Before the Christmas rush, the LightDyNAmics consortium came together for the third and final LightDyNAmics training week that took place from 15 to 17 November and was hosted by the Institut de Chimie Physique (Université Paris-Saclay). It was the first event since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic with in-person participation making it an exceptional occasion for ESRs to be involved in many different activities the programme offered, including training, meetings and workshops.
Day 1 (15.11.2021)
The first day of the three-day meeting kicked off in the morning after a welcome with the “Wider Horizon Day 3”. During this session, our ESRs gained insights into imaging the dynamics of protein-nucleic acid interactions from David Rueda (Imperial) to explore potential applications and take full advantage of LightDyNAmics innovations.
After a lunch break, the participants came back together for the first part of our “Day Of Light and Matter”, during which researchers and research projects from related disciplines were discussing possible applications of the LightDyNAmics results in their fields. In the first part of the “Day of Light and Matter”, four exciting talks were given:
- “Analysis of inborn errors of metabolism biomarkers by microfluidic instrumentation” by Antoine Pallandre, Institut de Chimie Physique
- “Photoinduced charge transfer and symmetry breaking” by Eric Vauthey, University of Geneva
- “Light and nucleic acids: spectroscopic analysis of unusual DNA and RNA structures” by Jean Louis Mergny, École Polytechnique
- “pi-conjugated materials for electronic and optoelectronic applications” by Abderrahim Yassar, Ecole Polytechnique
Day 2 (16.11.2021)
The second day of the LightDyNAmics training week was dedicated to the second part of the “Day of Light and Matter”. In addition to the exciting talks and and extended discussions of the previous day, four more talks were held in the morning:
- “Single Molecule Insights Into DNA Repair by Homologous Recombination” by David Rueda, Imperial
- “Damage-induced changes in DNA structure explored by nuclear magnetic resonance” by Peter Podbevšek, KI
- “Light emitted by bioluminescence: a theoretical investigation” by Isabelle Navizet, Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée
- “Chemistry Graduate School: new structuring@Univ. Paris-Saclay and a field of opportunities” by achel Meallet, Université Paris-Saclay
After a little rest during the lunch break, the “Day of Light & Matter” was concluded with the keynote lecture by D. Markovitsi, CNRS on “A European pathway between order and disorder in the search of light”. The entire “Day of Light & Matter” offered meaningful insights followed by exciting questions and debates.
The training day ended for ESRs with a “Vaccine Seminar” by Thomas Frischmuth (Baseclick) in which PIs and ESRs were informed about the development of the Covid-19 vaccine candidate BCV-193N based on mRNA technology (currently used by Pfizer/Biontech and Moderna).
Day 3 (17.11.2021)
The third and last day of the LightDyNAmics training week started in the morning with the long-awaited “Science Slam Workshop”. As part of the Science Slams, all our ESRs developed a 5-minute Science Slam on their research topic. The talks were recorded and will be published later, not only to provide an educational resource for a wide range of end-users but also to raise awareness of MSCA and LightDyNAmics research.
The last day was finalised with a disscusiion on increasing project outreach within a “Lab Experience Workshop” and coordinating activities as part of a “Management Board Meeting”. After the end of the official programme, the participants met again in the evening for the third collective social dinner.