The 2021 KBC Days was held on the 9th and 10th of November in an online format, and UPS was lucky enough to secure a two-hour spot during this time! We used this to highlight the activities of the Society, as well as provide a platform for some of our excellent postdocs to share their latest research.
The session was chaired by our own Karim Rafie, who did a fantastic job of outlining the plan for the session and keeping everyone to time. A quick introduction to the UPS and a summary of what we do was given by our active members Dorothee Langenbach and Sean Bisset, and then we launched into our postdoc talks. We had selected 6 exceptional speakers spanning the different departments of Umeå University and SLU from a list of submitted abstracts:
- Alexis Rojas-Briceno, Department of Physics, Umeå University, “Battles between predators and prey may have shaped ocean life as much as mass extinctions”
- Joshua Ratcliffe, Unit for Field-based Forest Research, Vindeln, SLU, “Peatlands: Carbon, Volcanoes, Trees and Drying“
- Cecilia Springer Engdahl, Department of Clinical Microbiology, Umeå University, “Effects on Aedes aegypti mosquitoes after sublethal exposure to a Chromobacterium-derived biopesticide“
- Cuncun Qiao, Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics, Umeå University, “Cryo-EM structures of two Staphylococcal self-loading helicases reveal unexpected insights for translocation“
- Saba Shahzad, Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics, Umeå University, “Towards a structural understanding of the Type 4 Secretion System ATPases in Gram-positive bacteria“
- Himanshu Sharma, Department of Molecular Biology, Umeå University, “Microsporidia: Divergent evolution underlies a unifying structural theme?“
All of our speakers were excellent, and enlightened us on a range of topics! We encouraged people to vote for their favourite speaker, and are proud to announce that Saba Shahzad won the Umeå Postdoc Society’s people’s choice award. Congratulations Saba!
The final segment of our session was “Host a PI”, where two PI’s from different departments of Umeå University were interviewed about their careers, experiences and advice to postdocs and PhD students using questions sent in from UPS members. Our interviewees for this were Lars-Anders Carlson from the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics and Francesca Aguilo from the Department of Molecular Biology. The session was enlightening and entertaining, and we thank both Lars and Francesca for taking the time to speak to us about their experiences! In case you missed it, you can find our Host a PI video below!
The Umeå Postdoc Society would like to thank KBC for the opportunity to present for 2 hours of the KBC Days. We would also like to thank all of our speakers for presenting their research, and thank our interviewees for taking the time out of their busy schedules to talk to us. We all had a great time at the KBC Days 2021, and we hope to see you all next year at KBC Days 2022!
