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European Congress on Biotechnology

Submitted by jfyffe on Thu, 27/02/2014 - 15:24

Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre for Scotland

Submitted by jfyffe on Mon, 10/02/2014 - 14:31

Just before Christmas last year, the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) confirmed funding of £10m to seed the establishment of the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre (IBioIC).  This will form the basis of an expected £45m spend on research projects and skills development in Industrial Biotechnology aimed at bringing these technologies to the market while making a substantive impact on the Scottish economy.  IBioIC has 13 academic partners across Scotland including the University of Edinburgh and will be initially based at Strathclyde.

A launch event for IBioIC took place at the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation (ECCI) on Wednesday 5th February. Guest Speaker was John Swinney MSP (see photo), Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Employment and Sustainable Growth. 

Gordon Plotkin receives the EATCS Award 2014

Submitted by efletch2 on Tue, 04/02/2014 - 13:16

Congratulations to Gordon Plotkin from the School of Informatics who has been given the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science Award for "his lifetime contribution of a research corpus of exceptional depth and influence across a broad range of areas within theoretical computer science.”  

Link: 
See announcement

Autodesk supports Genome Engineering at Edinburgh

Submitted by efletch2 on Mon, 03/02/2014 - 11:58

Autodesk Inc., a Fortune 1000 company that develops software used globally to unlock creativity and solve broad challenges, is investing in genome engineering at the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. Autodesk is financing a three-year PhD stipend for Wei Liu, an international student in the lab of Dr Patrick Cai’s group, to conduct research in the area of synthetic biology and genome engineering. Wei will focus on developing novel DNA assembly methods to help construct the synthesis of the largest synthetic chromosome in the UK – yeast chromosome VII that is one million base pairs in length.

Chancellor's Fellowships

Submitted by efletch2 on Mon, 13/01/2014 - 10:16

As part of a University-wide recruitment programme, the School of Biological Sciences seeks to appoint new Chancellor’s Fellows as an investment in the future of teaching and research. These prestigious Fellowship awards are aimed at early-career individuals of the highest potential who have begun to establish a reputation for the highest quality research at the forefront of their discipline and who have a commitment to learning and teaching at university level. We expect to appoint at least three Fellows. Substantial mentoring and development support will be available through and beyond the Fellowship period.

We will be particularly pleased to receive applications from candidates whose research interests cross two or more of these priority areas. Exceptional candidates with research interests in other areas of biological sciences will also be considered.

Link: 
Further Information

Papers accepted for publication

Submitted by jfyffe on Thu, 19/12/2013 - 19:18
Congratulations to Nacho Molina and co-authors (David M. Suter, Rosamaria Cannavo, Benjamin Zoller, Ivana Gotic, and Félix Naefa) whose paper on ‘Stimulus-induced modulation of transcriptional bursting in a single mammalian gene,’ recently got accepted in PNAS.
 

Congratulations also go to Ralph Hector, Sander Granneman and co-authors (Shaun Webb and Grzegorz Kudla) whose paper, 'PAR-CLIP data indicate that Nrd1-Nab3-dependent transcription termination regulates expression of hundreds of protein coding genes in yeast' has been accepted in Genome Biology.

Times Higher Education Awards

Submitted by jfyffe on Thu, 19/12/2013 - 15:56

Sarah Martin of SynthSys attended the Times Higher Education Awards Ceremony in London on November 28th, as part of the University of Edinburgh's delegation to represent us for two THE Nominations in the categories of "Outstanding Support for Early Career Researchers" and "Outstanding Employer Engagement Activity". In the first category, the University's Ingenious Women program lost out to Queens University of Belfast’s transferable skills certificate scheme. In the second category, Edinburgh scooped the prize for including industrial partners in a series of masters programs.

Daiwa Adrian Prize for Scientific Collaboration

Submitted by jfyffe on Thu, 19/12/2013 - 15:54

Congratulations to Dr Zeenat Noordally of SynthSys who was on one of the four winning research teams. They were awarded the 2013 prize for, “Circadian regulation of photosynthesis: discovering mechanisms that connect the circadian clock with photosynthesis in chloroplasts in order to understand how circadian and environmental signals optimise photosynthesis and plant productivity.”

The Daiwa Adrian Prizes are awarded every three years in recognition of significant scientific collaboration between British and Japanese research teams in pure or applied sciences. Collaborating institutions included University of Bristol, University of Edinburgh, Chiba University and Tokyo Institute of Technology, with team leaders Dr Anthony Dodd (Bristol) and Dr Mitsumasa Hanaoka (Chiba). The prizes were presented at a ceremony on 27 November by Lady Adrian, whose husband, the late Lord Adrian, a former Trustee of the Foundation, initiated them in 1992.

UK-Korea Focal Point Programme: Synthetic Biology

Submitted by jfyffe on Thu, 19/12/2013 - 15:51

Scottish Consultation on Synthetic Biology

Submitted by jfyffe on Thu, 19/12/2013 - 15:49

Four PIs from SynthSys contributed to a consultation run by the Scottish Science Advisory Council (SSAC) reviewing the evidence for the potential impact of synbio on the Scottish economy.

The SSAC, Scotland's highest level science advisory body, provides independent advice and recommendations on science strategy, policy and priorities to the Scottish Government's Chief Scientific Adviser. It has been engaging with key stakeholders in industry and academic research to better understand the opportunities and threats from pursuing or not pursuing a synthetic biology strategy, and where Scotland's strengths lie in the synthetic biology arena.

A briefing document was produced and a meeting held on November 28th in Glasgow with Muffy Calder (CSA) and around 30 delegates from business, academia, government and NGOs. A report will be provided to the Scottish Government by the spring 2014.

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