By Professor Mike Shipston, Dean of Biomedical Sciences, the University of Edinburgh
As a prelude to the signing off ceremony for the Joint Zhejiang University – University of Edinburgh Institute, the 4th Hangzhou-Edinburgh Joint symposium in Biomedical Sciences took place in the School of Basic Biomedical Sciences, Zhejiang University (ZJU).
The symposium series was initiated in September 2011 by Mark Evans.
The event brings together researchers from Edinburgh and Zhejiang to highlight recent progress in Biomedical Science research across the two institutions.
In particular, the event provides a showcase for new investigators recruited to the respective institutions to provide a forum to develop new collaborations and promote MSc research opportunities for students on the current 3+1 programme.
The audience included faculty from both ZJU and UoE as well as PhD students and those from both the 3+1 and current Biomedical Science programmes,
The opening address from the Dean of Basic Biomedical Sciences of ZJU, Hongwei Ouyang emphasized the rapid developments in Biomedical sciences across the two institutes and the new initiatives in research, teaching and learning.
Talks ranging from the role of AMPK in control of breathing (Mark Evans) through to new insights from Drosophila sensory neurons into mechanisms underlying human disease associated with primary Ciliary Dyskinesia (Andrew Jarman).
Edinburgh Chancellor’s Fellow Bin-Zhi Qian and Academic Track Fellow Thamarai-Schneiders enthused the packed audience including ZJU Faculty and students with their clear insights into macrophage mediated inflammatory responses in breast cancer and antibiotic resistance respectively.
Recent Zhejiang appointments included Guoji Guo (recruited back from Harvard) discussing single cell profiling to study the hierarchy of human hematopoietic stem cell; Jingwei Zhao recruited from Cambridge studying the role of glia precursors in the repair of the injured brain; Dante Neculai recruited from Canada studying scavenger receptors involved in innate immunity and metabolic disorders and included Stijn van der Veen recruited from Oxford examining bacterial meningitis.
I had the honour of closing the programme and emphasized to the students the outstanding joint collaborative opportunities for further research-led training with the new ZJU-UoE initiatives with the shared ethos of “every student a researcher and every researcher a teacher”
…and to test their working hypothesis by designing the best experiments they can by “working smarter, not harder”.