27 March 2019 – Each year, EMBO brings together the members of the Young Investigator Network for a scientific and networking meeting. The EMBO Young Investigator Meeting is a central component of the networking support for the young group leaders that are part of the network. This year, 56 former and current Young Investigators and Installation Grantees came together at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) Matrix building on the Biopolis campus in Singapore.
Between 13 and 15 March, the meeting participants presented and discussed their research. In addition, they were able to meet and get to know each other during a variety of informal sessions, such as speed networking or a stroll along Singapore’s Marina Bay.
Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India was elected as EMBO Young Investigator in 2018. She said that her first Young Investigator Meeting “was an excellent annual meeting [and I] met several fellow Young Investigators who do great science all over the world.”
Third Singaporean Gold Medal symposium
The Young Investigator Meeting was preceded by a one-day symposium, to celebrate the connections between EMBO and Singapore, which became an EMBC Associate Member State in 2016. The EMBO Gold Medallists and Young Investigators Meeting 2019 was the third Gold Medal symposium held in Singapore after similar meetings in 2009 and 2015. EMBO Member Phil Ingham from Nanyang Technological University, Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine in Singapore initiated this meeting ten years ago. Together with EMBO Young Investigator Bruno Reversade of the Institute of Medical Biology, A*STAR, Singapore, he acted as local organizer for this year’s meeting.
EMBO Gold Medal recipients Dario Alessi, Jiří Friml, Amanda Fisher and Marek Basler, as well as eight Young Investigators presented their work at the symposium, which was open to the entire Singaporean life science research community. In addition, Thomas Lemberger talked about Open Science and Maria Leptin announced the launch of the EMBO Global Investigator Network.
