KBC days 2023
From November 7th-8th, the KBC days took place, an interdisciplinary conference for researchers from Umeå campus and beyond. This year’s theme was AI in research, including a contest for the best AI-generated image of research topics of interest. This resulted in some great creations.
Lectures from PIs were heavily physics or computation-themed, to inspire the use of computation AI in future collaborative research projects. Assoc. prof. Marek Mutwil (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) for example, demonstrated how large language models, while meant to predict the next word in a sentence, could also be employed to cross reference literature to map functional relationships between different plant proteins. If tools for this could be expanded to other organism realms, this will be a great asset to many researchers, who would not have to sift through literature themselves.
This conference is also a great yearly opportunity to make everyone on campus aware of resources available to all researchers. Umeå Postdoc Society hosted a two-hour session on career development for postdocs, with one hour dedicated to starting a research group and grant writing, and one hour on pursuing a career in industry. Both involved a presentation with advice from relevant university support offices, followed by a panel discussion packed with helpful tips and ample opportunity to ask questions about possible career paths.
Then, the later half of day 2 was dedicated to research infrastructures available on campus and nationally, with the aim to share specialized techniques requiring expensive, highly advanced equipment. One example is the Biochemical Imaging Centre Umeå (BICU), of which our Total Internal Reflection Fluorescence (TIRF) microscope and Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) are part. Fouzia gave a talk in a session dedicated to AFM, which is a technique available at three different research facilities in Umeå. Our AFM is the only one located in a Biosafety Level 2 environment, enabling work with live pathogens. Besides within BICU, we are also part of the new Biomolecular Characterization Umeå (BMCU) infrastructure: our Quartz-Crystal Microbalance with Dissipation (QCM-D) enables the measurement of adsorption of biomolecules to cell surface mimics.
Yet again, it was an inspiring two days fostering and strengthening connections within our versatile science campus.
