Life in context: EMBL‘s perspective.

Dr. Edith Heard, Director General of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) will give a presentation at the University of Iceland on Monday August 15 at 16:00 in lecture hall Askja 132.

Seminar title: Life in context: EMBL‘s perspective.

EMBL is a European research institute that is owned and operrated by 27 countries in Europe, including Iceland. The main laboratory of EMBL is located in Heidelberg Germany but in addition it operates outstations in Hinxton (UK), Hamburg (Germany), Grenoble (France), Rome (Italy) and Barcelona (Spain). Approximately 2000 people work for EMBL, most of them in Heidelberg but the largest outstation is Hinxton where about 600 scientists work on analysing genomes and various life-sciences databses and making them available on the internet. EMBL‘s research focuses on improving our understanding of biological pathways and how they are regulated. The institite is best known for methods development in the structural characterization of proteins, in the analysis of genomic and protein information and for developing new imaging methods.

Under Dr. Heard‘s leadership EMBL has set up a 5 year research plan where the focus will be on life in context. A major component of this plan is the TREC project which aims to use novel methods to explore biological diversity along the coastline of Europe, from the Mediterranean to Scandinavia. A pilot for the TREC project is currently being performed in Iceland in collaboration with Universities and institutes. Dr. Heard‘s visit is a component of launching this project.