qbio Workshop #2 on ‘Molecular Machines’
November 2023
For the second edition of the qbio Workshop teaching unit, we received three renowned invited speakers tackling different aspects of ‘Molecular Machines’.
We had the pleasure to host talks on phase separations of bacterial DNA segregation complexes (Jean-Charles Walter, Laboratoire Charles Coulomb, Montpellier), on the complexity of the bacterial flagellar motor (Ashley Nord, Centre de Biologie Structurale, Montpellier), and on the molecular aspects of the replication mechanisms of the Chikungunya virus (Juan Reguera, AFMB, Marseille).
When the topics where announced, students picked their preferred one and worked in small groups to present two articles of each invited speaker in the morning. The journal club was immediately followed by the speaker’s seminar (open to the scientific community in Montpellier). After that, the M2 qbio had an informal lunch with the speakers, which was the occasion to exchange not only about Science, but also on general the aspects of a researcher’s life.
BOOTCAMP 3.0
September 2023
The M1 graduates were warmly greeted with an exhilarating escape game (Bacterial olympic games!) organized by the M2 seniors.
The activities were thoughtfully designed by the M2 students in collaboration with faculty members to align with the curriculum of the Bootcamp, the teaching unit that welcomes the new coming students.
Following the game, students and faculty enjoyed a delightful evening in Montpellier, strengthening their bonds outside the academic setting.
Retreat 2023: Ardèche
April 2023
From April 14th to 16th, we held our annual retreat at the Les Stelles gîte in Ardèche.
Students from both years worked alongside faculty members and two invited guests: Remy Kusters, a senior researcher and data scientist at GOURMEY, and Mohamed El Beheiry, co-founder and CTO of Avatar Medical. Our discussions with them provided valuable insights into alternative non-academic curricula and the transition ‘from lab to startup’ in very different fields such as cultivated meat development and immersive virtual reality imaging for medical purposes.
During the retreat, students interacted with our guests and developed new material for next year’s Bootcamp – our ‘warming up’ teaching unit at the beginning of the academic year. We also decided to increase our social media presence. Stay tuned for updates!
qbio Workshop #1 on ‘Transcription’
November 2022
In November 2022 we inaugurated the qbio Workshop teaching unit. For its first edition, we received three renowned invited speakers tackling different aspects of ‘Transcription’.
Students picked their preferred topic and worked in small groups to organise a presentation based on two articles of each invited speaker. After the speaker’s seminar (open to the scientific community in Montpellier), the M2 qbio had the occasion to exchange about the presentation during and after lunch, in informal sessions that were not limited to the scientific content but also touched on career advice.
The work did not end up that week of November. Each group spent a couple of months to write the proceedings of the meeting, attempting to summarise in a few pages the salient points of the speakers’ results.
“The telescope vs. the microscope”
October 2022
On October 25th 2022, we took advantage of a partial solar eclipse in Montpellier to organize an outdoor practical for our qbio master students : “The microscope vs the telescope”
It was a fun way to revise some basic optics concepts, see how a telescope and a microscope are designed, the similarities and differences, talk about magnification, aperture, aberrations, and other wonders of nature.
iGEM 2022 GRAND JAMBOREE
October 2022
Our students defended the coulours of the University of Montpellier in the world’s largest synthetic biology competition (iGEM).
Over 350 teams from all over the world participated in this 3-day exposition (Grand Jamboree) in Paris.
This year, the Montpellier team was exceptionally composed of only 5 qbio students, who idealised, developed, and presented their project Shell’lock, a user-friendly technique to detect oyster pathogens based on a Cas13 enzyme.
We are proud of our students who were 1st runner up, 2nd position among all the overgraduates teams, and obtained five nominations (Best Food & Nutrition project, presentation, wiki, entrepreneurship, Integrated human practices) in addition to the gold medal.
This has been an incredible achievement for Ali, Christelle, Émilie, Hye Rin, Nessim, congratulations again!
If you want to re-live their presentation and the prize ceremony, you can do that from the 2022 Grand Jamboree website.
Bootcamp 2022
September 2022
We welcomed our new M1 graduates with an intense and fun bootcamp 2.0. The senior M2 students conceived, prepared and animated the second escape game during the bootcamp. To celebrate the beginning of this new year, all qbio students and some faculty members enjoyed a night out in Montpellier.
Retreat 2022: les Cevennes
April 2022
Our first annual retreat took place at “La Maison Clément” gîte in the Cevennes at the end of April. Students and some faculty members as well as invited speakers enjoyed fun games, a beautiful hike and picnic as well as animated evenings. We had the chance to hear from Xiaojing who talked about her research work on molecular modeling of GPCRs.
