. The research showcased at the symposium was an exciting overview of what goes on in the MRC Centre for Developmental Neurobiology, with research topics ranging from neurogenesis and patterning to circuit development and neuronal plasticity.
Rebecca McIntosh
(best talk co-winner, Jon Clarke group) discussed the origin and spatial organization of non-apical neural progenitors in the developing zebrafish neural tube.
Adna Dumitrescu
(best talk co-winner, Matt Grubb group) entertained the symposium audience with a talk about the techniques she developed to study the plasticity of the axon initial segment in an in vivo zebrafish model.
Sarah Kemlo
(best 2nd year poster winner, Juan Burrone group) showed the strategies she uses to systematically map inhibitory synaptic inputs onto single dendritic trees in vitro and in vivo through genetically encoded markers.
Christopher Puhl
(best 1st year poster winner, Juan Burrone group) presented his work on hippocampal slice hyperactivity models to explore activity-dependent plasticity in a more physiological, in vivo-like context.
This is just a flavour of the themes discussed at the Postgraduate Research Symposium Day. Overall, the event was a great success of science and students engaging in sharing ideas about their research.
Paride Antinucci MRC CDN PhD student representative and symposium organiser
paride.antinucci@kcl.ac.uk
@ParideAntinucci
The Guy’s Campus Postgraduate Research Symposium 2015 was sponsored by Abcam, Biochemical Society, Promega and Sigma Aldrich.
For further information on this story or about the centre please contact Andreia Carvalho, Head of Scientific Affairs, MRC Centre for Developmental Neurobiology, King’s College London ( andreia.carvalho@kcl.ac.uk ).
The MRC Centre for Developmental Neurobiology is part of the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King's College London .