UCL RESEARCH DEPARTMENT OF GENETICS, EVOLUTION AND ENVIRONMENT

Prof Andrew Pomiankowski, Head of the UCL Research Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment, with Prof John Carroll, Associate Dean, Division of Biosciences, introduced a day of dynamic talks for this second annual Research Away Day, following the success of last year's, at UCL's Chandler House on Friday 6 May 2011.

Over fifty members of staff and post-docs attended a busy and interactive programme of scientific talks comprising Prof Andres Ruiz-Linares giving a presentation on the 'Genetic history of Native Americans'  referring to inter alia Greenberg's 1986 settlement model.  This was followed by Dr Charalampos (Babis) Rallis presenting a talk on 'Dissecting signalling pathways and factors that affect cellular lifespan' and his research on S Pombe (fission yeast).  Dr Jacob Sweiry then followed with important and informative news about funding opportunities, support available, contacts, pathways to impact, fellowships etc.  Prof Pomiankowski discussed research income by grant start date; he highlighted the procedure for internal/peer grant review, cost recovery, Independent Research Fellowships,Sponsorship of Fellowship Applications for Early Career Scientists etc.  With regard to supporting and providing advice for Fellowships in specific areas, he congratulated colleagues, Prof Max Telford, Dr Max Reuter, Professor David Balding and Dr Eugene Schuster.  After a buffet lunch, Dr Kanchon Dasmahapatra, acknowledging the work of Prof James Mallet and other PhD students, gave a talk on 'Heliconius, the model system for speciation genomics', highlighting divergence across colour patterning across loci. mimicry etc.  Dr Nikolas Maniatis followed with a presentation entitled 'How complex is complex inheritance?', presenting his work on Crohn's Disease, disease mapping, complex inheritance, disease heterogeneity etc.  This was followed by three quick fire new grant ideas for later feedback, with Dr Paola Oliveri, Dr Hazel Smith and Prof Max Telford.  After tea, Dr Lazaros Foukas presented on 'Insulin signalling in age-related metabolic disease'.  The day's presentations ended with Dr David Gems in GEE's Institute of Healthy Ageing who gave a talk entitled 'Reasons to be cheerful: The biology of ageing, disease, necrosis and death'  referring to the current strategy for treatments of age-related diseases, future strategy and outlined current projects and developments.

The GEE Research Away Day was organised by Prof Max Telford, and GEE's Executive Officer, Jane Dempster, provided admin support at the event.