OLS hosted a visit on 21 March 2007 from a delegation from the Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) whom we are working actively to secure collaborative opportunities. The visitors from SNL were :-

1. Ray Finley, Director, Geoscience & Environment Center
2. John Merson, Senior Manager, Geoscience Research & Applications Group

They were accompanied by Prof Michael Saunders, Director of NUS Environmental Research Institute fon the tour of CeLS facilities.

We would like to congratulate Dr Leslie Retnam on his appointment as Deputy Director, Laboratory Animals Centre with effect from 1 March 2007.

We would also like to welcome Dr Viji Vijayan who has joined the Office of Life Sciences as our new Scientific Manager on 28 March 2007.

OLS Distinguished Lecture Series

Two lectures were held in the month of March. They were delivered on 7 Mar by Dr Bjorn Andersson (Dept of Cell and Molecular Biology, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden) on “Large-scale screening for new viruses; towards the sequencing of the human virome” and on 21 Mar by Prof Jeffrey J. Fredberg (Department of Environmental Health, Harvard School of Public Health, USA) on the topic “A hard day in the life of a soft cell”.

The Grantsmanship Workshop

The Grantsmanship Workshop organized by OLS was attended by 117 participants on Tuesday, 20 March 2007 from 9.30 am to 11.30 am at the CeLS Auditorium.

Prof Barry Halliwell, Deputy President (Research and Technology), Prof Hew Choy Leong, Director, OLS and Assoc Prof Soong Tuck Wah, Department of Physiology shared with participants on how to write research proposals and their observations for the previous grants submissions.

The workshop was well received by the participants who gave very positive feedback on the usefulness of the workshop.
The BMRC grant call will only be made at the end of April. The new forms for grant submission will only be available then. The deadline for the BMRC grant call is expected to be1 June 2007. Staff who wish to submit their draft research proposal to OLS for voluntary internal review may do so by 4 May at the latest.

Proposals can be forwarded to Ellice Lim at olslime@nus.edu.sg. The workshop presentation slides have been uploaded on the OLS website. Please click on the url to access the slides: http://www.ols.nus.edu.sg/attachments/
grants_guidelines.pdf.

Ingenuity Workshop

OLS supported Ingenuity Systems Inc. in the organisation of the seminar on “Research Applications of Systems Biology using Ingenuity Pathway Analysis”. Dr Ramon Felciano, Founder, CTO and Vice President of Ingenuity Systems Inc. was the speaker. Overall, the workshop which was held on 13 March 2007 from 3.30 pm to 4.30 pm drew some 50 participants.

A*STAR and University of Dundee will be organizing aJoint Scientific Symposium “Recent Advances in Cell and Molecular Biology”. This Symposium will be held on 2 – 3 April 2007 in Creation Theatrette, Matrix Level 4, 30 Biopolis Street, Singapore 138671.

This is the first scientific meeting, following the signing of an MOU last year and the initiation of the A*STAR-Dundee PhD Partnership Programme. The scheme hosts jointly supervised projects between A*STAR and Dundee scientists. This symposium highlights some of the research areas to which eligible students are invited to apply. All are welcome, especially prospective students.

For more information, please contact Damian Neo at (65) 6826 6272 or email him at Damian_Neo@a-star.edu.sg.

Distinguised Speakers Programme

The following seminars are organized by the Cancer Programme:

Editorial Team

Lim Chwee Teck
Ellice Lim
Siti Haryanti