Maastricht workshop and annual meeting 30th April - 4th May 2018
In the spring of 2018, the EVOluTION consortium and ESRs gathered in Maastricht for a week of fascinating lectures, an interactive exploitation workshop, a tour of a pharmaceutical company and ended with the annual and mid-term review meeting.
Speakers from across the pond and Europe were invited to the workshop at the beginning of the week. Some highlights included a presentation on personalised medicine by Prof Gert Vriend, Prof Monzur Murshed from McGill University, Montreal, Canada gave an interesting lecture on the mechanisms of biomineralisation. On the second day Assoc Prof Jack Tie from Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina described his use of the CRISPR-Cas9 system to study the enzymes in the vitamin K cycle and Prof Volker Gerke from the University of Munster presented his seminal work on annexin and the mechanisms of regulated exocytosis.
On Wednesday the 2nd of May the ESRs visited the Basic Pharma laboratories in Geleen at the Brightlands campus as part of the transferable skills training module on technology transfer, creation and spin offs.
On the final day of the workshop an exploitation booster session was given by Mr Giovanni Zazzerini from the META group. ESRs gave pitch style presentations on their key exploitable results, which was followed by an interactive feedback and discussion session.
The remainder of the week was dedicated to the annual meeting and the mid-term review meeting. Of course, an EVOluTION gathering would not be complete without a delicious dinner for all the consortium members, which took place at the boutique gastronomic restaurant, Touched.
