Submitted by Laura Puhl on Mon, 24/06/2024 - 12:19
This month, the Institute held the CSCI Annual Retreat on 6 and 7 June in Cambridge.
This annual event brings together CSCI researchers, Affiliate Group Leaders, and our Stem Cells Interdisciplinary Research Centre members for a day and a half of talks, posters, Institute updates, and networking outside of the office and labs. This year also featured, in addition to the scientific sessions, a special afternoon session to discuss translational research.
Throughout the two-day event, CSCI welcomed over 350 attendees that included CSCI’s own Group Leaders, Postdoctoral researchers and Postgraduate students; Affiliate Group Leaders and their labs; visitors from our SCI-TIF companies, and special guest speakers.
The special panel session this year invited Dr Rachel Atfield (Associate Commercialisation Director, Cambridge Enterprise), Dr Jason Mellad (CEO & Founder, Start Codon), and Professor Steve Jackson (Senior Group Leader, CRUK-CI & founder of KuDOS Pharmaceuticals).
The keynote address was given this year by Dr Timm Schroeder from the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering at ETH Zurich in Basel, Switzerland. His talk, ‘Long-term single-cell quantification: New tools for old questions,’ discussed the imaging approaches and software his lab is developing in order to image, segment, and track cells and to quantify aspects of individual cells over generations.
Thursday evening featured a poster session for PhD, Postdoc, Research Assistants and Technicians to present their work, followed by a social gathering with a BBQ and live music from The Squires Duo.
On Friday, an awards session honoured Research Culture & Integrity, Workplace Culture, and Public Engagement efforts at the Institute throughout the past year, as well as research prizes for poster and flash talk presentations throughout the retreat. This year’s winners were:
Commitment to Public Engagement Prize
- Kirsty Ferguson (Postdoc, Philpott Group - “For her commitment to engaging people with lived experience with her group’s research, particularly with childhood cancer patients, families, charities, and healthcare professionals.”
Innovation in Public Engagement Prize – joint winners
- Cambridge Reproduction (led by Kathy Niakan & Christina Rozeik) - “for their extensive work connecting public opinion and dialogue into their project to develop guidelines for the use of stem cell based embryo models in research”
- Sinha Group- “for their project working to dialogue with people with experience of heart failure and organ transplantation with support from the University’s Public Engagement Starter Fund”
Commitment to Research Integrity Prize – joint winners
- Mekayla Storer (PI) – “for her work undertaken as HTA lead”
- Jacqui Davidson (Admin Group) – “for ensuring that all Institute publications meet Open Access requirements”
Commitment to Workplace Culture Prize – joint winners
- Adam Spruce (Postgrad student, Khaled Group) – “for commitment to Green Impact and Wellbeing initiatives in CSCI and across the campus”
- Chloe Baxter (Technician) – “for constantly striving to improve processes for all researchers”
- Deborah Passey (Sinha Group) – “for creating a welcoming work environment”
- Miriam di Re (Hodson Group) - "for creating a welcoming and inclusive work environment”
Special services prize: JCBC IT Group – “for working under pressure to solve problems across the Institute”
Top posters (Isabelle Bouhon Early Career Poster Prize):
- Noémie Combémorel (Postdoc, Tyser Group)
- Sarah Horton (Postdoc, Huntly Group)
- Matthew McLoughlin (Postgrad, Vassiliou Group)
- Giorgi Melia (Research Assistant, Khaled Group)
Top Flash Talks (Isabelle Bouhon Early Career Presentation Prize)
- Top Postgrad Talk – Giovanna Mantica (Postgrad, Laurenti Group)
- Top Postdoc Talk – Stavros Vagionitis (Postdoc, Karadottir Group)
Find the event booklet with details of the talks and poster session here.
