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Alumni Day at the EMBL-EBI – Alumni relations

Alumni Relations

Connecting, engaging and nurturing EMBLs global community of current and former scientists, technicians, communicators and administrators

Alumni Day at the EMBL-EBI

EBI Auditorium: Chris Sander

After the ceremony to mark the opening of the new site extension, EMBL-EBI hosted an on-campus symposium for all EMBL alumni and EBI staff. The event attracted 116 participants and was a great opportunity to meet friends and enjoy an excellent programme of talks by EMBL-EBI’s directors, scientific staff and alumni.

EMBL-EBI Associate Director Graham Cameron illustrated the bioinformatics contribution made by EMBL-EBI over the last 25 years with material from his personal archive of photographs and journal extracts. His humorous account chronicled the scientific and structural development and achievements of the EMBL-EBI, referring to key personalities and the political and scientific hurdles they faced.

EMBL-EBI Director Janet Thornton complemented this with an account of the EBI’s mission, services and goals, inviting alumni not only to use these resources, but also to raise awareness among their national funding bodies that their support will be essential in building a stable bioinformatics infrastructure for Europe – a point strongly endorsed by EMBL’s Director General Iain Mattaj.

EMBL-EBI faculty Ewan Birney and Nicolas Le Novère presented their research areas together with former EMBL-EBI staff Chris Sander, Des Higgins, Anton Enright, Liisa Holm and Tom Flores, all of which reflected the cutting-edge science carried out at the EBI and continued by its alumni.

Alumni Association chair Angus Lamond outlined the role of the Association in supporting EMBL alumni and staff through its careers services, awards and local chapters, amongst other things. In particular, he referred to its most recent initiative, a wikiformat online career development resource. This will be available to EMBL staff and alumni by the second half of 2008, and will offer a major new resource for career development in Europe. He also invited all alumni to consider nominating themselves or others to stand for the Board elections in September 2008. In particular, he encouraged nominations from female candidates and alumni from the EMBL outstations, to maintain a representative balance of gender and EMBL units on the Board.

The event was concluded with a discussion, chaired by the UK Local Chapter head Annalisa Pastore (Group Leader, National Institute of Medical Research, London), during which Janet and Graham invited EMBL’s alumni to use the EBI for regular meetings in conjunction with EBI conferences and user training courses in the future. This was welcomed by all participants.

The Alumni Association would like to thank EMBL-EBI for hosting this special event, all attendees for their participation and Cath Brooksbank and her team for making it such a success!

Programme

TimeSpeakerTopic
9:00Iain MattajWelcoming Remarks
9:15Chris SanderA global perspective on bioinformatics
9:45Graham Cameron25 years of biological databases: a historical perspective on the EBI
10:15Janet ThorntonWhere is the EBI now and what are our plans for the future?
10:45 Coffee Break
11:15Ewan BirneyUnderstanding our genome
11:45Nicolas Le NovèreIntegrators, loops and switches. The mechanic of learning
12:15 – 13:30 Lunch and posters
Tours of the new building in small groups
13:30Angus LamondThe Alumni Association
13:45Des HigginsEverything you ever wanted to know about multiple alignments but were too shy to ask
14:15Anton EnrightNetwork based clustering and analysis of the Mouse Transcriptome
14:45Liisa HolmSuperalignment of all protein sequences
15:15 Tea
15:45Tom FloresTranslating from EBI to Industry
16:15Angus Lamond and Annalisa PastoreDiscussion on making the most of the alumni network
16:45Janet ThorntonClosing Remarks
17:00 Drinks and nibbles

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