The 7th annual Crick and Partner Universities PhD Student Summer Symposium took place on Monday 8 July! It was an opportunity for students from the partner universities to come together, present their research and hear about each others' projects. Thanks to everyone involved!

The event saw 130 PhD students from the Crick, UCL, Imperial and King’s come together to share their research, with the schedule including 22 talks and over 80 posters.

Students also had the opportunity to speak to our wonderful sponsors: Waters, Buchi, MedChemExpress, and New England BioLabs. Thank you also to the Networking Fund, ICL, KCL, and UCL for their funding.

A panel discussion welcomed Indie Beedie, Dr Maria Farkas and Aneesha Bhumber to discuss Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Academia. Thank you to the new EDI manager of the Crick, Vanessa McKean, for chairing!

This year’s keynote speaker was Sonia Contera, Professor of Biological Physics at the University of Oxford, Associate Head (EDI) of the Physics Department, as well as author of the book ‘Nano Comes to Life’. Sonia gave an exhilarating lecture providing an overview of physics and its usage in biology, and the future of nanotechnology.

Congratulations to the poster and talk prizes: with best poster going to Mirjam Verbeek and best talk to Rupali Dabas.

The day ended with ice cream, pizza and some energetic Spanish-Latin music from guitar duo De Fuego.

Thoughts ...

The keynote speaker was excellent.

I felt inspired seeing so many agile and motivated PhDs!

A really enjoyable day.

(Post orginally shared on CrickNet by Amy Bowden)