Paper accepted

My first-author paper reporting the majority of work I performed at the ICR during the MC fellowship period has just been accepted by Leukemia. Time between submission and acceptance was only 24hrs28min! Celebration with several bottles of beer :-)

Concluding remarks

So it's over. Two years have flown quickly. The Marie Curie program provided me a real opportunity for career development. I can recommend it to all young researchers. My technical skills have been expanded significantly and working in an international environment was an amazing experience. I got to know a lot of interesting people and great minds. The training was also a very important part of the fellowship period and I feel especially lucky that I could visit the Sanger Center, the EMBL in Heidelberg, present my work at the EHA conference and attend the Lindau Meeting. One good paper so far and one in progress. My daughter speaks english almost fluently and my wife also gained working experience at an American CRO company in England. So in summary, the Marie Curie Actions significantly changed our life and we are grateful to the reviewers and funding body for their support!

Darwin house

64th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting

The Lindau Meeting was absolutely amazing. I've never ever attended a scientific event comparable to this one. 609 young scientists had a chance of meeting 37 Nobel Laureates. During the opening ceremony, a previous participant of the Meeting sent us his greetings from the space! After that the members of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra gave a fascinating concert. From the next day, 8 Nobel Laureates gave 30-min talks each day followed by discussions, masterclasses, seminars in the afternoon and various dinners in the evening. The organization was highly professional. Each Laureate was transported everywhere by the organizers with an Audi or Porsche. We, young scientists received a book about all Laureates in Physiology or Medicine, participant directory, a fully personalized program, 50 business cards and lots of other things. The Nobel Laureates were very friendly and approachable. Last day, a boat took us over the Bodensee to the Mainau Island for the last panel discussion and closing ceremony. The whole event was like a dream...

Discussion session with Hamilton O. Smith

with J. Michael Bishop

J. Michael Bishop and Elizabeth H. Blackburn

Entering the masterclass chaired by Aaron Ciechanover

Panel discussion on 'Large Data and Hypothesis-Driven Science in the Era of Post-Genomic Biology' with Bruce A. Beutler, J. Michael Bishop, Jules A. Hoffmann and Brian P. Schmidt. (moderated by Stefan H.E. Kaufmann)

with Françoise Barré-Sinoussi

Arrival at Mainau Island

Panel discussion on ' Science for the Benefit of Mankind'

boarding the boat and heading back to Lindau

Olivier Smithies

British Mensa

Yeah, I've just got the scores of my Mensa test and the result is in the top 1% thus they invited me to join.

19th Congress of EHA

I've just returned from Milan where I gave a talk at the annual conference of the European Hematology Association. There are appr 10,000 attendees each year so this is the largest scientific event I usually participate. The past month was really stressful due to data generation and evaluation, preparation of the presentation etc but based on the feedbacks people enjoyed the talk so it was worth making efforts.

Rib boat tour

I got a voucher for a rib boat tour on the Thames from my wife for Christmas. That was a fantastic experience yesterday.

Paper accepted!

Our paper has just been accepted by the Leukemia. I haven't published at this level yet so this is a real jump in my publication record which is great :-) Celebration with some beer in Florida...
                                                       

CYTO 2014

The annual conference of the ISAC with appr 1,600 attendees is being held in Ft Lauderdale, FL. It's my pleasure to serve as a Program Committee member and take part in session chairing, poster judging, etc. There are some really great talks and posters and it's always nice to see so many colleagues and friends. The weather is excellent and the temperature of the ocean allows to swim even after dusk.

Sign on the sidewalk (showing where the entrance of the venue is)

Entrance Hall

 Convention Center

 

A yacht worth 180 million bucks

 Everglades

Single-cell analysis

I've just completed a series of cool single-cell experiments using the Fluidigm high-throughput microfluidic platform. Just before my arrival at Sutton, a colleague of mine had set up an application that allows to analyse a lot of interesting genetic changes at single-cell resolution. The method has been described in detail here. In my project, I've we used it for exploring the subclonal architectures and phylogenetic histories of leukemias developed in monozygotic twin siblings. These cancers have a common in utero origin and it was interesting to see how differently cancer can evolve on the same genetic background.

Second child

My wife has just given birth to our son. Exciting days :-)

London in a nutshell

All important things in a single image.

64th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting

The Lindau Meeting is an amazing event where young researchers can meet Nobel Laureates in an informal and relaxed environment. I've just got the notification from the organizers about the acceptance of my application. It'll be the most inspiring scientific conference in my life I'm sure. You can read a press release about the selection process here.

Happy Darwin Day!

Baba Brinkman's message :-)

We Are Made of DNA

Not the most recent but clearly the most hilarious Baba Brinkman video! Sponsored by the Wellcome Trust, the biggest global charity supporting health research.

Greenwich

I had a couple of things to sort out in Greenwich so spent some time there strolling around. It's a very nice place also for families with children. En route to there I looked around at the Canary Wharf as well.

 US feeling

 Cutty Sark

 The Queen's house

The Royal Observatory on the top of the hill 

Sharp contrast - architecture on the Thames' two edges