10th Retreat 2022
The Location
The jubilee 10th Systems Biology PhD retreat took place on the 28th-30th September 2022 in Niederwangen bei Bern, Kanton of Bern (Switzerland). Participants and speakers stayed at Landguet Ried, Center for Mindful Living, a homey retreat center surrounded by a wonderful garden (incl. a fireplace) amidst Bernese forests. Based on its humane, social, and sustainable values, the center cooked fantastic vegetarian food, all based on locally and freshly available ingredients. The various seminar rooms in the center provided a perfect atmosphere for all the talks, workshops, discussions, and the occasional Yoga session.
Scientific Program
Our scientific program revolved around interactive sessions and workshops between the PhD students and the respective experts.
On the first day, the participants could choose two out of four workshops. In Izaskun Mallona’s (University of Zurich) transcriptomics workshop, the differences and common pitfalls between single-cell RNA-sequencing technologies were discussed and explored. Patrick Pedrioli (ETH Zurich) introduced how different proteomic workflows can be tailored to specific experimental questions from both an experimental and computational perspective. At the same time, Kevin Yamauchi (ETH Zurich) presented fundamentals in bioimage analysis, and how these can be setup successfully for different projects. While in Carlos Oliver’s (ETH Zurich) network analysis workshop, the participants gained knowledge about basic network theory, and how this is applied to systems biology data.
The second day focussed on a panel discussion with different topics (incl. science communication, career paths, ethics in biological research, and others). Joel Lüthi (FMI Basel) introduced his views on career & communication from three different perspectives, while Andrea Haag (Technology Transfer Office ETH Zurich) showed her career path to the Technology Transfer Office at ETH Zurich, and offered insights into the conversion from innovative to patentable ideas.
On the last day, Joel Lüthi (as part of Reatch) gave a communications workshop, where the participants revisited topics discussed on the previous day hands-on, and learned about different presentation styles for their next talks.
Student assignments
The focus of the 10th retreat lied heavily on interactive sessions. This promoted scientific exchange and personal networking among the PhD students. Additionally, the nature of the workshops and the panel discussion required cross-project discussions in small groups.
Social program
On the first evening of the retreat, the participants were grouped into four clans, which they named “Can’t touch this”, “Los Biolocos”, “The mindful metabolisers” and “Fistfighting Axolotl”. The rest of the retreat was then followed by inter-clan games, requiring lots of scientific and less-scientific talent. We thank all participants for engaging in all tasks with lots of energy, creativity, and humour.
Additionally, after a Biognosys-sponsored dinner in Niederwangen, many participants gathered around the fireplace, which inspired conversations about science and concluded with a spontaneous karaoke session. To mark the 10th Jubilee of the retreat, all participants took home custom-designed goody bags, filled with sponsored gifts and refreshments.
Organisers
- Ruth Hornbachner (Pelkmans group)
- Malte Mederacke (Iber group)
- Serguei Ovinnikov (Pelkmans group)
- Lucie Kralickova (Snijder group)
- Ramon Pfändler (Snijder group)
This retreat would not have been possible without the support of our generous sponsors (Roche, Biognosys, Twist Bioscience, Microsynth, Kühner Shakers, Zeiss,Greiner, Rivella, and LSZ Graduate School).
