2nd Retreat 2013
The Location
The 2013 Systems Biology retreat was organized in a charming, cozy and quite traditional hotel in the Bernese Oberland, the seminar hotel Möschberg.
Since the chosen hotel was located in a rather remote area, there were only few distractions, which made it an ideal place for focused and at the same time pleasant work.
The Scientific Program
The scientific part of the program was centered on a selection of young PIs, creating a forum to increase the renown of their work as well as new collaboration opportunities.
We were happy to welcome Paola Picotti (ETHZ), Bernd Bodenmiller (UZH), Manfred Claassen (ETHZ) and Beat Christen (ETHZ) as internal speakers from the Systems Biology program.
To complete the variety of scientific talks, we also invited a selection of young, upstart PIs from Switzerland and abroad; selected for innovative approaches and overlap of topics to foster possible new interactions.
We had the opportunity to listen to Carole Linster (University Luxemburg), Erik van Nijmegen (University Basel), Jeroen Krijgsveld (EMBL Heidelberg), Karsten Hiller (University Luxemburg) and Stefanie Wienkoop (University Vienna).
With this selection, we tried rather successfully to cover different areas of the broad spectrum of Systems Biology.
The workshop, team building activity and assignment
Besides scientific talks from invited speakers the 2013 retreat also featured a workshop on conflict management, a team building activity as well as an assignment for the participants.
The workshop on conflict management was designed to expand the scope of the retreat, from only science-talk to insights into effective communication with collaborators in your everyday life. Conflicts are not pleasant, but sometimes unavoidable regardless how hard we try to avoid them. Thus, it is crucial for everyone to get insights in managing conflicts effectively, which was the goal of this very short workshop.
The workshop proved to be an effective preview of the topic to anyone who wants to follow up on it, for instance by joining the more comprehensive workshops available by the Life Science Zurich Graduate School.
The 2013 Social Activity was a external pageFoxtrail through Bern.
The Foxtrail was chosen so that everyone increases their view on the charming old town of Bern, even when one thought to know Bern already. As we set off as mixed teams, it fostered interaction between the students and allowed for plenty of exchange on science and other topics. It let everyone stretch their legs, so that they did not just work their minds during the retreat, and kept a healthy balance.
The Foxtrail earned a very positive feedback from the students – even though we did not manage to get back to the seminar hotel in time for dinner!
The objective of this year’s assignment was to design and present a poster on someone else’s PhD project: groups of 3 had to chose one of the PhD projects in their group, design a poster and then the two students who did not work on the chosen project had to present it. We designed this assignment to create extensive exchange among all students. We made sure to pair participants from different scientific backgrounds and aimed to break the barriers between the different fields of systems biology.
The students invested way more than demanded and worked many hours even till deep into the night. Even to us this effort was a surprise, and resulted in very good, creative and well understandable presentations.
Feedback
As a conclusion, the retreat worked well and it showed that we’re clearly in need for many of such events that strengthen the interactions between the PhDs. As a result of this need, the students are now organizing a seminar series of world-renown speakers. We as the organizers are happy that our work is followed up and we’re looking forward to the seminars and the next retreat.
The Organizers
Marieke Buffing (Sauer group), Phillip Ihmor (Baerenfaller group) and Denis Shapiro (Bodenmiller group)
Sponsoring
