A Word From: Nicolas Wanaverbecq & Annalisa Scimemi

Last week, we spoke with co-instructors from Ion Channels in Synaptic and Neural Circuit Physiology course, Nicolas Wanaverbecq (soon to be starting a group at the Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone) and Annalisa Scimemi. Both share great insight into how the course remains at the forefront of technology while maintaining its core training ideology, and give a glimpse into the course by outlining a day in the life of an Ion Channels trainee. Nicolas and Annalisa also offer sage advice on how future applicants can increase their chances of being selected for the course. Given the Ion Channels course is highly competitive – accepting only 20% from its 2017 pool of applicants – their advice is worth its weight in gold.

Nicolas: The course is three weeks long. The first couple of days consist mainly of lectures given by instructors on the basics of electrophysiology, ion channels, and physiology of excitable cell and their implications for the function of neural circuits. Then we bring in invited lecturers to speak on specific topics. Each lecturer gives two talks during the morning half of the day: a didactical one followed by a talk on their research. We then take a lunch break after which we brief the students on the afternoon’s lab session, where they will work on the topic that was discussed in the morning. So the afternoons and evenings are spent recording from neurons and analyzing the results. Every day we cover a different, major topics ranging from single ion channels to synapses, using in vitro and in vivo experimental preparations. 

Annalisa: I like the lecturer format Nicolas mentioned. Sometimes the first part of a lecturer’s talk describes papers published in the 50’s and 70’s and then switches gears to discuss a 2017 approach to address more sophisticated questions. I appreciate the approach of looking back and looking forward within the same three hours of a morning, because it allows you to realize how much we have progressed but also how much is still unknown about some fundamental mechanisms of brain function. 

Nicolas: We ask our lecturers to stay at CSHL for as long as possible so they can interact with and help students in the lab. This gives students the chance to talk with prominent scientists in a very laid back atmosphere. Also, every night we have “Chalk Talks” where two students each give a five-minute talk on their project - what they do, why they applied for the course, and how they and their project will benefit from it.

Given their participation in the course over the last several years – Nicolas has been part of the training staff since 2013 and Annalisa was a teaching assistant in the early 2000’s – we discussed the curriculum of the course and specifically how it has changed to stay current with the evolving field.

Nicolas: The main philosophy hasn’t changed. Our goal is for the students – who are mostly unfamiliar with electrophysiology and ion channels physiology – to understand the concepts of electrophysiology and neuronal activity. Students get a general picture of neuronal activity, how to record and study it so they are able to return to their labs with a general "tool kit" to solve problems and carry out their experiments using what they learned. This philosophy has worked quite well and has been a constant in the course. 

Annalisa: The techniques may have changed but the spirit of the course hasn’t. It’s good that some techniques change because it means we’re teaching the state of the art. The conceptual approach — the rigor in which you have to perform your experiments, your attention to details, and the effort to squeeze information out of your recordings — is definitely there. 

Scientifically, I think the field has become more multidisciplinary. It’s a source of excitement and challenges because many of us were trained in just one of the many disciplines that we need to know right now. I personally like the new developments in imaging and quantitative approaches. Every day, there’s something new to learn, and that’s a humbling exercise that keeps me motivated.

Nicolas: I totally agree. I’m very interested in the development of transgenic approaches and viral infection to selectively target and manipulate neurons. They enable us to perform electrophysiological recordings from an identified population of neurons while analyzing their morphological and anatomical properties. This approach combines function with connectomic approaches – identifying how cells talk to each other as well as which cells talk to each other. 

We then asked them for advice they would offer to those interested in attending a future iteration of the course: 

Annalisa: Think about your scientific questions and how they can be complementary to the topics historically treated in the course. And, to those whose applications were not accepted, I would say try again. A part of science is being persistent, and not being accepted one year doesn’t mean you weren’t good. Maybe the pool of applicant was just very big that year. Also, keep doing your good science. It’s not a sprint run but a marathon.

