Spill carts: New fully stocked spill carts have been provided to each programme. The carts include personal protective equipment and spill clean-up material. Please familiarize yourselves with the contents of the spill cart stationed in your laboratory, pictures and locations of the carts are put up on the safety notice boards and available on the LSI website. http://www.lsi.nus.edu.sg/08/corporate/safety/
Emergency_Spill_Kit@CeLS.pdf

ASHPA audit: An audit to verify the documents submitted for the Annual Safety and Health Performance Award was conducted by OSHE and an external auditor on Friday, 27 Feb. Thanks to everyone at CeLS for your continuous efforts in improving safety practices in your laboratories.

AAHC Visit

AAHC members at a CSI lab at CeLS.

Some 30 members who were in Singapore to attend the Association of Academic Health Centres (AAHC) meeting at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine called at the Centre for Life Sciences on Friday, 27 Feb 2009. They visited the labs at both the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore and the Neurobiology Programme. The delegation comprised Chancellors, Provosts, Deans of Medical Faculties from top American Universities and Universities from the Asia Pacific Region.

NUS IP Road Show

Ms Chan Li Chin from ILO.

The NUS Industry Liaison Office (ILO) conducted a road show on recent updates on the NUS Intellectual Policy on Wednesday, 4 February 2009 at the Centre for Life Sciences Auditorium.

The briefing was carried out by Ms Chan Li Chin, Legal Adviser from ILO. It was attended by participants from the LSI programmes and Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. It was an informative session. Staff who are interested to find out more information relating to Intellectual Property may contact ILO at iloquery@nus.edu.sg.

Dr. Qiu Anqi and her group from the LSI Bioengineering Programme developed a sophisticated image analysis technology, large deformation diffeomorphic metric mapping, to quantify brain shape using magnetic resonance (MR) imaging. Childhood psychiatric disorders and age associated neurodegenerative diseases have important implications because of their possible effects on normal development and function of the brain.

Recently, the research group and their collaborators applied this technology to the MR study of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). ADHD is a prevalent neuropsychiatric syndrome characterized by excessive difficulty caused due to inattentiveness and/or hyperactive-impulsive behaviour. [READ MORE]

The year of the Ox kicked off with a party held at the Centre for Life Sciences on Friday, 6 February 2009. Some 270 staff from the LSI Programmes, NGS, SMART, IACUC and LAC joined in the festive lunar new year celebration.

The party began with welcome remarks by Prof Ong Choon Nam, Director, LSI. The traditional tossing of the Yu Sheng was led by outgoing LSI Exco member Prof Hew Choy Leong following which staff were treated to a buffet spread.

Ms Nikol Adrianne Tschaepe, Facility Manager with the Laboratory Animals Centre won the Best Dressed Award. She was elegantly dressed in black cheongsam and silk jacket. Miss Adeline Chow Wai Lyn from the Neurobiology Programme walked away with the first prize of the lucky draw.

Prof Chua received his PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Auckland, New Zealand in 1990.  He joined the National University of Singapore (NUS) as a Lecturer in 1990 and is now a Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. 

From 1995 to 2000, he was on secondment to the Centre for Wireless Communications (now part of the Institute for Infocomm Research) a national telecommunication R&D centre funded by the Singapore Agency for Science, Technology and Research as its Deputy Director.  [READ MORE]

LSI congratulates the Mechanobiology Research Group which comprises members from the Faculties of Science and Engineering and LSI on being awarded a grant to set up the new Research Centre of Excellence (RCE) on Mechanobiology at NUS.

The new RCE will receive a funding of $150 million over a 10 year period from the National Research Foundation and the Ministry of Education.

The RCE’s research focus will be on new ways of studying diseases through the mechanisms of cell and tissue mechanics. This is the third RCE to be set up at NUS, the first being the Centre for Quantum Technologies and the second the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore. [READ MORE]

in February:

LSI Distinguished Lecture Series

Prof Paola giving her presentation.

On 5 February 2009, LSI had a Distinguished Lecture by Professor Paola Castagnoli, Scientific Director from Singapore Immunology Network (SIgN), A*STAR. she gave a talk on “Immune Regulatory Role of Dendritic Cells During Sterile Inflammation”. Professor Michael Kemeny, Head of Department of Microbiology and LSI Immunology Programme Leader, chaired the lecture.

