Nottingham - Bradford Neuroendocrine Metabolism Meeting

MAY 2024

We welcomed our collaborators from University of Bradford and University of Nottingham for a collaboration day in May, funded by an MTAM internal award from Nottingham Trent University for a day of presentations, discussion and team building. 

Our day started with short introductory talks from PhD students

Haesung, Junior and Marwa presented their PhD projects in only 3 minutes - a tricky task they all managed brilliantly. All three students are at different stages of their research, so it was nice to see the different plans and levels of work they've achieved in the time they've had. 

This was followed by overview talks from the PIs

Here we covered the general work of our individual labs, in order to demonstrate our expertise, skills and facilities, to best identify where our work complements each other - and how we fit together as collaborators. 

Katie Hanna discussed her work on peripheral metabolism and plans for an upcoming grant application. 

Preeti Jethwa discussed the wide range of her group's work, including dietary interventions and whole body metabolism regulation work using novel in vitro models

Gisela Helfer gave a masterclass in dealing with technical issues with her presentation and discussed the wide ranging work her group does in the physiology of energy balance and biological rhythms, featuring a clock gene sequence clock figure and naked mole rats. 

Sam McLean and Gareth Banks both discussed their groups' neurobehavioural work. Sam and Gareth found a lot of overlapping themes in their research as behavioural neuroscientists who collaborate closely already with different metabolism groups. 

Power Hour

Next, we had a focussed session on collaboration plans, including collaborative research projects and grant applications. We came up with some interesting ideas and made plans on how to move forward. 

Teambuilding

Once all the serious work was over, we headed into town and took part in some of Nottingham's famous escape rooms! We split into two teams and both managed to escape their rooms; although the team including the students was much quicker! 

We continued our discussions all the way through to dinner, where we celebrated a successful day, with many plans for collaborative work to come!