Virtual Event, Worldwide : 27 - 28 June 2023
Arianna Baggiolini, Institute of Oncology Research, Switzerland
Maria Caffarel, Biodonostia, Spain
Arkaitz Carracedo, CIC bioGUNE, Spain
Sankari Nagarajan, University of Manchester, UK
Elisa Oricchio, EPFL, Switzerland
It's nothing new: already a decade ago, analyses by the Royal Society in the UK and the National Science Foundation in the US showed that most PhD researchers do not remain in academia but go off into other domains to seek their fortunes. This can seem disappointing to those who would prefer to remain in the laboratory, and it can seem frightening to those who have never given a thought to working away from the bench. This presentation will try to give you perspective on the strange beast that is academic research, encourage you to feel excited and emboldened by the growing array of careers that welcome former researchers, and provide suggestions and experiences about how to navigate (y)our uncertain future.
Speaker Information
Chapin trained as a chemist and biochemist at Duke University (US), as a molecular and cell biologist at UT Southwestern Medical Center (US) and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (UK), and as a molecular neuroscientist at Harvard Institutes of Medicine and Brigham and Women's Hospital (US). Since leaving the bench, he spent many years searching for professional meaning, working as a European Affairs Manager at a large scientific society, a teacher of biology and chemistry at the secondary and university levels, and a program assistant at a non-governmental organization. For more than a decade, he has found a home in the world of scientific communication, founding thriving consultancies in Hong Kong and Germany (www.creaducate.eu). But if you ask him what he wants to be when he grows up, he'll still claim he doesn't know.
I am a scientist with 13 years experience as a biomedical researcher in population genetics, and a solid track-record as a publishing scientist on national, European and international research projects.
Since 2008, I have worked as a scientific editor and consultant, and have helped publish over five hundred original scientific articles for dozens of institutes in diverse fields, as well as many competitive funding proposals under national, European and International funding programs.
I also have extensive experience as a trainer in scientific writing and other transferable skills for researchers. With my team at ThePaperMill, we now provide transferrable skills training, manuscript review, and grants consultancy services for researchers at research institutes, universities, European research networks, and private companies.
Lisa obtained her master’s degree from the University of Vienna, during which she was trained in the laboratory of Jacqui Shields at the MRC Cancer Unit in Cambridge, UK. She then completed her PhD in the laboratory of Anna Obenauf at the Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna, Austria. Her doctoral research was based on the intersection of targeted therapy and immunotherapy and focused on understanding the effects of acquired resistance to targeted therapy on the tumor microenvironment. She joined Nature Cancer in 2021 and is based in the Berlin office.
Email: lisa.haas@nature.com
Twitter: @LisaHaas0107
Malte Beringer PhD is a grant advisor, scientific editor and trainer, providing tailored grant preparation services to the biomedical community. Malte holds a PhD in Biochemistry and has more than 15 years of professional experience in the molecular life sciences.
During his career as a researcher in top-class laboratories at the University of Witten/Herdecke (Germany), the Wistar Institute, Philadelphia (USA) and at the Centre of Genomic Regulation, Barcelona (Spain), he gained extensive hands-on experience in scientific writing and grant writing.
As a grant consultant at sciencepoint.eu, he applies this expertise to support individual scientists and institutions preparing competitive grant proposals. Since 2018, he has been focusing on the most prestigious of all European funding schemes, the European Research Council (ERC), while also supporting collaborative proposals within the H2020/HEurope and applications to national funding programmes.
Among his clients are world renowned scientists working at CNIO (Spain), HiTS (Germany), IMDEA Nanociencia (Spain), EMBL Nordic Partnership (Norway), IRB Barcelona (Spain), Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics (Germany), and he has consulted clients from Belgium, Germany, France, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, UK and the US.
The Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Metabolomics in Ageing, at CECAD, at the University of Cologne. He studied Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Padova, Italy, and gained his MSc in 2002, after a period of research on mitochondrial toxicity induced by photoactivable anticancer drugs. Christian then joined the laboratory of Luca Scorrano in Padova to start a PhD on mitochondrial dynamics and apoptosis. In 2008, he moved to the Beatson Institute of Cancer Research in Glasgow as recipient of an EMBO Long Term Fellowship, where he investigated the role of mitochondrial defects in tumorigenesis. He moved to the MRC Cancer Unit in 2012 as tenure track Group Leader and became a Programme Leader in 2017. In 2021 he moved to CECAD to establish his laboratory in Germany.
