5- th MOSBIO Meeting and MOSBIO course Espoo Finland June 2009

Another MOSBIO course this time in Finland was intended for biology teachers taking into account their preliminary knowledge. The course was organized together with teachers association in Finland thanks to activities of Christophe Roos.

The course was special also due to the fact that almost all the potential employees of the potential sysbio.lv project from Biosystems group came to Finland. So we have also more pictures ... On the cultural part Helsinki were inspected very carefully.

Meeting of KBBE Collaborative Wotking Group on Synthetic biology 8-th May 2009

One of perspective directions in farer future seems to be synthetic biology where Biosystems group could apply its computational and modelling skills.

To facilitate participation of Latvia in the joint programming of European Synthetic biology Egils Stalidzans went there to represent the country. It turned out during the meeting that ERA-net network could be possible future development of Synthetic biology as many countries are aiming to invest in research of this direction.

Meeting of ICT-Agri ERA-net in Copenhagen May 2009

Finally after about a year it was clear that ICT-Agri project will be funded. Egils Stalidzans and Dr.biol. Dace Tirzite (Latvia Academy of Science) arrived to the Copenhagen to represent the interests of Latvia and learn about next steps in the project.

We hope to start participation in the ICT-Agri projects coming closer to the international research.

4-th MOSBIO Meering and MOSBIO course Bilbao Spain May 2009

On the second half of the project some results have to be presented. That was the case in Bilbao where our educational materials and approach generally was tested on its efficiency.

The course was successful and the lectures were recorded by Ulf Schmitz and became available to the public on the website www.mosbio.eu. Intensive cultural program culminated when the local football team FC Bilbao Atletic had a game with FC Barcelona for the Royal cup. We were on streets of Bilbao (game took place elsewhere) watching a big TV in the crowd in the city square. We saw all the spectrum of emotions: Bilbao team scored first getting lead. That was followed by 4 scores of Barcelona thus winning the cup. Crazy evening!

3-rd FEBS Advanced Lecture course Systems Biology from Molecules to Function 07-13 March 2009 Alpbach Austria

Positive experience from the previous FEBS SysBio course in Gossau 2007 was strong motivation for Egils Stalidzans to apply for possibility to participate in that kind of course again.

Unforgettable memories will stay from the intensive open discussions regarding the possibility, necessity and timing of development of virtual biochemical human. It was fun to follow contradicting arguments of very famous scientists. Another emotional peak was the lecture of Dennis Noble that was followed by present of personally signed book of him “The Music of Life”. Downhill skiing was not forgotten also at this conference.