The 5th Iberian chapter meeting \u2013 the first to be held in Portugal \u2013 took place on 2 October at the Institute for Molecular and Cell Biology (IBMC) in Porto. Participants were largely EMBL Portuguese alumni as well as IBMC staff, who gathered to listen to talks on neurodegeneration, kinetochore-microtubule interactions and RNAi-based dissection of innate immune responses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
IBMC Director Claudio Sunkel, who is also the EMBL Council delegate and the EMBC Vice President, opened the meeting with an introduction to the IBMC and to EMBL\u2019s role in European science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Following EMBL group leader Anne-Claude Gavin\u2019s honorary lecture on biochemical approaches to biomolecular networks, the alumni enjoyed a tour of Porto and a wine-tasting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The whole event was organised by Paula Sampaio, Head of IBMC’s Advanced Light Microscopy Facility, with help from Paula Sebastiao, Assistant Professor at the Escola Superior de Tecnologia do Mar de Peniche.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paula Sampaio, who is often seen walking through the corridors of the IBMC with a screwdriver, was a visiting scientist in the CBB unit\u2019s Gonzalez Group from 1995 to 2001. While responsible for maintaining the first Leica confocal microscope at EMBL and teaching scientists how to use it, Paula was also running the fledgeling IBMC\u2019s server on her laptop! \u201cEMBL gave me an overview of how a big institute works, and this has been very useful to help to improve IBMC organisation,\u201d she says. \u201cBesides inspiring me to build the microscopy unit at IBMC, it was a great experience scientifically.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was her interest in technical equipment \u2013 microscopes in particular \u2013 which led her to set up the IBMC\u2019s open access Advanced Light Microscopy Facility in 2004, where they now have 100 users a year. Paula is also a Senior Scientist in the lab of IBMC Director Claudio Sunkel. \u201cIt has been very important for me to divide my time between services and research\u201d, she says. \u201cI don\u2019t think you can really understand and appreciate the requirements of the facility users, and push forward the need for microscopes, if you\u2019re not doing research\u201d. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The 5th Iberian chapter meeting \u2013 the first to be held in Portugal \u2013 took place on 2 October at the Institute for Molecular and Cell Biology (IBMC) in Porto. Participants were largely EMBL Portuguese alumni as well as IBMC staff, who gathered to listen to talks on neurodegeneration,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":27911,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"embl_taxonomy":[],"class_list":["post-27909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"acf":[],"embl_taxonomy_terms":[],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/about\/info\/alumni\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/restaurant-l.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/about\/info\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/about\/info\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/about\/info\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/about\/info\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/about\/info\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27909"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/about\/info\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27913,"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/about\/info\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27909\/revisions\/27913"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/about\/info\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/about\/info\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/about\/info\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/about\/info\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27909"},{"taxonomy":"embl_taxonomy","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/about\/info\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/embl_taxonomy?post=27909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}