His laboratory is mainly interested in investigating the emerging connection between cancer and metabolism, with a particular focus on mitochondrial metabolism. By using a combination of biochemistry, metabolomics, and systems biology he investigates the role of altered metabolism in cancer with the aim to understand how metabolic transformation regulates the process of tumorigenesis. His aim is to exploit these findings to establish novel therapeutic strategies and diagnostic tools for cancer.
Brief summary of the lines of research
Since starting my independent research group in 2012, I have pursued the emerging paradigm that dysregulated cellular metabolism can contribute, and in some cases, promote carcinogenesis. Our work focuses on the dysregulation of mitochondrial metabolism, which is emerging as a key feature of tumorigenesis with yet unclear molecular underpinnings. This work is the results of a natural progression of my longstanding interest in mitochondria, which started during my PhD with Luca Scorrano, where I contributed to a new understanding of the link between mitochondrial dynamics and apoptosis (Frezza et al Cell 2006), and later during my post docs with Eyal Gottlieb, where I laid the foundation of my current work on Fumarate Hydratase (Frezza et al Nature 2011). Our work has begun to contribute to a new understanding of mechanisms of tumour initiation and progression, which are invariably characterised by profound metabolic changes (Gaude et al, Nature Communications 2016), but whose role is only partially understood. Our recent work (Sciacovelli et al, Nature 2016) provided the first evidence that fumarate, a metabolite that accumulates in fumarate hydratase-deficient cancer cells, elicits the epigenetic suppression of a small non-coding RNA called miR200, triggering the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, an event critical for cancer initiation and metastasis. These findings demonstrate that metabolic reprogramming of cancer is not merely an epiphenomenon of cell transformation but, rather, that it can actively contribute to the activation of oncogenic signalling cascades. Recent work (Gaude et al, Mol Cell 2018, Ryan et al, eLife 2021) corroborated the relevance of dysregulated mitochondrial metabolism in driving oncogenic processes.
A key feature of our work is the combination of multidisciplinary approaches, from hard-core mitochondrial biochemistry, to systems biology, and metabolomics, and a unique network of collaborators. We also strive to apply our results to clinical relevant contexts.
Mireia Crispin-Ortuzar, CRUK Cambridge Institute, Cambridge, UK
Dr Mireia Crispin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Oncology of the University of Cambridge, and leads a research group focusing on the development of multi-omic data integration models to understand response cancer therapies. She co-leads the Ovarian Programme of the CRUK Cancer Centre and the Mark Foundation Institute for Integrated Cancer Medicine. She is also the Chief Digital Officer of 52 North Health, a biotech start-up developing affordable at-home tests for cancer patients.
Dr Crispin worked previously at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, and was the Director of the Healthcare Innovation programme of the Center for the Governance of Change at IE University (Madrid, Spain), focusing on policy challenges for the integration of AI and digital health in European healthcare. She holds a PhD in Particle Physics (University of Oxford, 2015). She is an author in over 400 publications and has received numerous national and international awards for the academic, entrepreneurial, and outreach aspects of her work.
Dr. Kara McKinley is an Assistant Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University. She received her A.B. from Princeton University in 2010 and her Ph.D. from MIT in 2016.
From 2016-2021 she was a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow and NIH K99 Pathway to Independence Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, San Francisco.
Her research awards include the Harold M. Weintraub Award from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, the Kaluza Prize from the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB), the Merton Bernfield Memorial Award from ASCB, the Regeneron Prize for Creative Innovation, and the Dale F. Frey Award for Breakthrough Scientists from the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation.
She is also the founder of the Leading Edge Symposium, an initiative to promote gender equity among biomedical research faculty.
Marisol Soengas is the Head of the Melanoma Group and the Dean for Academic Affairs at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) in Madrid. She is also the President of the Spanish Association for Cancer Research (ASEICA).
