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Grenoble anniversary symposium: join us!
EMBL Grenoble will celebrate its 40th anniversary with staff and alumni on 4–5 June this year, marking the occasion with an event that aims to be informative, inspiring and, primarily, enjoyable! All members of the community that has made EMBL Grenoble what it is today – staff, alumni, and facility users past and present – are invited to join the birthday celebrations: registration is now open, until 10 May.
“I have witnessed the outstation evolve over many years and seen hundreds of EMBL staff, postdocs, students and visitors pass through its doors,” says Stephen Cusack, head of the outstation since 1989. “The 40th anniversary party will be a unique occasion to bring all these people together again and celebrate our remarkable achievements for EMBL, European science all in the spirit of international co-operation.”
Soon after the agreement to establish EMBL’s first outstation in Hamburg in 1975, a parallel accord was signed with the Institut Laue Langevin (ILL) in Grenoble to create a second outstation on the site of the world’s leading research nuclear reactor. In 1976, under the direction of Andrew Miller, EMBL began its very fruitful collaboration, at that time focused on developing neutron scattering techniques and instrumentation.
The 40th anniversary party will be a unique occasion to bring all these people together again and celebrate our remarkable achievements
Today, EMBL Grenoble hosts 70 staff and welcomes several hundred users of its structural biology facilities (beamlines, crystallisation and protein expression) per year. It undertakes research in structural and molecular biology, notably using crystallographic techniques to obtain atomic structures of multi-protein and protein-nucleic acid complexes involved in transcription, innate immunity, virus replication and non-coding RNAs. It also builds and operates beamlines for macromolecular crystallography, develops instrumentation and techniques, and provides facilities and expertise to visitors in collaboration with its European Photon and Neutron (EPN) Campus partners: the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ERSF), the Institut Laue Langevin (ILL) and the Institut de Biologie Structurale (IBS).
The 40th anniversary event programme focuses on the contributions of EMBL Grenoble to structural biology, with a forward look towards the next decade. Speakers include EMBL Directors as well as current and former EMBL scientists who will share trends in structural biology on campus as well as at alumni institutes.
One of the highlights will be a celebration at the historical Château la Commanderie, where participants will be taken for dinner, music, dancing. Transport back to campus and onsite accommodation will be provided for participants.
