The ISBGroup Blog

Before this summer, Elin received a 2-year career support grant “International Postdoc” from the Swedish Research Council. This grant allows junior researchers to go abroad and work in world leading research environments to improve individual qualifications and extend their network of collaborators.

Elin applied for the grant together with Chris Sander at Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA, and Emek Demir at Oregon Science and Health University, OR, and will start this fall in the Sander lab. The research project is about using large-scale data handling to improve drug treatment in pancreatic cancer.

During this project, Elin expects to broaden her knowledge in large scale data handling, machine learning approaches, and cancer biology. And on top of that, being in an atmosphere like the one at Harvard Medical School, with famous researchers and the newest experimental techniques, will absolutely give her many new and exciting experiences.

In 2016/05/31, students who take the course TBMT19/33/37 and some members in ISB group went to AstraZeneca for a study visit. Four groups of students gave the final presentations for their project work. The presentations were interesting and successful. The topics of those projects vary from T2D cell level: signalling in fat and brain cells; the dynamics of glucose, insulin, fatty acid in whole level with relative drug simulation; the combination model of T-cell, mechanistic core, Lasso-omics and the study on brain activity by using fMRI.

After the students’ presentations, the project leader in AstraZeneca provided an lively introduction to their work, going through all the necessary steps and digging into details such as time cost and potential problems. That presentation really gave all the people a straight forward look at the working flow of real pharmacy modelling simulation.

Linnea Bergenholm and David Janzén, also some students who did their thesis in ISBgroup, who were students from Liu and now working in AstraZeneca shared their experience with attendants later. The topics included study period in Liu, further education and research and current work. The speech was inspiring since their past experience could be the tomorrow for the students.

During the lunch time, all people had the chance to sit together and exchange information with each other in a relaxing way, not only the students but also some staff who work in AstraZeneca.

Except for the presentations, students also made posters for their project which were used later in the afternoon for everyone to read. Meanwhile, many questions were raised from the people who attending the presentation. Every student in relative groups was trying to answer those questions from different perspectives which gives the audience a better understanding of the project. Opposition part was also held in the afternoon, where one group of student opposed against one other group. The opposition went really well and it was helpful for the students to find the drawback of their work.

For every group that attended the presentation, a logo is required for their project and the ‘best logo’ winner who got a cup was voted by the audience. And this year, group IntraCell won the honer.

The study visit to AstraZeneca gave students a chance to present their working results to those professional people and undergo the atmosphere in a company which has a tight connection to their study.

After taking almost 1.5 year Biomedical Engineering Master program here in Linkoping University, it is a new journey for me to join the ISBgroup to do my Master Thesis work. Differing from the daily courses I took before, working with people in ISBgroup is a brand new experience, the whole atmosphere is relaxing while they have a very precise attitude on academy.

Now I am working on the Multi-level modeling project which has very little in common with the knowledge I had before. However, it doesn’t become a problem due to the help from a two-week pre-course where some background information and basic skills were taught. Gunnar is the lecturer of that course and after taking it, I know it will be a very interesting period of time for me to work with this project and the people in ISBgroup.

My Master thesis started around the middle of the February and I’ll work on it for 4 to 5 months, with the help and cooperation with all ISBgroup members, the following time will be full of challenge and fun!