Daily Archives: Thursday April 30th, 2020

Dear all!

Now it has been nearly 7 weeks since UiB was closed due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Most of us are still obliged to use home-office. Since Monday 27/4, some more people have been allowed back in the labs. However, it is still an exception that you get access!

Remember that it is the research group leader who has to send a list of who should have access to me (including risk assessment and confirmation of passed infection control course), and then Pål as head of department decides who gets access. And then of course, there are the infection control and hygiene rules when you are at work, so it takes some organization to avoid too many people at the same time in smaller rooms. A big thank you to all those who help make it work in these times!

I would also like to remind PhD fellows who have been delayed in their progress because of home-office during the Corona period to make a written description of the delay and let the supervisor confirm this. The documentation has to be sent to the faculty administration by e-mail:  hrmed@uib.no, mark with Korona in the subject line. This documentation will be entered into the personnel folder of the individual and may form the basis for an extension of the appointment period if necessary.

Finally, I wish you all a nice International Worker’s day and a good weekend!

The Nordic Nanopore-Seq Network Meeting September 14.

The Valen Lab at the Computational Biology Unit Bergen is hosting a conference to get to know Oxford Nanopore Sequencing and its applications.
The free-of-charge, one-day meeting aims at bringing together Nanopore experts with interested scientists from various disciplines. Experts from the company as well as experienced scientists will cover a wide range of scientific areas.
Additionally this conference aims at founding a network of Nanopore Sequencing users in the Nordics.

If you are interested, find out more information at the conference website: https://nordicnanopore.net/n3m-2020/

Continue reading

Norwegian: Ønsker du pedagogisk stimuli?

Læringsfestivalen er i år digital, og gratis å være med på, den går 4-5 mai.

Hva er Læringsfestivalen? Festivalen er en nasjonal konferanse med fokus på undervisning og læring i høyere utdanning. Årets tema er:

  • studentaktiv læring
  • læringsarenaer
  • vurdering
  • læring og teknologi

Programmet er tilgjengelig her: https://www.ntnu.no/laeringsfestivalen/program

PhD defense – Yaping Hua

Yaping Hua will defend her PhD thesis on Monday 4th May 2020

Trial lecture: Monday 4th May 2020 at 10.15.
Topic: “Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in treatment of cancer – clinical effects on tumor size, survival, and metastasis”
Place: https://tinyurl.com/YapningHua 

Public defense: Monday 4th May 2020 at 12.15.
Title of dissertation: «Discovery and characterization of novel STAT3 and  androgen receptor inhibitors in prostate cancer cells”                                                                                                            Place: https://tinyurl.com/YapningHua

1st opponent: Professor José Carlos Machado, University of Porto, Portugal
2nd opponent: Førsteamanuensis Gerd Berge, UiT The Arctic University of Norway 3rd member of the comittee: Professor Lars Herfindal

The defense will be led by professor Silke Appel

This week’s employee – Lars Herfindal

Can you tell us something about your daily tasks and work in general?

I have been appointed here as a professor of pharmacology for almost five years. Prior to that, I was a member of the group of Stein Ove Døskeland, where I also earned a Doctorate in Cell Biology. My work is twofold, teaching and researching. I have responsibility of teaching pharmacology for pharmacists. It is a challenging field, consisting of several disciplines, such as physiology, pathophysiology, cell biology, biochemistry, drug chemistry, to mention some. Luckily, I have skilled co-workers who help me pull the load. Our goal is to constantly prepare for teaching, so that pharmacists have a good basis for practical use of pharmacology when going to work.

Research takes time, and is a way of life and a hobby (pleasure-staking activity that you do in your spare time) as much as work. During the time here I have built up the research activity around the development of new therapies for cancer, focusing on new molecules, and nanomedicine. We have also looked up systems where we use zebrafish larvae to find both the toxicity and effectiveness of new molecule sandand. With me in the research I have a small group of PhD students, master-student  and researchers , who take care of most of the practical work. It’s a good time when it’s needed, but most of the time is enough in the office.
I’m so lucky to be part of several collaborative project working on drug development. It is very inspiring to meet skilled researchers in other disciplines, who can fill in my knowledge hole.

What do you like working at K2?

I applied to K2 because I saw that it was a varied research environment, and expertise that allowed me to develop as a researcher. Although it is in many ways similar to the Department of Biomedicine, where I came from, the close-up of the clinic is a huge advantage at K2. I’ve had the opportunity to work with clinicians, who make sure that my research abruptly come much more closer to the patient. There are also a lot of people at K2, and a lot of people who helped me get started right after I started here. Without that help, it would be much harder for me to get started with my research. I would also add that teaching is actually quite nice, so long as they get enough time to prepare. All in all, K2 is a nice place to work.

Home office – Anja Torsvik

I can confirm that the efficiency is drastically reduced when working in an open office landscape, especially if you share this with a 6-year-old, a snoring dog, and the regular visit of teenagers. In contrast, the working day has been extended by several work sessions, e.g. “The pre-breakfast session” and the “while-dinner-is-cooking-session”. I am approaching the end of my postdoc period and my work assignments now is to write manuscripts and analyze data. Table and figure editing can be partially combined with homeschool teaching, while work that requires deeper concentration is dependent on good “noise cancelling”.

I have had some problem with unstable VPN but setting files and software in offline mode has mainly solved this issue.

Digital meetings work well, and it is motivating to have someone to talk work-related stuff with. I miss my colleagues at MGM and K2, but lunch break zoom with the Martens group has been a nice option.

I enjoy working in the home office, but unfortunately it is not ergonomically designed as a workplace. However, I can vary between different workplaces / chairs / couch, and I have access to a good coffee machine and a good selection of lunch dishes. The view of Løvstakken is great, especially when the sun is shining. Significantly much better than the dark view of the rock wall from the 2nd floor of the Lab building.

New publications

Here are recent publications with contributions from K2 based on last week’s search on PubMed (and optionally articles that have not been included in previous lists). This time the list includes in total 7 recent publications. The entries appear in the order they were received from NCBI. If you have publications that are not included in this or previous lists, please send the references to Oda Barth Vedøy.

Continue reading