Marisol graduated in Molecular Biology at the Univ Autónoma of Madrid, where she got her PhD in the group of Margarita Salas. After a successful postdoc at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (NY), she set up her first independent group at the University of Michigan, Department of Dermatology. She moved to CNIO in 2008.
Marisol's group is internationally recognized for the identification of tumor drivers and therapeutic targets in melanoma (papers in Nature, Science, Nature Medicine, Nature Cell Biology, Nature Communications and Cancer Cell, among others). Her group has also generated the first-in-class animal models for non-invasive imaging of pre-metastatic niches in melanoma (Nature and EMBO Molecular Medicine), which have identified novel aspects of immune suppression and tumor metastasis (Nature Medicine).
Marisol also cofounded Bioncotech Therapeutics (now Highlight Therepeutics), a start up stemming from the CNIO, with proprietary dsRNA-based nanocomplexes currently in Phase II clinical trials.
She has received multiple awards (over 40 since 2010), exemplified by the Estela Medrano Memorial Award by the Society for Melanoma Research (2017), the Fritz Ander Medal of the European Society for Pigment and Melanoma Research (2019), the Carmen and Severo Ochoa Award (2021) and the Pezcoller-Marina Larcher Fogazzaro-EACR Women in Cancer Research Award (2022).
Soengas is also actively involved in initiatives to empower and promote career development for female scientists. She has lead an international L’Oreal-MRA Women-Lead Team Award, and is the Founder and coordinator of the “Women in Science” section of Spanish Association for Cancer Research (Asociación Española de Investigación sobre el Cáncer, ASEICA). She has also been recognized among the Most Influential Scientists and Clinical Doctors (Yo Donna/El Mundo, 2018) and has been chosen as the Top100 of Influential Women in Spain 2018, 2019 and 2023 (Mujeres & Cia group), among others.
Soengas is Corresponding Member of the Real Academia Nacional de Farmacia, the Real Academia de Farmacia de Galicia and the Real Academia Galega de Ciencias. Soengas is an EMBO member and is a Board Member of the European Association of Cancer Research (EACR).
Alfredo joined Nature Metabolism in August 2021. He received his PhD in Biology from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, developing neuroprotective strategies against mitochondrial dysfunction in the central nervous system. He then pursued postdoctoral studies at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, where he investigated metabolic checkpoints and their role in responses to pathophysiological stress. Alfredo led his own independent research group, first at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, and soon after at the Centro de Biología Molecular “Severo Ochoa”, Madrid, focusing on mechanisms that integrate cell signaling and metabolic flux in the central nervous system. He is based in the Berlin office.
Maksym Tsytlonok is a Scientific Officer at the European Research Council Executive Agency (ERCEA). He is primarily involved in the evaluation procedures of proposals in the LS3 (Cellular, Developmental, and Regenerative Biology) and LS4 (Physiology in Health, Disease, and Ageing) panels, as well as project follow-up after the granting phase.
Prior to joining ERC, Maksym worked as a Project Officer at the Research Executive Agency on the Future Emerging Technology (FET) program. He holds a PhD in Oncology from the University of Cambridge, with a background in protein biophysics and protein folding.
Dietary requirements (in-person events only)
Please indicate any special dietary requirements here. We will try to cater to all dietary requirements and we will write to you if there is any problem.
Data
Your details will be retained in our electronic registration database and used for correspondence from the EACR in line with our
Privacy Policy. If this event is organised in partnership with another organisation, we may share your name, country and email address with the partner(s) unless you ask us not to.
Sharing your details with others
Please click below if you agree we can share your name, email and postal address with participants and exhibitors, who may use them to contact you.
Don't Share
Share
Please note: you have selected NOT to share your details with participants and exhibitors.
You can click above to change this.
Invoicing information
We will use the email address in your EACR account to communicate with you. However, during the checkout process you will need to enter the name and contact details of the person paying for your registration, if this is different to your own details. Please make sure you have this information to hand.
Terms and Conditions
Please read our
Membership and Events Terms and Conditions before completing your registration.
Photography and video
Please note that we will be taking photographs and video at the conference for publicity and marketing purposes. If you do not wish to take part please inform the photographer.
Confirm Registration