Successful NRPDTP Summer Conference 2019

On Thursday 20th June the NRPDTP doctoral candidates all came together for the annual Summer Conference held at OPEN, Norwich. The audience of about 180 included NRPDTP students, those Collaborative Training Partnership students affiliated to the programme and MRC Doctoral Antimicrobial Resistance Training (DART) iCASE students. The topic was Frontier Bioscience and the morning involved four scientific talks by international experts on: mathematical modelling of plant development (Dr Dyson, Birmingham); cryo-electron microscopy for structure determination of viruses (Prof Ranson, Leeds); developing artificial metalloenzymes (Prof Duhme-Klair, York); and the biology of plant infection by fungi (Prof Talbot, TSL, Norwich).

After lunch, Prof Tom Welton (Imperial College, London), a member of the UKRI External Advisory Group for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, explored with the audience why they should care about inclusivity. This was followed by an excellent workshop on ‘Designing Visual Abstracts’ facilitated by Peter Moore Fuller of infohackit. The third-year cohort presented posters on their research. Winners of the poster competition, as voted for by their peers, were presented prizes by Dr Ruth Nottingham (UKRI-BBSRC). The first prize went to Claire Hews (UEA), second to Millie Stanton (JIC) and third to Agatha Treveil (EI).

It was a great day and soon planning will begin for Summer Conference 2020 on the topic of Bioscience for an Integrated Understanding of Health.