Nicolas: We evaluate applications by making sure the personal statement shows an applicant’s motivation, how the Ion Channels course will be useful for them and for their project, and what aspect of their research will be improved with a technique we cover. We also look at an applicant’s background and originality of their project. If an applicant, let’s say, has a non-electrophysiological background but intends to add these techniques to their research, we would consider his/her application as well. The course is very competitive. We accepted only 12 students out of 60 applicants this year to maintain a 1:2 ratio of students to instructor/TA. With twelve students, we are able to follow them through the course and make it as efficient as possible for them.

Our chat winded down with both co-instructors sharing their personal experiences with the course and the benefits all parties gain from it:  

Annalisa: It’s useful to think about what has happened to people who took the course in the past and where they are now. In the past, I was a TA in this course with students who have now established themselves as individual investigators. When you attend as a student, you’re surrounded by friends who will become your colleagues in a few years. It’s an opportunity to form bonds that will last a lifetime. Cold Spring Harbor is one of the few places that offers this kind of opportunity, so it’s a privilege to be here as a student, a co-instructor, and as part of the community in general. So I definitely would encourage anyone to take this chance of a lifetime. 

Nicolas: Personally, I enjoy the connections made. Through the course, I have the opportunity to talk with students who have a real interest and curiosity for the field. I’m enthusiastic to share my knowledge and help young scientists grasp the techniques as best I can. It’s also interesting to meet fellow scientists, discuss our research, and set up future collaborations. Another benefit is the potential to meet and discover candidates for future postdoc openings. I think it’s bilateral – as much as the students benefit from meeting established scientists, we benefit from meeting them, getting to know them, and seeing how they work. 

Thank you to both Nicolas and Annalisa for taking the time to chat with us. For more conversations with our other meeting organizers and course instructors, go here. Also, to gain a trainee's perspective on the Ion Channels course, read our Q&A with Aalok Varma. 

A Word From: Benjamin Allen & Amy Ralston

We recently chatted with the Mouse Development, Stem Cells & Cancer course instructors Benjamin Allen and Amy Ralston. Ben and Amy, for a number of years, have been involved with the course in various capacities but this is the first year both are co-lead instructors so we dived right into the benefits of participating in the course.  

Ben: From my standpoint, the students get two important things out of the course. Sure they learn how to do these techniques and practice them a few times while they’re here but, more importantly, they get introduced to the people who are experts in each of those techniques. So even if they walk out of here not an expert in a particular technique, they’re now friends with an expert they can contact. So if they’re doing experiment X and running into technical troubles, they can feel free contact one of the best people in the world to get advice.

Amy: In addition to the professional and scientific opportunities, we’re trying to maximize our students’ networking opportunities. We bring in about 30 additional experts from fields we’re not experts in so the students are exposed to a broad number of topics and taught classes and labs by those experts. One thing that is new to this year’s course is “First Drink”, where the students sign up to host a lecturer of their choice and take the lecturer to the Blackford Bar to buy his/her first drink. I think the students really like it! I’ve asked feedback from the lecturers too, and one comment I heard from a lecturer who has been here several times was that there were interactions that probably wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

Curious as to what other updates were made, we asked the first-time lead instructors if they made any changes to the curriculum. 

Ben: Amy and I replaced a few of the labs with ones that fit more smoothly with the flow of the course and that give the students a fuller grasp of the different stages of mouse development. We also swapped out some of the lecturers.

Amy: Another thing we’ve done, which is in response to survey feedback from last year’s students, is to give the students multiple opportunities to try each experiment rather than offering more experiments with fewer opportunities to practice. So far, I see people mastering things a little bit more and I’ve seen a lot less frustration than in previous years when we were ambitious with the number of experiments we taught.

In addition to the changes made to the course curriculum and lecture lineup, Amy and Ben incorporated a hot new experimental approach into this year’s course. 

