The Cryo-EM platform receives grant from the Swedish Research Council
Original article was published by SciLifeLab, available here: https://www.scilifelab.se/news/151-million-grants-improves-scilifelab-services?utm_campaign=nyhetsbrev&utm_medium=email&utm_source=apsis
151 million SEK grants will vastly improve SciLifeLab platform services
New grants from the The Swedish Research Council will allow SciLifeLab platforms and units to double screening capacity, acquire high-end instruments and conduct large scale clinical trials. In this Q&A we check in with platform directors to get an idea of what is coming.
SciLifeLab platforms and units have as part of the call Grant for investment in existing research infrastructure received 151 million SEK from The Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) – Sweden’s largest governmental research funding body, that “supports research of the highest quality within all scientific fields”. As a comparison, the core funding of SciLifeLab’s entire national research infrastructure was 217 million SEK in 2021. So, how will the platforms and units use this, quite substantial, sum of money? We asked the three SciLifeLab-related applicants that received the highest grants to tell us about their hopes and aims with the new funding.
Linda Sandblad, Platform Scientific Director at the Umeå node of the Cryo-EM SciLifeLab Infrastructure Unit, MIMS Team Leader, applied for the grant to expand the screening resources, and will receive 22,5 million SEK.
Read more: The Cryo-EM platform receives grant from the Swedish Research Council
I interviewed Thanat Chookajorn, who joined the Billker lab at MIMS in March 2021. Thanat shares his life with his partner and their two dogs. Before this phase in his career, he studied or worked in several countries around the world: Thailand, his homecountry, the US, the UK, Spain, Israel (which he is very fond of), Russia and Cambodia.
I joined Barbara Sixt’s lab as a research assistant, with the goal to stay long term as a PhD student. I am studying a bacterial pathogen, called Chlamydia. More specifically, I aim to determine the role of the Chlamydia-containing vacuole in counteracting the intrinsic defense responses of infected host cells. To do so, I am using a lot of microscopic and molecular biology techniques.
The 9th National Infection Biology/Swedish Microbiology Meeting, 16-18 November 2021, will be a virtual meeting that aims to provide a broad vision on current state-of-the-art microbiology techniques and research in Sweden. Keynote speakers are Swedish researchers working within the sub-disciplines of bacteriology, virology, parasitology, host response, clinical infection biology, environmental microbiology, zoonotics, and new methods. To involve junior researchers, additional talks will be selected from the submitted poster abstracts. Poster presentations will be organized as digital poster walks that allow participants to present and discuss their work with other participants.
I am working as a postdoc in Ellen Bushell’s group thanks to a 2-year scholarship from Japan. This type of scholarship is to encourage Japanese postdocs to go abroad, covering both travel fees and my salary.
