Events

News

Gold medal and Special Prize! An interdisciplinary team of 10 undergrads, coached by IBI's Sebastian Maerkl, Bart Deplancke and Matteo Dal Peraro for EPFL's second participation in the international Genetically Engineered Machine competition (iGEM), landed a great success with its project nicknamed "E.colight", aiming at demonstrating the ability of light-sensitive fusion proteins to regulate gene expression through light control (read abstract here). The EPFL team brought home a Gold Medal and a “Best New BioBrick Part or Device, Engineered” Prize, awarded at MIT (Cambridge, MA, USA) during the annual "iGEM jamboree" held October 30 thru November 2, 2009.

IBI's Yann Barrandon is one of 66 leading life scientists elected to EMBO membership in 2009. The European Molecular Biology Organization elects new members annually on the basis of scientific excellence, thereby aiming at putting a spotlight on the most outstanding representatives of the current generation of life scientists. (Read more here).

IBI's Johan Auwerx has received the Danone International Prize for Nutrition for his research in molecular nutrition. More precisely, his studies focus on the mechanism of shedding of fat from adipose tissue, thereby paving the way for new preventive and therapeutic strategies to combat obesity and cardiometabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes and hypertension. Set up in 1997 with the support of the Medical Research Foundation, the Danone International Prize for Nutrition is awarded every two years to a research scientist or research team conducting outstanding studies in human nutrition. (Read more here).

Warm congratulations to IBI's Nikolaos Stergiopulos, who has been promoted to Full Professor. (Read EPFL's press release here).

Welcome and congratulations to Auke Ijspeert, who has been promoted to Associate Professor and simultaneously transferred to the IBI, where he will continue his research on biologically inspired robots. (Read EPFL's press releases here).

Welcome and congratulations to Dimitri Van De Ville on his nomination as SNSF Assistant Professor and his joining the IBI. His appointment is shared with the University of Geneva and he is also affiliated to CIBM, the Center for Biomedical Imaging partnered between EPFL and the universities, and university hospitals, of Lausanne and Geneva. Van De Ville is an expert in biomedical signal and image processing, and in functional imaging. (Read more on the MIPLab website here).

BioNano2009, the 2nd Swiss-Japanese Symposium on Bio-Nanotechnology, chaired by Head of IBI Jeffrey A. Hubbell and co-chaired by IBI's Matthias Lutolf, has taken place Sept. 10-11, 2009 in beautiful medieval Aigle castle, and was a great success. The next edition will be organized in Japan, in 2011. (View online photo gallery here).

ESB 2009, the annual conference of the European Society for Biomaterials / 22nd European Conference on Biomaterials, has taken place in Lausanne Sept. 7-11, 2009. With 250 oral presentations, over 750 posters and a record-breaking 1200 registered participants, the conference has been a huge success. Head of IBI Jeffrey A. Hubbell chaired the Conference's Scientific Secretariat, while IBI's Christine Wandrey was our local representative in the Organising Committee. ESB2010 will take place Sept. 11-15, 2010 in Tampere, Finland.

IBI's Carlotta Guiducci lectures in the Summer school on Nano-Bio-Sensing taking place June 29th through July 3rd, 2009, on the EPFL campus. This educational event, of particular interest to doctoral students, bioengineers and members of the Life Sciences community at large, is organized by Centre SI and the MMNS Education and Research unit of the CCMX Competence Centre for Materials Science and Technology. For details, please click here.

Archived 'News' items can be looked up HERE.