Amy: Top secret! No, I’m kidding. It’s CRISPR. The course was originally designed to teach scientists how to make transgenic mice or knock-in mice the old fashioned way. But now that CRISPR exists, we adapted a lot of those same approaches to facilitate CRISPR, which is more efficient than the old approaches but it requires the same skillset.

Ben: CRISPR is the newest and biggest thing we incorporated into this year’s course. Last year was the first year we taught CRISPR and it was successful…

Amy: Successfully CRISPR-ed.

Ben: …we expanded it this year and we’re hoping it will be successful again.

The Mouse course celebrates its 35th iteration this year. To commemorate the course’s milestone anniversary, the organizers coordinated a special one-day symposium. Trainees of this year’s Mouse course – in between checking in on their experiments, of course – were treated to a full day of talks from scientists who made significant contributions to both the course and to mouse biology. 

Amy: We’re really excited that we were able to invite all 3 of the founders of the Mouse course. They were all present for the Symposium: Brigid Hogan gave a talk at the Symposium, Liz Lacy gave a lecture this week, and Frank Costantini is arriving in a few days. It’s special to have all the founders present to acknowledge the course’s 35th anniversary.

We closed our laughter-filled conversation with their advice for future Mouse course applicants. 

Amy: It’s very important to justify how the Mouse course will enhance their career and research project. When we have a clear understanding that the student is familiar with what happens at the course, then we can be confident that they’ll have a satisfactory experience.

Ben: Also, we would recommend they ask their advisor or letter writers to do the same, to emphasize how the course is going to be a practical benefit. We don’t want this to be an intellectual exercise. Our hope is that students walk out of here trained, to actually use the techniques we’re teaching them here.

Thank you to both Amy and Ben for taking the time to chat with us. For more conversations with our other meeting organizers and course instructors, go here. Also, to gain a trainee's perspective on the Mouse course, read our Q&A with Rebecca Lea. In the meantime, enjoy the results of our rapid-fire photography session with Ben and Amy. 

A Word From: Dafna Bar-Sagi, Howard Crawford, Tony Hollingsworth & David Tuveson

L to R: Howard Crawford, David Tuveson, Dafna Bar-Sagi, Tony Hollingsworth

Last week, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory welcomed 26 trainees, 31 lecturers, and 2 new additional instructors to the biennial Workshop on Pancreatic Cancer. The course, just four iterations young, has substantially grown over the last six years, reflecting the growth in the field. Our conversation with the four instructors Dafna Bar-Sagi, Howard Crawford, Tony Hollingsworth, and David Tuveson illustrates how pancreas cancer research continues to evolve and progress. We also discuss developments that may be game changers, as well as advice for those interested in the field or who wish to attend a future iteration of the course. 

To start, here is a brief history of the course as told by Dafna and David – the two instructors who have been with the course since its premiere. 

David: The pancreas cancer course started in 2011. There hadn’t been an instructional course in pancreatic cancer before that time and Jim Watson felt strongly that that was one of the reasons why the field was going so slowly. He convinced Dafna Bar-Sagi to organize such a course and, around this time, I was engaged with Jim Watson and Bruce Stillman on a number of issues involving pancreatic cancer so they asked me to help Dafna.

The first course was held that summer with 19 selected trainees who were students, postdocs, junior faculty, as well as some senior faculty. We assembled 19 lecturers to have an intensive workshop at the Banbury Center to go over aspects of pancreatic cancer medicine and science.

Dafna: We almost ran through the entire research community when we first organized the course. Fortunately, for a lot of reasons – funding, publicity for the disease – there are more investigators studying it so we now have a fantastic resource of people looking at the disease from many different perspectives. Now we have to actually leave out great people because there are so many to choose from.

