DANEMO Excursion: Advancing Cell Biology through Innovative Infrastructure in Heidelberg

Would you like to visit some of the most important facilities for doing cell biology experiments in Europe? Hear from some of EMBL’s most outstanding cell biologists who are leading the development of important new tecnniques for investigating cellular processes? Expand your network both in Denmark and abroad?

This is a time of tremendous opportunity for cell biology, but realising it also represents a formidable challenge and requires new concepts and approaches. Individual cellular processes ─ such as signalling, membrane trafficking, cytoskeletal dynamics and cell migration, gene expression or cell division ─ can no longer be studied in isolation but need to be considered as integrated events. This requires new ways of thinking about cellular functions that use network biology and employing quantitative theoretical methods to generate mechanistic and predictive models that rely on realistic physical principles at the cellular, subcellular and molecular scale. Therefore, cell biology needs to integrate traditionally separate disciplines to realise its potential.

The purpose of this excursion is to introduce students to diverse cutting-edge methods developed for cell biology and showcase how integrated approaches can address the current “big” questions in cell biology. Novel developments in microscopy, computer simulations and chemical biology-based probes are a particular strength of EMBL Heidelberg. New correlative light/electron and super-resolution imaging methods, as well as mechanistic biochemistry, allows them to directly interface between cell and structural biology to understand molecular mechanisms. Furthermore, advances in live and deep tissue imaging methods now allows one to carry out cell biology in developing organisms to understand how collective cell behaviour leads to organ formation, and how cells interact with their physiological microenvironment.

Over two-days of lectures and seminars, students will learn from some of the worl’d most exciting research leaders who are pushing forward our understanding of cellular processes. They will also have a chance to visit the world-renowned facilities located at EMBL Heidelberg, including the EMBL Imaging Center.

In addition, it is a goal of the excursion to spur new collaborations and connections between Danish researchers and researchers based at EMBL Heidelberg and networking events will be organised where participants will meet with postdoctoral researchers based at EMBL Heidelberg.

The excursion is open to all interested junior researchers (PhD students, postdoctoral researchers and assistant professors) based at Danish research institutions. The excursion will therefore also present a fantastic opportunity for meeting other junior researchers working in structural biology from across Denmark.

There is no registration fee and accommodation will be provided for. In addition, participants will receive a 3.000kr travel stipend to help cover the costs of trabsportation to Heidelberg. Capacity is strictly limited to 20 places.

PhD students will be eligible to receive 1 ECTS for participation in the excursion.

Register now through the menu on the left.

The excursion is being jointly organised by DANEMO, the Technical University of Denmark and EMBL Heidelberg.