VLAG FLASH - May 2009, Edition 22
From April 11 to April 27, 23 PhD students from the Microbiology Department at Wageningen University, accompanied by principal investigator Caroline Plugge, visited several research institutes, companies, and universities on the northeast coast of the USA. The aim of the trip was to visit research groups in the field of Microbiology and arrange mini-symposiums and poster sessions leaving also room for informal discussions. Within the two weeks, more than 60 presentations were given by the Dutch visitors, and a similar number of presentations were given by the hosting groups. The symposia were often characterized by vivid scientific exchange with research groups working on related subjects such as bioremediation, microbial fuel cells, or the human microbiome.
The trip started in the Boston area where we visited New England Biolabs, well known for its production of restriction enzymes. However fundamental research is also in their scope and we heard some nice open presentation about their enzyme research. Other visits in Boston we paid to Northeastern University and Harvard Medical School. The tour continued with visits to the Marine Biological Laboratory and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in the scenic village Woods Hole, nicely located on the Cape Cod peninsula, facing the Atlantic Ocean. The last day of the first week we travelled inbound to Amherst visiting the department of microbiology at the University of Massachusetts which covered a wide variety of research topics that are also being studied in our laboratory. The weekend left a single day for us to go on a sightseeing marathon at NYC.
The second week began with two more symposiums at Universities. At Rutgers University New Brunswick the focus was laid on environmental microbiology, the second symposium was the day of archaeal microbiology and was organised by Frank Robb at the Center of Marine Biotechnology in Baltimore, an institute, what is in the name, which is nicely located on the water front. During the last days the program covered some state of the art genomics at the J. Craig Venter Institute and the group of Eugene Koonin at the National Center for Biotechnology Information.
The program also included visits to two former students of Wageningen University: Marco Coolen at the Woodshole Oceanographic Institute and Dr. Jasper Akerboom, former PhD student at the Laboratory for Microbiology in Wageningen and now working at the HHMI research campus Janelia farm.
This trip was entirely organised by five PhD students and would not have been possible without the financial support from the graduate schools WIMEK and VLAG as well as the LEB fund, the Middelhoven fund, the Top Institute Food and Nutrition, Wetsus and the Stichting Biotechnologie Nederland. Furthermore, the trip was sponsored by the companies Beun de Ronde, Corning, and Shimadzu.