Gut Microbiome Research Using Molecular Biology and Multi-Omics Technologies is the title of postgraduate symposium organized by our STRATiGRAD cohorts – Fran and Nancy in collaboration with University College Cork (UCC) students.
Wednesday 24th Sep:
UCC guys arrived at Imperial College London (ICL) in the afternoon. Fran and Nancy took them around for mini-sightseeing of South Kensington Campus before attending welcome and introductory lectures by Prof Elaine Holmes and Dr Julian Marchesi. The first day was nice but it seemed like both UCC and ICL guys were a little bit shy to get to know each other – I may be wrong though lol.
Thursday 25th Sep:
We started our second day with oral presentations by ICL students followed by the highlight lectures from Dr Jia Li and Dr Jonathan Swann. Then, it was our guests’ turn to present their fascinating projects. Then, we bombarded them with NMR demo and multivariate data analysis workshop – sorry guys if it was too much information to digest. Segregation was fading away on the second day as can be seen from wonderfully interactive conversations made during the workshop and more sort of mixed groups between ICL and UCC guys during the coffee break 🙂 That was probably not the only highlight of the day since we then went to Belgo restaurant in Covent Garden for seafood dinner. Julian (one of my lovely supervisors) bought 36 shots for all of us– once again, many thanks to Julian!! but that’s not it!! After that we went to Roadhouse where live music band usually plays from 10.30 pm onwards. We actually expected the live karaoke but unfortunately they usually do it on Monday only…..oh well!! Anyway, everyone had a blast in the end, right?!?
Friday 26th Sep:
The last day of symposium began with poster presentations followed by a lecture from Prof Jeremy Nicholson and award ceremony for best oral and poster presentations – congratulations to Emer and Nancy. Both of you deserved it!
Even though I have not seen the returned feedback forms by the time I am blogging at the moment, the symposium was such a great success for networking ICL and UCC students and also a good platform for exchanging our research expertise.
Last but not least, a big thank you to Fran and Nancy for organizing the pleasant event. Surely, we are all looking forward to the next one in Ireland soon!!
Pete