On the 25th of August The IMMEDIAB lab attended this years’ FEBS Advanced Course in Epigenetics, Nuclear Receptors and Disease on the Greek Island of Spetses. FEBS advanced courses take place every two years and are the perfect opportunity for young scientists to interact with and learn from the best in the field of Epigenetics, Nuclear Receptors and Disease. What’s more? This year the IMMEDIAB Lab is proud to be one of the event sponsors! Learn more about the event here.
The Organisers This year’s organising committee was composed of Eckardt Treuter (Karolinska Institutet, Sweden), Barbara Demeneix (Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, France), Karen Knudsen (Thomas Jefferson University, United States) and Serena Barilla (Karolinska Institutet, Sweden). They’ve done an amazing job!
The Line-up Nothing short of star-studded, the speaker’s line-up featured 16 internationally renowned researchers who’ve made their mark and notable up-and-comers.
The keynote lecture was given by Katherine J Moore, a Professor of Cardiology at the Departments of Medicine and of Cell Biology at New York University’s Langone Medical Centre. Katherine gave her Keynote lecture on long non-coding RNAs and regulating cholesterol metabolism.
Other notable speakers were Susanne Mandrup, Inès Pineda-Torra, Lars Grontved, Karolien De Bosscher, Joëlle Rüegg, Myles Brown, Karen Knudsen, Jason Carroll, Wilbert Zwart, Mitch Lazar, Eckardt Treuter, John Scwabe, Mercedes Ricotte, Stephan Herzig and David Moore.
The Students The best part of this FEBS course was the unique opportunity students had to interact with the lecturers, the organisers have really outdone themselves!
The event started off with an ‘elevator-pitch’ where we all had 60 seconds to introduce ourselves! Then all students had the opportunity to present their work at poster sessions, guided in small groups of 7 students with 2 lecturers as moderators. The best abstracts also had short talks to give.
The best posters and talks were awarded with a prize and a novelty this year was a student prize for best participation. The most engaged student that asked questions and interacted with others the most! The student version of Miss Congeniality 
Workshops were organised for science and career advice in the areas of speciality of each speaker. Resounding popularity for technical advances, immunity and long non-coding RNAs!
Some great round-table sessions, moderated by Inès Pineda-Torra and Jason Carroll, discussed new and practical areas in science: how to use social media in science, how to publish in (top) journals and how to find the (best) post-doc lab.
The fun If you thought it was all work and no play? you were wrong!
The organisers have made extraordinary efforts to keep us all entertained! And by that, we mean dinners on the beach, riding around the island and big blow-out parties! We all had the chance to let our hair down!
The sponsors Ofcourse none of this would have been possible without our sponsors, go over to FEBS, Karolinska Intitutet, IUBMB and The Company of Biologists to show your love. Don’t forget, yours truly was a sponsor of this event .
Any questions about this event, and any others, get in touch with us here, and don’t forget to follow us on Instagram and Twitter for instant updates on everything we get up to!