Bioinformatics & Computational Biology Programme

“Double water exclusion: A hypothesis refining the O-ring theory for hot spots at protein interfaces”

A/Prof Jinyan Li
Associate Professor, School of Computer Engineering,
Nanyang Technological University

Date:    Wednesday, 4 March 2009
Time:    2 – 3.30pm
Venue:  SR7, COM1, Level 2 Room 7, School of Computing

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Neurobiology Programme

“Regenerating the Adult Mammalian Brain”

Dr Eyleen Goh
Assistant Professor
Neuroscience and Behavioral Disorders
Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore

Date:    Thursday, 26 March 2009
Time:    12 – 1pm
Venue:  CeLS Seminar Room 1

Editorial Team

Lim Chwee Teck
Sumita Anant
Ellice Lim
Siti Haryanti
Aziz Salim

“Problems and Pitfalls in Protocol Approval”

(A talk jointly organised by LSI, LAC and IACUC)

Date:    Monday, 2 March 2009
Time:    10am – 12.30pm
Venue: CeLS Auditorium

For enquiries, please contact Mrs Ellice Lim at ellice@nus.edu.sg.

Grantsmanship Workshop 2009

Date:    Wednesday, 4 March 2009
Time:    9am – 1pm
Venue: CeLS Auditorium

Please register online at http://lsi.nus.edu.sg/grants2009/. Registration os free.

For enquiries, please contact Mrs Ellice Lim at ellice@nus.edu.sg.

Waseda-NUS Joint Symposium

(A joint symposium between LSI Medicinal Chemistry Programme, NUS and Institute of Chemical Biology, Waseda University, Japan)

“Chemical EPIgenomics -Fusion of Epigenetics, Stem-Cell Biology and Chemical Biology”

Date:    Thursday, 12 March 2009
Time:    10am
Venue: University Hall, Level 2, NUS

Please register online at http://tlo.wul.waseda.ac.jp/chemepi. Registration is free.

For enquiries, please contact A/Prof Chang Young-Tae at chmcyt@nus.edu.sg.

LSI Distinguished Lecture Series

“SAIL-NMR Method for Protein Structure and Dynamics”

Professor Dr Masatsune Kainosho
Centre of Priority Areas, Graduate School of Science and Technology,
Tokyo Metropolitan University;
Structural Biology Centre, Graduate School of Science,
Nagoya University, Japan

Date:    Thursday, 5 March 2009
Time:    4 – 5pm
Venue: CeLS Auditorium

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LSI Young Investigator Seminar

“Is Cholesterol a Friend or a Foe of the Lymphatic System?”

Dr Veronique Angeli
Assistant Professor, LSI Immunology Programme
Department of Microbiology,
Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, NUS

Date  :  Thursday, 19 March 2009
Time  :  4pm – 5pm
Venue:  CeLS Seminar Room 2

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LSI Seminar

“Greasing the cell cycle: CDK1/Cdc28-dependent activation of the major triacylglycerol lipase Tgl4 in yeast links lipolysis to  cell cycle progression”

Professor Dr. Sepp D.Kohlwein
Professor of Bichemistry
Institute of Molecular Biosciences,
University of Graz, Austria

Date  :  Monday, 2 March 2009
Time  :  4pm – 5pm
Venue:  CeLS Seminar Room 2

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Immunology Programme

“Basic and Translational Studies on the Human Retrovirus Infection by HIV-1 and HTLV-I”

Prof Naoki Yamamoto
AIDS Research Center,
National Institute of Infectious Diseases,
Tokyo, Japan

Date:    Tuesday, 3 March 2009
Time:    12nn – 1pm
Venue: CeLS Auditorium

“Unexpected functions of DOTs: cell cycle regulation and host-induced differentiation in Trypanosoma brucei“

Dr Christian J. Janzen
Group Leader
University of Munich, Germany

Date:    Tuesday, 10 March 2009
Time:    12nn – 1pm
Venue: CeLS Auditorium

“How little changes cause large effects: The tale of histone H3 variants and their posttranslational modifications”

Dr Hake S.B.
Adolf-Butenandt-Institute and Center for Integrated Protein Science Munich (CIPSM),
Department of Molecular Biology,
Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany

Date:    Tuesday, 10 March 2009
Time:    12nn – 1pm
Venue: CeLS Auditorium

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