IC Biomedical Symposium 2017

 

On Wednesday 20 June, members of all departments across Hammersmith Hospital campus gathered for the “IC Biomedical Symposium” – an annual showcase of postdoctoral research which comprises work from departments of Medicine, Surgery and Cancer, NHLI and LMS.

After last year’s successful “Postdoc Knowledge Forum”, this rebranded second edition, ensured all members of the departments felt welcome to come and support the work of their postdocs, promoting multidisciplinary collaborations. In fact, a very positive turnout resulted from this rebranding with a 145-people registering, a quarter of which signed up on the day. Other than postdocs, Faculty members, PhD students and Master’s students also joined for the day, as well as members of other campuses, fulfilling the aim of a symposium that reaches a wider audience, brings the whole campus together, and facilitates collaboration across the different departments and divisions.

The full-day programme included a selection of high-quality postdoctoral talks and posters that covered major themes of research such as neurological disorders, neural networks and regeneration, cancer signalling, and vascular and endocrine pathobiology.

After each talk, attendees were asked to grade the presentation using the Mentimeter interactive tool, based on the criteria: accessibility, presentation delivery, slide quality and scientific quality. We are pleased to announce Dr Thomas H Hutson (Department of Medicine) as the winner, with his excellent talk on “Environmental enrichment induces a lasting increase in axon regeneration potential via activity-dependent epigenetic reprogramming”.

Posters were graded by the postdoc representatives team, and the prize for best poster went to Dr Tien-Chi Huang (LMS), for his remarkable poster entitled “The role of Ezh2 in transcriptional regulation of retrotransposons during epigenetic reprogramming”.

During the day, several representatives from the campus facilities and from the Postdoc Development Centre (PDC) delivered small informative talks about their work, to promote collaborations and awareness of new techniques.

Six major biomedical companies sponsored the event, and five of them decided to do so by being present on the day to interact with potential customers and showcase their products. This was the opportunity for a lot of staff working on the campus to inspect new products and learn about the ways companies could support their research.

After a day of exciting talks, people were given the opportunity to network and give feedback during the evening reception, building exciting cross-departmental collaborations and getting to know each other over drinks and nibbles.

This event was organised by the team of 11 postdoc representatives for Hammersmith campus: Anita Alvarez-Laviada, Biancastella Cereser, Elita Jauneikaite, Catherine Mansfield, Silvia Pedroni, Maria Fuentes Perez, Delphine Rolando, Giusy Russomanno, Kirill Shkura, Matthew Turley and Vessela Vassileva.

This event was organised by the team of 11 postdoc representatives for Hammersmith campus: Anita Alvarez-Laviada, Biancastella Cereser, Elita Jauneikaite, Catherine Mansfield, Silvia Pedroni, Maria Fuentes Perez, Delphine Rolando, Giusy Russomanno, Kirill Shkura, Matthew Turley and Vessela Vassileva.

Throughout Imperial, postdocs representatives are here to help organise workshops and tailored events for fellow postdocs, ensuring their views are heard and their issues tackled. Postdoc representatives were originally created by PDC, and they work in a close relationship, receiving strong support from its members.

The group aims to improve both current and future work environment for postdocs by providing a range of events, ranging from social coffee mornings to the annual symposium,  to tailored workshops to help them develop skills and further their careers. In Hammersmith campus, postdoc representatives focus on bringing together the different departments to set up workshops and events usually happening in South Kensington campus.

While the feedback received on this symposium was very positive, improvements will be made to ensure a wider participation and collaboration in the next editions. In particular, the date for next year’s edition will be known a long time in advance, ensuring that PIs and division heads not only have time to encourage their postdocs to submit an abstract, but will also join in on the day to support the work of their postdocs.

We hope that this symposium will become an annual feature in Imperial College, and will be a very welcomed day for each department in Hammersmith Campus.

Hammersmith Postdoc Representative

 

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