News

Lauren Jones, a member of the 2013 cohort, has been awarded a gold sponsorship from Primerdesign.

Every year Primerdesign sponsors a number of postgraduate students across the UK to help with their research by actively promoting good science and providing some free, and some discounted, high quality Real-Time PCR reagents. Projects are assessed and a number of sponsorships awarded on merit.

As one of this year's winners, Lauren has been awarded a Gold level of sponsorship which includes over £3000 worth of reagents and products, as well as additional discounts and hands on technical assistance and training from our experts.

Further information can be found on the Primerdesign website.

Michael Baker, from the 1st MIBTP cohort, was recently published as co-author in the American Journal of Physiology with the paper - α-1-Antitrypsin variants and the proteinase/antiproteinase imbalance in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The paper is as a result of his first mini-project, during his training year on the programme.

Mussa Quaresy recently took part in a course at the European Bioinformatics Institute at the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus in Hinxton. Participants for the course are selected based on an application rather than first come first serve basis. Mussa said that the course was very interesting and well organised, with training from the people that actually curate the databases and who are experts in their fields. Mussa also presented his work on drug design for novel auxins.

Ikhlaas Kasli, first year MIBTP PhD student was awarded a grant to attend the 11th Annual bioProcessUK Conference in Liverpool, on the 25-26th November.

Zoe Lonsdale, MIBTP 1st year PhD student has been selected to visit the Department of Biological Sciences at Nara Women's University (Japan) in Spring 2015 as part of a Leicester–Nara Exchange Agreement. She will work with Professor Shin-ichi Iwaguchi and his group, exploring epigenetically controlled phenotypic plasticity. Her visit will also include giving a research seminar, visiting the research laboratories, and meeting with staff and students to discuss the research at Nara and Leicester to hopefully lay the groundwork for collaborations.

MIBTP second year PhD student Andrew Gilbert has had a first author publication in the Cold Spring Harbour Perspectives in Medicine monthly online publication.

He has also gained a co-author publication in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

The Universities of Warwick, Birmingham and Leicester were recently awarded £13 million for MIBTP2. A second phase of our Doctoral Training Programme that will train 52 PhD students a year for 5 years (half funded by BBSRC and half by the Universities). We are now the third largest BBSRC DTP in the country and will continue our emphasis on quantitative biology and new ways of working. Recruitment will start soon for entry in Oct 2015.

MIBTP student Andrew Tock made a short video about his PIPS placement in Uganda - highlighted by BBSRC and the Global Food Security programme.

Second year MIBTP student Liam Redgrave has a first author publication in Trends in Microbiology on fluoroquinoline resistance.