Words from the Director Trevor Forsyth - latest news from LINXS in november

Autumn is here and as the leaves fall and the temperature drops it is inevitable that people reflect on the year and on plans for the future. For LINXS it has been an extremely busy period with a large expansion of activity compared to previous years including a diverse range of thematic activities, schools, guest seminars, visiting researchers, Young Researchers’ events and outreach events. The three new Themes have started with kickoff meetings for Environment and Climate, Heritage Science, and Chemistry of Life, with extensive planning and discussions for the work ahead.

We are also delighted that we can formally announce the AMBER project for Advanced Multiscale Biological Imaging, coordinated by LINXS. The contract for this was recently signed with the European Commission with funding from the Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSCA) COFUND scheme. The total value of the project is over €12M and will fund the recruitment of 47 postdoctoral research fellows who will work across European large scale research infrastructures and research centres. The first cohort of postdocs will start work in autumn 2024.

Between now and Christmas, there is a lot of activity planned, including the LINXS Digital Town Hall meeting on 20th November, a guest lecture for the Integrated Pharmacology and Drug Discovery (IPDD) Theme on structural characterization of mRNA-LNPs (Federica Sebastiani, University of Copenhagen) on 21 November, and the LINXS Christmas open house event on 29th November. On the 29th November there will also be a mini-symposium on the structure, function and dynamics of macromolecular complexes with the Chemistry of Life Theme. December starts with a webinar within the Northern Lights on Food Theme on taste, texture and health on the 4th December. This is followed by a symposium and hackathon on biomedical imaging within the IPDD Theme, and an antibodies webinar on CG Simulations with Harold “Wick” Hatch from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), USA – both on the 6th December. On the 8th, LINXS will host the third SAS-clinic where users can bring their already acquired small angle scattering data to get analysis support.

On our website, we share interviews and articles of some of the thematic activities that have taken place at LINXS. We hope that they will shed light on some of the important work that is undertaken by our themes, and that they will inspire other people to get involved!

Take care and stay safe!

LINXS Director Trevor Forsyth. Photo: Kennet Ruona.