New heads of units for EMBL Heidelberg Council ... - EMBL Grenoble

EMBL&cetera • August 2007 • page 10News from the Alumni AssociationThe double life of Silke PichlerFormer EMBL predoc Silke Pichler does ajuggling act with her roles as full-timecadre athlete in the Austrian national team,employee of the Austrian TriathlonFederation and Research Associate in theDepartment of Genetics at CambridgeUniversity, UK.Silke, who studied in the Cell BiologyUnit at EMBL Heidelberg from 1997-2001,points out that “athletics at this level needsabsolute commitment, a professional coach,sponsorship, good training partners, andthe moral support of family and friends”.These components have all been there forSilke: from Tim Williams, her trainer at theCambridge triathlon club, to her sponsorsMike’s Bike in Cambridge and Orca, a wetsuitcompany in New Zealand, to name afew. She is particularly grateful for theencouragement and understanding of hersupervisor, Prof. David Glover, for makingher double life as scientist and athlete possible.In turn, she feels that her scientific workhas benefited from the endurance trainingand racing (ironman, for instance, constitutesover nine hours of 3.8k swimming,112k cycling and 42k running) which havegiven her the mental stamina to compete inscience at a very high level, to change herresearch field twice, and to keep publishing.In 2006 she competed in both the IronmanTriathlon Worldchampionships in Hawaii inOctober and the Ironman 70.3 TriathlonWorldchampionships in Florida inNovember. The latter qualified her for a professionaltriathlon licence and since then shehas completed her first pro race in IronmanAustria 2007 as 11th pro woman. She hopesto match this achievement scientifically bycompleting her article on nuclear tracking inthe syncytial blastoderm of Drosophila in thecoming months.Silke will then return to Austria and is currentlyinvestigating of postdoctoral fellow-Alumni facts...55% of EMBL’s 46alumni in Austriahold senior or facultypositionsships and grants for group leaders. This meansthat she can stay involved with the local chaptermeetings there. Watch this space for newsof future meetings, and let us know if you orsomeone you know would like to help organisethem.– Mehrnoosh RaynerWe want to hear from you! Tell us about yourpersonal or scientific achievements, an interestingevent in which you are involved or giveus feedback on alumni matters atalumni@embl.de.First meeting for alumni in GermanyEMBL alumni in Germany, from former predocsto Unit Coordinators, met in Heidelbergduring the Summer Party on 14 July to discusstheir science and career paths after leavingEMBL. This, the first German Local ChapterMeeting, provided staff and alumni theopportunity to share tips on life after EMBLand find out about potential collaborations.The meeting, which began with a welcomeby Iain Mattaj, was a great success, with stimulatingtalks by Christoph Niehrs, GaiaTavosanis, Marek Cyrklaff and Ralf Jansen, acolourful EMBL update by Matthias Hentzeand a creative discussion on what should beoffered at future meetings, led by ClaudiaKoch-Brandt and Freddy Frischknecht.Microarray just a click awaySick of using Excel spreadsheets to organiseyour microarray data? Help is at hand withemBASE, a microarray storage and analysisdatabase which, as well as providing a completeresource and place to keep your data wellorganised, allows the annotation of uploadeddata in compliance with all the standards.The database, which is available to allEMBL groups, supports both commercialand home-made microarray platforms, and isusable without special bioinformatics skills.emBASE will store your highthroughputresults safely and privately until you chooseto make them public and allows easy submissionto EBI’s ArrayExpress repository, soOne issue which emerged was the unanimouswish to involve more EMBL staff whowould benefit from an awareness of the scienceundertaken by EMBL alumni inGermany and the issues they encounter afterleaving. To this end, a popular suggestion wasto hold these meetings during working hours,or in the winter to coincide with the EMBLBurns’ Night party. Finally, the event wasrounded off nicely with one of ClausHimburg’s famous giant strawberry cakes!For programme details and the participantslist visit www.embl.org/aboutus/alumni/chapters/germany.html.– Mehrnoosh Raynerthere’s no more going over old ground whenpublication time arrives. In addition, as youenter data you can also do analysis, and if youfeel like it’s not enough, data export in variousformats is available.“With emBASE, you can manage all aspectsof your experiments, from chip production toArrayExpress publication,” says developerCharles Girardot from the Furlong and Boulingroups at EMBL Heidelberg, who has beenworking on the database with the help ofSajoscha Sauer and Julien Gagneur (HTFGCenter). For more see http://embase.embl.de/base/ or contact Charles at girardot@embl.de.Please mark your diaries with the followingalumni events and opportunities:• EMBL Alumni at the 2007 ELSOMeeting, Dresden, 2 September.Talks by Daniel Louvard, MatthiasHentze and Kai Simons begin at18:45. See www.elso.org, and contactalumni@embl.de for your freeentrance pass.• The 3rd Local Chapter Meeting inSpain will be held on 7 September atthe CIC bioGUNE near Bilbao. IainMattaj will present what’s new atEMBL, and as well as the standardprogramme there’ll be a visit to theGuggenheim. Contact María(mdmvivanco@cicbiogune.es) or visitwww.embl.org/aboutus/alumni/chapters/spain_portugal.html• 14 September is the application deadlinefor the John Kendrew YoungScientist Award. Nominate a formerEMBL pre- or postdoc for the awardof €1000 or apply directly atwww.embl.org/aboutus/alumni/careers_awards/index.html#kendrew.• To celebrate the opening of the newEast Wing, the EBI invites all EMBLalumni to an Alumni Day on 24October. See www.embl.org/aboutus/alumni/news/oct07.html formore details.