New horizons – taking PhD students from Denmark to Hamburg.
June 24-26

Monday, June 24, we took 28 PhD students and postdocs with us to EMBL Hamburg, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchroton (DESY), European X-Ray Free-Electron Laser Facility (European XFEL) and Cryo-Electron Microscopy at Centre for Structural and Systems Biology (CSSB). Here they got an introduction to the state-of-the-art infrastructure available in Hamburg. The students came from various backgrounds within life science, adding to EMBL’s goal of interdisciplinary work. With the excursion to Hamburg, we at DANEMO hoped to encourage networking, not just between the students themselves but between Danish researchers and researchers at Hamburg.

 The trip had a variety of topics, which were warmly welcomed by the participants with Vijeesh Vayyattil from Aarhus University stating:

 It’s a nice experience learning more about structural biology techniques we needed to get the opportunity to visit EMBL. That was a very great experience.

Ruchi Sharma from Aarhus University expressed the joy of seeing some of Hamburg’s excellent facilities. During these visits, participants learned about cutting-edge approaches for using synchrotron radiation, x-ray crystallography, cryo-electron microscopy, x-ray imaging, and time-resolved experiments to study molecular structures. Something quite new to students like Ruchi Sharma:

 I get more information about molecular biology as I don’t know a lot about molecular biology. This is my first trip, and I’m excited. The people we’ve met are quite friendly and nice, that is nice – the facilities are very structured and organized.

The excursion was filled with talks by amazing professors from all over the world who were researching Hamburg’s facilities. This ensured a high level of education for the participants, who got to ask questions and network with scientists from Hamburg. During the excursion we held a poster session in collaboration with DESY, where the participants had the opportunity to bring a poster to present to other PhD- and postdocs at DESY, to enhance networking and collaboration between Denmark and Hamburg. The event was great with both Danish and DESY students showcasing their work, resulting in great discussions and connections.

Throughout the three-day excursion, one thing especially stood out, the facility tours: Patric Nordlin from the University of Copenhagen, happily stated:

The facility tours have been excellent, it was really interesting hearing about the new BSL3 lab and how dedicated they are to setting it up, cause they are buying a new microscope for it. I’ve never been to an EXFEL facility before, so I’m very excited to experience that.

 The scientific facilities available just a few hours from Denmark at Hamburg are truly amazing. The excursion included tours from world-leading scientists, working at the many labs at EMBL, DESY, XFEL, and CSSB. This ensured that the participants had plenty of time to ask questions, before, after, and during the facility tours. The trip also included multiple lectures from different scientists, as the participants came from various scientific backgrounds, this ensured that the participants all had the opportunity to learn from experts within their field, as well as expand their knowledge in other areas of life science. This included a lecture on X-ray imaging from EMBL team leader Elizabeth Duke, in which the participants got to learn the science behind X-ray imaging, before visiting the labs themselves. This impressed the students, who all in all only had great things to say about the excursion, here with Sandra Andersson from the University of Copenhagen saying:

I’m very impressed with the facilities here, they have so much great equipment and also very great scientists, really interesting research

See pics from the event here.