We opened the discussion with how both the course and the field have changed since 2011: 

Dafna: The thinking now is less about the tumor cell itself and more about the environment, and putting more weight towards what we call the tumor microenvironment. There is a recognition that it’s not just the genetics of the tumor but how the tumor cells themselves talk to cells in the organ that are doing a lot of important things. Talks that address either partly or completely the role of the tumor microenvironment made up a lot of the talks we heard and what I sense to be exciting to our participants.

David: This year’s course, compared to just six years ago, has more to tell people because in the last six years we’ve learned a lot about pancreatic cancer - not about the medicine but about the science underneath it. We now know genetic events in pancreatic cancer, and we’ve developed methods to study the disease that are much deeper and much more facile than they were even six years ago.

Howard: Scientifically, we’re definitely up-to-date. That’s the nice thing about having four organizers and making these decisions together. It’s not very difficult to incorporate new science.

Tony: In general, there is more discussion now of opportunities compared to the large number of talks about infrastructure before. In the early days, people were still trying to build programs of research – it was an emerging field – which have come together now. As a result, there’s a lot more collaboration going on and more institutionalized programs are making progress.

Something else that’s different in the course are the student presentations that have been incorporated into the curriculum. They’re very effective and very good for engaging the young people with the faculty to discuss a lot of ideas that are going on in their labs right now.

David: The students today are much more informed because they come to the course knowing a lot about pancreatic cancer whereas, in the past, they came to the course to learn what was pancreatic cancer. And so the quality of the students as well as the knowledge of the disease has made it so now we get twice as many applicants as we have spots.

Our conversation then transitioned to the lecturers, topics presented, and exciting new developments:

Howard: Having our lecturers as part of the audience gives the impression of "no holds barred." As a result, the trainees understand early on that there will be questions and challenges, and that it's alright. They also get more comfortable inside the room to be able to bring up any topic that's in their mind.

David: There were a number of lectures this week that were extremely exciting. One was by Dieter Saur who is a professor in Munich, Germany. He’s developed the next version of a mouse model of pancreatic cancer where you can turn genes on and off at different times. In fact, he has gone to the level of making the first known pig model of pancreatic cancer, which looks intriguing and promising and a bit scary.

There was also a lecture by Matthew Vander Heiden who is a well-known biochemist and metabolism researcher. Matthew has identified new pathways that are required by pancreatic cancer to survive. I think his work is groundbreaking and will pave the way for many additional investigators.

And finally, one of our course instructors, Dafna Bar-Sagi has identified two methods by which pancreatic cancer cells evade therapy and survive in a hostile environment. One is they eat their surroundings to live – that’s where they get their food, by eating what’s around them. And the second is they have a stress pathway they activate to prevent responding to therapies. Both of her observations can lead to brand new therapeutic approaches.

Tony: There is a coalescence of ideas of early detection that are coming together. I think the basic studies in the field are really making progress. There’s been development of new complementary model systems – organoids and different animal models – to go along with the existing studies. Also, there is more focus on human studies now than there was for a long time.

Howard: I’d like to re-emphasize that. The idea that there are these new models – organoids and new mouse models and such – and essentially everyone knows they’re available. The students don’t just hear about them but get help developing them in their own laboratory. I think that’s huge. The camaraderie of these workshops is one of the biggest selling points. It gives the students things they can take back to the lab, and the connections to help implement them.

Tony: I think it’s notable that a lot of students from previous workshops are now in faculty positions and are participating in this workshop as lecturers.

Howard: At least two alumni are presenting this year – Mara Sherman and Jenn Bailey.

Dafna: It’s extremely rewarding. Mara Sherman attended as a trainee in 2013 while she was a postdoc in a lab that didn’t work on pancreatic cancer, and she is now an independent investigator in Oregon. We invited her to be a lecturer this year because obviously she’s very driven to do pancreatic cancer research. But Mara will also say herself that attending this workshop was a very reinforcing experience.

