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News   

It's been a busy year for the Astbury Centre...

The first residential research retreat was held in September in the Castle Green Hotel in Kendall. The event was a big sucess - one which we hope to repeat in forthcoming years!

The Wellcome Trust PhD programme was renewed for a further five years - we celebrated at the annual Wellcome Trust dinner and Quiz in November!

The Astbury Society organised an exciting quiz in October and the annual barbeque and 'sports' afternoon in July!

Mandy Bolt won first prize at the RSC Biological and Medicinal Chemistry Group's postgraduate symposium held in  Cambridge. Mandy is a student on the Astbury Centre's Wellcome Trust-funded 4-year PhD programme and is supervised by Dr Alan Berry and Professor Adam Nelson. Her research concerns the directed evolution of stereoselective aldolase enzymes for application in synthetic organic chemistry. 

Congratulations to...

Alison Ashcroft on promotion to Reader in Biomolecular Mass Spectrometry

Peter Knight on promotion to Professor of Molecular Contractility

Sheena Radford on her election to EMBO

Lars Jeuken has been awarded the British Biophysical Society Young Investigator's Award 2006. Lars will be presented with his medal at a forthcoming BBS meeting. Lars Jeuken
Stan Burgess The Astbury Centre welcomes two new members - Stan Burgess and Arwen Pearson. Arwen Pearson
Wellcome Trust students The Wellcome Trust annual dinner was held on November 14th, followed by a quiz organised by Alan Berry.
Playing the Stonehouse card! The winning team!

The Astbury awayday was held on November 3rd at Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

100 members of the Centre enjoyed a day of presentations, followed by a poster session and wine reception. A great day out!

The Astbury Quiz night was held on October 12th following a lecture by Steve Homans.

The quiz included a 'Identify the PI' section!

Congratulations to Isobel Morten for winning best presentation at the Kidney Research UK conference in London recently.  
The second Astbury BBQ was held on a gloriously sunny July 6th. It was preceded by the first Astbury Sports Day in which 13 teams participated. Congratulations to the winners 'Leftovers' with a final score of 52 and many thanks to the Astbury Society for organising the event.
The Astbury wine tasting was held on May 18th and was attended by 80 members of the Centre. Eight different wines (and a large number of cheeses) were sampled! Many thanks to the Astbury Society for the organisation of the event.

Congratulations to the following on their recent promotions...

David Westhead (Professor), Mark Harris (Professor), Alan Berry (Reader) and Richard Jackson (Senior Lecturer)

Welcome to David Parcej. David undertook his BSc and PhD at Imperial and for the past 8 years he has been at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysics in Frankfurt, from where he has a wide experience of EM.
His main task is to help run the new Tecnai F20 field emission gun EM. This will include training new users and helping them with their specimens.

WT students The annual dinner for the Wellcome Trust PhD programme was held on November 7th...followed by the traditional quiz, organised by Alan Berry. Current second year WT students are pictured.
MSc Chemical Biology graduation The first students to graduate with an MSc in Chemical Biology took place on 12th December. Four students from the inaugural class are shown with the course managers, Adam Nelson and Bruce Turnbull. Leeds is the first UK university to offer a taught MSc in Chemical Biology; the course was launched in September 2004

We are pleased to announce that Victoria Homer joined the Mass Spectrometry Facility at the beginning of November and will be running future service samples. Victoria obtained her BSc in Chemistry from the University of Leeds in 2002 and has since gained experience in mass spectrometry and other analytical techniques during her years in industry. The Mass Spectrometry Facility now has four mass spectrometers, including the new LCT Premier which has been customised for non-covalent macromolecular complex analysis, and offers a range of analyses including on-line HPLC-MS and MS/MS for structural elucidation. Further details about the analyses available can be found at http://www.astbury.leeds.ac.uk/Facil/mass.htm , or if you wish to discuss sample analysis and preparation, please contact Victoria Homer (ext. 37274) or Alison Ashcroft (ext. 37273).

Tony North and Raghupathy Sarma Dr Raghupathy Sarma (from the State University of New York at Stony Brook) visited the Astbury Centre on October 7th and gave a highly entertaining seminar on the work of Ramachandran and his key role in the determination of the structure of collagen. He is pictured with Professor Tony North.
Many Congratulations...
...to Bruce Turnbull on the award of a Royal Society Fellowship.
...to Becky Rose, who won Bordoli prize for the best student-presented poster at the annual meeting of the British Mass Spectrometry Society, in September. Becky has just completed the first year of her BBSRC/CASE (Waters/Micromass)-funded PhD and is co-supervised by Alison Ashcroft and Sheena Radford. Her poster was entitled "The Analysis of Bacterial Fibres by Mass Spectrometry" and described results from an on-going collaborative project with Drs Han Remaut and Gabriel Waksman of Birkbeck College.
...Sheena Radford, who has been awarded a Research Medal from the Royal Society of Chemistry.
The first students from the Wellcome Trust PhD programme graduated on July 22nd.
Congratulations to Adam Nelson on his recent promotion to Chair in Chemical Biology. The new (2004) Astbury report is now available via the Astbury website.
Welcome to Thomas Edwards (Ed) who joined us as a URF from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.
Installation of the new LCT premier The LCT Premier, a new mass spectrometer purchased from Waters/Micromass UK by Alison Ashcroft, Sheena Radford and Peter Stockley with funds from the Wellcome Trust, is being installed in the Mass Spectrometry Facility on level 9 of the Astbury Building. The LCT Premier has been specifically customised for the analysis of macromolecular complexes, molecular interactions and protein dynamics and has the highest m/z range currently available.
Congratulations to Ade Whitehouse, who received the Fleming Prize from the President of the Society for General Microbiology on April 6th. This is awarded annually to recognize outstanding research in microbiology by a scientist in the early stages of their career. Ade Whitehouse
The Henry Wellcome Building for Biomolecular NMR Spectroscopy in Birmingham is now open and the facilities were showcased in an entertaining seminar by Michael Overduin on March 10th. Leeds is one of several Universites with time allocations here - contact Arnout Kalverda for more information.
Prof Arthur with Astbury Centre members Members of the Astbury centre were delighted to host a visit by the new University Vice-Chancellor, Prof Michael Arthur on 21st December. The visit concluded with posters highlighting some of the multi-disciplinary research with Astbury.
Prof Arthur with Astbury Centre members Prof Arthur with Astbury Centre members
Prof Arthur with Astbury Centre members Prof Arthur with Astbury Centre members
The annual Astbury Structural Biology Evening was held on 13th December, organised by Bruce Turnbull and Julian Hiscox. The AGM was followed by 6 research talks and a buffet supper in the School of Chemistry.

More news...


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