I have not posted a lot in the last couple of months. During april I went to the US to visit some biologists at Vanderbilt where we study the role of stroma-epithelia interactions on prostate cancer both computationally and (hopefully soon) experimentally. This month I attended CancerSim 2008 in Turin, Italy. Following the wishes of Martin Fenner I will talk about the meeting.
CancerSim was the last meeting of the Marie Curie Research Network established to put together mathematical oncologists in Europe. Since many of the network organisers are in Turin the meeting took place in Turin. As you can see in the photo
Turin is a very pretty city full of history, friendly people, great food, wine and coffee….and some times not as sunny as one would expect Italy to be when travelling from Scotland.
The programme of the conference was the usual in these meetings, with many mathematicians (with different degrees of bio attached to their research) and some biologists (with also different degrees of interest in mathematical/computational formalisations). Asides from the separation between mathematicians and biologists (that I’d say this network helped to bridge somewhat) there was also the gap between young and established researchers. Young researcher meaning, of course, those of us with temporal contracts. But this is not a critic, one good thing about the network was the amount of travelling, exchanges and long stays between the different groups that make the network. It is difficult to explain but all this frantic travelling allowed us to get an overview of what is there in terms of mathematical/theoretical oncology in Europe. It also started many collaborations, especially between the young researchers (which I think is much easier in theoretical fields than in experimental ones since often times you need little more than a laptop, a notebook and a pen). I wonder if they have similar programmes in the US (or other parts of the world), seems to me that any government interested in science would have not that many other investment opportunities that would give the same bang for the euro.
David,
This is a great photo! Did you take that?
Thanks Sabine,
I am a hobbyst photographer so when I go places I take the most awful photos. I decided to use this one in my post as it was only mediocre. The rest I’ll probably upload to my flickr…
I see, found your flickr account. I am a hobbyst painter, would you mind if I use the photo as a template? Do you have a color-version?
I have sent it to you by email, please let me know if it does not arrive…