For those interested in applying for the Workshop on Pancreatic Cancer, here is additional insight from two of the instructors: 

Dafna: This is the only existing opportunity in the field of its kind. It is an immersion course in everything that has to do with the disease. The beauty of this course is that in 5-6 days you are exposed to everything you need to know if you are either going into the field or want to understand the evolving trends. A lot of our lecturers talk about unpublished data. The course is a combination of didactic components so people can actually understand the field, but then it gets into things that are new and exciting that very few actually know about. These are things that aren’t talked about at meetings. It’s a comprehensive way of getting to know everything you need to know about pancreas cancer.

David: For people interested in the course, I would recommend they get in line now. The Workshop on Pancreatic Cancer is the rock concert you don’t want to miss.

Lastly, here are parting messages from Dafna and David for young scientists: 

Dafna: It’s really important to follow your brain and your heart in terms of what it is you want to do. Don’t get sidetracked by the flashiness of a methodology or by the fact that a certain phenomenon has been published in a high-profile paper. Use your creativity and your curiosity to drive what you’re doing. From my experience, that has been the most important ingredient for success and what is ultimately most rewarding. So really think about the interesting questions, don’t shy away from the more difficult questions, rise up to the challenge and do whatever you can to meet it.

David: If someone’s really interested in pancreatic cancer, they should find people they can start working with and talking with now. They should contact the participants – the course instructors and students – to seek from them any knowledge about the course that could help them on their quest to learn more about pancreatic cancer. And pretty much anyone who’s a lecturer in this course is more than happy to help someone get started on their path.

Thank you to Dafna, Howard, Tony, and David for taking the time to chat with us. For more conversations with our other meeting organizers and course instructors, go here. Also, to gain a trainee's perspective on this workshop, read our Q&A with Lee Shaashua.

Lastly, the Workshop on Pancreatic Cancer will return in the Summer of 2019. For updates, visit our course webpage or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

A Word From: Vinay Pathak & Stefan Sarafianos

This week, we hosted the CSHL meeting on Retroviruses. Started in 1975, this is one of only a handful of CSHL meetings that occur annually as opposed to every other year. This year’s organizers – Vinay Pathak and Stefan Sarafianos – are veterans of the meeting but new to organizing it. We checked in with them for a quick discussion about the meeting and major updates they’ve made to it. Among the changes they made are “five-minute poster pitches,” where select poster presenters summarize their projects in short talks in the Auditorium to entice more people to stop by during the poster sessions. Here’s what Vinay and Stefan had to say:

Stefan: Vinay and I increased the base number of scientists directly involved in the meeting in terms of participation in talks, sharing their art by displaying their science on the abstract book cover, and even chairing the sessions. This year, there are more session chairs and more talks because we introduced 5-minute talks. This is new for this meeting and we’re very happy so far.

Vinay: The people I’ve spoken with who gave a 5-minute talk have been appreciative of the opportunity. All of them presented the highlights of their work, uniformly stayed on time, and what this does is it gives people the opportunity to go to their posters and discuss the details of their works. I think they’ve all been very happy about it so far. We’ve heard no complaints about it so I hope that this will become a regular feature of the meeting in the future.

Stefan: Presenting a talk makes a difference for those who are still in the early stages of their career – including PI’s.

Regarding the session chairs that Vinay and Stefan chose:

Vinay: The idea is to give more junior faculty the opportunity to chair a session so they know what it’s like to stand in front of a crowd, direct the discussion and guide it.

Stefan: Chairing a session is an indication of accomplishment and recognition in your field. It’s something you can take to your department chairperson and include in your annual report. It is important.

Vinay: We were looking more for people who would benefit from chairing a session. There are a lot of senior people here who have done it before – it’s not a big deal to them. For someone who’s in their first, second or third year of an independent career, it’s a good opportunity for them to have this experience and, as Stefan said, they can take this to their department chair as an indication that they’re being recognized internationally.

