EMBL Australia

A young member of EMBL Australia’s Partner Laboratory Network took out the award for the best scientific poster at the Visualizing Biological Data (VIZBI 2017) conference in June.

On 9 June, many of the 74 EMBL alumni now living in Australia, as well as their colleagues and networks, congregated at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney for the first EMBL alumni event to be held in Australia.

Dozens of life science leaders from across the nation – and several from across the globe – travelled to Melbourne to share their expertise with sixty hand-picked young scientists at the 4th EMBL Australia PhD Course.

Professor Ada Yonath is not one to back away from a challenge. It was this grit and determination that saw the Israeli crystallographer - and Nobel Laureate - overcome injury and jet lag to spend more than two hours entertaining and inspiring students at the EMBL Australia PhD Course.

EMBL Australia Group Leader Associate Professor Cryle co-led a team of researchers who have identified a key part of the process by which a common clinical antibiotic is formed – a finding that could potentially pave the way for novel compounds to tackle the problem of bacterial resistance. With 'superbugs' responsible for around 700,000 deaths globally a year, new types of antibiotics are urgently needed.

EMBL Australia has continued to thrive as a research organisation with strong local and international linkages. In 2016, the Partner Laboratory Network almost doubled in size, with four new and promising early-career researchers establishing their laboratories at our existing host institutes and more institutes coming on board, and we continued to strengthen ties between the international and Australian research communities.

The EMBL Australia group is growing, with two renowned research institutes – the Garvan Institute of Medical Research and QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute – joining our Partner Laboratory Network.

News this quarter:

• Ancient DNA expert Professor Alan Cooper to give public address at the EMBL Australia PhD Course on 12 July 2017
• Swiss researcher Dr Harald Janovjak announced as a new EMBL Australia group leader
• Join EMBL for their first alumni event to be held in Australia
• EMBL’s Head of Electron Microscopy Core Facility, Dr Yannick Schwab, will present at EMBL Australia’s PhD Course
• Gaus group researchers have developed a sensor to measure membrane charges in live cells
• The Davidovich group has further enhanced our knowledge on how genes are regulated

And more:

• Student opportunities
• Upcoming events
• Job opportunities

Opportunities are available for students interested in the EMBL Australia PhD Course, travel grants for PhD students and postdoctoral fellows and financial support for the 19th EMBL PhD Symposium in Heidelberg.

Dr Yannick Schwab, team leader and head of electron microscopy core facility at EMBL, will travel from EMBL Heidelberg to join us and 60 first and second-year PhD students at the EMBL Australia PhD Course in July at Monash University.