14 November 2017 – Dulika Sumathipala is a PhD student at the University of Oslo, Norway. Her research explores the pathogenicity of non-coding variants in whole genome sequencing (WGS) data in children with severe neurological disorders. To help her progress her research, Dulika applied for an EMBO Short-Term Fellowship, which enabled her to spend some time in Christian Gilissen’s group at Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Explaining how this time in another laboratory helped her to progress her work, she says: “During the stay I learnt bioinformatic analyses of WGS using patient-parent trio data, and I was able to identify candidate pathogenic variants in five genes not previously associated with disease.”
To support research exchanges in the areas of systems biology, genomics & computational biology, EMBO is funding up to four additional fellowships in 2018. These EMBO | EuropaBio Fellowships are being offered in partnership with the European Association for Bioindustries (EuropaBio). Compared with regular EMBO Short-Term Fellowships, researchers can apply for extended laboratory visits up to six months.
The goal of the EMBO | EuropaBio Fellowships is to facilitate valuable collaborations with research groups applying techniques that are unavailable in the applicant’s laboratory. EuropaBio, which represents 79 corporate and associate members and bio-regions, and 17 national biotechnology associations, provided funds for these additional fellowships as part of the collaboration with EMBO.
The application deadline for EMBO | EuropaBio Fellowships is 31 December 2017, and applicants should plan their visits to take place throughout 2018.
