Author: bwaclaw

Witold (Witek) Postek joined our group last week. Witek has experience in building microfluidic devices and using them to investigate how bacteria evolve resistance to antibiotics. In the Dioscuri Centre, Witek will continue this line of work; he will also help other members to develop co-culture systems for epithelial cells and bacteria.

Welcome to Karolina Drabik, a freshly minted PhD graduate from the Nencki Institute. Karolina has just started with us this week. She will be our expert on cell culture work.

Please consider participating in the conference I am co-organizing:

https://higgs.ph.ed.ac.uk/workshops/fundamentals-of-growing-active-matter/

If you need an extra motivation, we will distribute two £200 prizes for best contributions from early-career researchers.

Welcome to Elin Lilja, who has recently joined our group from Edinburgh. Elin is a post-doctoral researcher interested in microbial evolution; she also has significant expertise in genetic engineering of bacteria. She will be our “core microbiologist” and a molecular biology techniques expert.

We have a fully-funded postdoctoral position for researchers interested in pursuing projects in microfluidic systems for bacteria/animal cells co-culture, and/or in optical detection and measurement of bacteria. See Jobs for details.

Bartek Waclaw is co-organising an online workshop “Fundamentals of Growing Active Matter”, 25-26 March 2021. Here is a short description:

“A wide variety of physical properties of living systems arise from interplay between activity and growth. These include pattern formation in bacterial colonies, ordering in actin networks and the emergence of resistance in tumours.”

“The workshop’s main goal is to gather together researchers working on different systems and using different techniques (theory, simulations, and experiments). We hope that the meeting will help to identify universal characteristics of growing active matter and reveal unifying general principles (if they exist).”

There is an excellent line-up of speakers: Jens ELGETI (Forschungszentrum Jülich), Luca GIOMI (LEI), Rhoda HAWKINS (University of Sheffield), Silke HENKES (University of Bristol), Julia YEOMANS (Oxford).

It will be possible to present a contributed talk or poster.

Please register at

https://higgs.ph.ed.ac.uk/workshops/fundamentals-of-growing-active-matter/

The Polish Academy of Sciences has announced a funding programme PASIFIC for post-doctoral fellows who would like to work for two years in any of the PAS research institutes.

The fellowship is 2500 EUR net/month plus family allowance and research expenses

Please contact Bartek Waclaw if you would be interested in applying to undertake an independent research programme in the Dioscuri Centre funded by PASIFIC.

https://pasific.pan.pl/for-applicants/about-the-fellowship/

We warmly welcome Magda Ziolkowska and Ilyas Djafer-Cherif to the Dioscuri Centre! Both are post-doctoral researchers, Magda will work on bacteria-surface interactions and Ilyas will use machine-learning algorithms to analyse microscopic images of bacterial colonies.

This week we have welcomed a new member of the Dioscuri Centre. Patrycja Kuzma is a part-time lab manager who will help us setting up and run the lab. She is already acting in a similar capacity for another group in IPC. Her “insider knowledge” of local procedures has already helped a lot. Welcome Patrycja!