Alumni Association News 2012

Poster

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Last year, Amaicha Depino promised the EMBL Director General, Iain Mattaj, shortly before receiving her John Kendrew Young Scientist Award, to organise a conference promoting EMBL in Argentina. Together with two other EMBL alumni - Lazaro Centanin (based in Heidelberg) and Ignacio Sanchez (also based in Buenos Aires) - Amaicha delivered her promise on 5-7 November with a three-day symposium at the University of Buenos Aires. A total of 100 participants passed through the event, despite the unusually hot temperature (40°C in November).

"It was a real pleasure to host this symposium in Buenos Aires," says Amaicha, now Group Leader at the Institute of Physiology, Molecular Biology and Neuroscience (UBACONICET). "It was amazing to see the enthusiasm of all EMBL group leaders and the Director General in sharing their science with local researchers and students. I hope that, along with the contacts made by EMBL with CONICET and the Ministry of Science, this symposium will help to strengthen the scientific cooperation between EMBL and Argentina."

During this visit, the Director General signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Argentine Ministry of Science with the objective of enhancing cooperation between EMBL and Argentina. “Amaicha and her colleagues helped organise a fantastic combination of meetings with life scientists of all ages and decision makers. Both were extremely useful for EMBL and, I hope, Argentina,” says Iain. 

Lazaro Centanin: "For the organizers, it was extremely satisfactory to have such a quality of speakers presenting their work to the future generation of scientists in Argentina. I was fascinated by the performance of the speakers not only during their scientific talks, but also when dealing with the huge and juicy Argentinian steaks." 

Ramesh Pillai: "What I liked about the meeting was its location in a University setting, and the opportunity to interact with many of the students who attended the symposium. Like good hosts, Amaicha and the other organizers made sure we saw some of the excellent research being done by Argentine researchers, and enjoyed great food and art. This meeting will surely enable researchers at EMBL and Argentina to establish fruitful collaborations in the coming years, at least for me it will."