18 September 2024

At the end of June, the PALS Summer School in Transcriptomics during Development and Cancer was held, offering four days of inspiring talks, lively discussions, and even some sauna sessions by the lake.

All participants of the 2024 PALS Summer School.
All participants of the 2024 PALS Summer School.

The summer school was designed for PhD students and Postdocs who work in the field studying the Transcriptional Control of the Genome during Embryonic Development, Cell Differentiation, and Disease, or for those who would like to approach it. A total of 57 students participated in this years summer school, which took place at Sandvik Gård.

Participants of the 2024 PALS Summer School.

A low ratio between participants and teachers/speakers allowed each participant to come in close contact with successful scientists and learn how they developed key technologies to respond to pressing questions in their field. Thirteen countries were represented by participants, with two of them traveling as far as from Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The course included a mix of lectures, group discussions, and interactive activities. The unconventional "Non-Poster Session", held by the pool, followed the exchange of details on data and analyses, to allow focusing on the broader picture and the philosophical implications of each project.

Research was discussed by the pool in a relaxed manner.
Research was discussed by the pool in a relaxed manner.

This year’s course focused on advanced topics such as barcode-based lineage tracing, understanding the 3D genome, transcription factors, peak calling, and in situ hybridization combined with scRNAseq. The event also featured a short course on scientific writing for developmental and cancer biologists.

An important innovation of this year is that previous summer school participants, on the wave of their current scientific successes, have been selected to teach – the students became the teachers!

The organizers, Claudio Cantù from Linköping and Silvia Remeseiro from Umeå, are proud of the outcome. They experimented new pedagogical methods and strived to generate an informal setting where every participant, despite personal idiosyncrasies and predispositions, can feel at ease and share their ideas and opinions on how technologies are changing their field of research and, in fact, the entire world.

“It is incredible to see how, for a second time after the first edition in 2022, students from many countries are eager to participate to this summer school. Silvia and I do our best, but it is the students, their lively participation and passion, that make it a truly special event”, say Claudio Cantù.

The PALS Summer School was made possible through the generous support from the Wallenberg Center for Molecular Medicine (WCMM) and SciLifeLab.

More about PALS

PALS: A Program for Future Academic Leaders in Swedish Life Science. The national Program for Academic leaders in Life Science (PALS) is an official collaboration between SciLifeLab, the DDLS Program and the four WCMM Molecular Medicine Centers.

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