Stefan: And among their colleagues. We made sure to pair the younger chairs with the more experienced ones so the meeting still runs smooth. They’ve all been very fantastic...they all deserve credit.

Another meeting feature the organizers updated this year is how the poster sessions were arranged. Rather than ordering the 151 poster presenters by name, they grouped them into research areas like Virus Entry and IFITMs, Uncoating, and Tetherin/Bst-2: 

Vinay: We organized this year’s poster sessions according to the subject. The last several years it’s been done alphabetically, which is a much more random way of doing it. We’ve gotten good feedback and people like the fact that it has been organized by topics this year.

For those who are on the fence about attending this longstanding meeting, we asked Vinay and Stefan for their advice and thoughts:

Vinay: This is the best meeting for basic science relating to HIV and retroviral replication throughout the entire year. So, I think for everyone who’s working in this field – molecular biology, cell biology, HIV replication – it is absolutely essential they come here and learn what’s going on in the field and to keep up-to-date.

Stefan: It’s a one-stop catch-up with everything that’s happening in the field. It’s a holistic kind of thing. You look at every step of the viral life cycle.

Thank you to both Stefan and Vinay for taking the time to chat with us. For more conversations with our other meeting organizers and course instructors, go here. Also, to gain a meeting-goer's perspective on this meeting, read our Q&A with Shaima Akhlaq. 

Lastly, Retroviruses will be back on campus May 21 – 26, 2018. 

A Word From: Jared Rutter, Mitch Lazar & Susanne Mandrup

This week, we hosted the third CSHL meeting on Mechanisms of Metabolic Signaling. We checked in with all three meeting organizers – Jared Rutter, Mitch Lazar, and Susanne Mandrup – for a casual chat about the meeting and its role in bringing together the different metabolism disciplines.

Jared: I view the Mechanisms of Metabolic Signaling meeting as being unique in the sense that it’s the one meeting, I know about, that brings together people who work on metabolism involved in different diseases and different physiological states. There are a lot of cancer metabolism meetings, diabetes meetings, and obesity meetings. This meeting brings together metabolic aspects of all of those and allows cross-fertilization across those different disciplines. 

Susanne: The different metabolic disciplines is a common denominator in the positive feedback we’ve received from the participants.  

Mitch: I’m occasionally at cancer metabolism meetings and I was thrilled that several of the leaders of the cancer metabolism field, first of all, came to this meeting because they thought it was important and second of all, were asking the difference between what happens in the organism versus in cells. This has historically been one of the big differences between organismal metabolism and cancer metabolism. 

Susanne: Also there are many great technologies now being applied across the disciplines, from in-vitro technologies to whole-organism technologies.

This meeting is still fairly new but it plays a unique role in bridging the gap between the different disciplines in the field of metabolism. It consistently attracts a great number of meeting participants who are junior scientists; with graduate students and postdocs continuing to make up 42% of the meeting. We brought up this fact during the interview and Jared shared an insightful response:

I think it’s a reflection of the fact that young people are realizing that metabolism is cool again. That it’s important again. This wasn’t always the case. I would guess that 15 years ago, metabolism meetings had a bunch of old people and no one under 60. But, I feel like now, there’s a rebirth of metabolism research and people are interested again, and that provides an opportunity to bring these people together – young and old. 

As for those curious or who were on the fence about attending this meeting, Jared shares some advice: 

Think a little bit more broadly than just in your narrow field, and realize that if you study cancer metabolism, you can learn a lot by talking with people who study metabolic physiology in diabetes or the brain or whatever. I think we often, as scientists, tend to have our own tribes of people that hang out with each other and think about things the same way. It enables innovation when we can go between tribes and learn how someone else thinks about the world.

Lastly, we inquired about the presentation awards they are handing out this year. Though they kept the award categories close to the vest during our interview, the winners were announced at last night’s banquet and we love the idea of the presentation awards.

Check out all the chats we had with other meeting organizers and course instructor.