A Life with Yeast Molecular Biology - Prof. Dr. Horst Feldmann

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H. FELDMANN
who would be willing to run a FEBS Course. Though the funds for
FEBS Courses were raised to 1 Mio Deutsche Mark per annum, we
had to set certain limits for the amount of money given as a
support to each course. So it was highly appreciated if organizers
were able to invite co-sponsorship from other grant giving
institutions. One particular advantage of running a FEBS Course,
however, was that Youth Travel Grants were provided to assist
attendance at these by younger scientists. As half of the FEBS
Courses budget was designed for this purpose, up to 25% of the
participants in a lecture course and all of the participants in a
practical course could profit from this type of support. In
accordance with FEBS’ general policy, fellowships were preferably
awarded to young scientists from Eastern European countries, who
otherwise would have had little chance to receive funds from their
national institutions. Another aspect connected to this issue was
that the ACC sought to invite colleagues from these countries to
organize FEBS Courses at their home institutions, an encouragement
that in fact paid out successfully. During my time as
chairman, the ACC consisted of 10 members: eight colleagues from
different Constituent Societies as well as the FEBS Secretary
General and the FEBS Treasurer. This arrangement has been
kept, but fortunately more colleagues from former Eastern
countries became members of the ACC since. In all these years,
the ACC received enough applications to sort out inappropriate
ones. Priority was given to practical courses, because the
committee felt that this type of venue would be of greatest benefit
to young researchers who had no other opportunities to experience
novel laboratory techniques or to learn techniques, which they
wanted to apply in new projects. Thus the practical courses
complete the intentions of the FEBS fellowships’ program. Indeed,
some of the practical courses were so successful that the organizers
and the ACC decided to repeat them, sometimes in subsequent
years or in a series. I gratefully recollect that for one particular
course the main organizer [Wilhelm Ansorge from EMBL
(European Molecular Biology Laboratory)] repeatedly undertook
to transfer all special equipment and instruments needed for this
course to a place that had no supplies of this kind. The significance
of the Advanced Courses Programme is also documented by the
fact that students themselves, the Young Scientists movement,
took the initiative to organize a successful series of courses entitled
‘‘Young Scientists’ view of molecular biology and biotechnology.’’