One of the great strengths of the Crick is that it will bring
together researchers from the institute and its partner
universities to develop innovative research ideas and to undertake
new, collaborative projects based on their complementary
expertise.
Last year we launched a pilot exercise to identify early
opportunities for researchers at the Crick and its university
partners to undertake such projects. We invited Group Leaders at
UCL, Imperial and King's to apply for their groups to be seconded
to the Crick, or to send members of their lab to form a satellite
group at the Crick, or to spend up to a year with the Crick on
sabbatical.
The idea of a Secondment is that a Group
Leader and his or her research group will transfer to the Crick for
an agreed period (usually between 3 and 6 years). Often the Group
Leaders in question will be early in their
careers. Satellites will consist of smaller
numbers of university researchers (usually one to three) who will
be embedded in a Crick research group for an agreed period
(typically between 3 months and 3 years) to undertake specific
collaborative projects. Satellites will usually include postdocs,
PhD students and/or technical staff working at the Crick, while the
Group Leader remains at his or her home institution.
Finally, Sabbaticals will enable a Group Leader
to spend up to a year working in a Crick research group, perhaps
learning new techniques or undertaking a hands-on
collaboration.
University staff working at the Crick will remain full employees
of their university, and will return to the university when they
finish their work at the Crick.
We have now identified twenty Group Leaders (ten male and ten
female, including one joint application) who will bring
complementary expertise to the Crick in physical, computational,
biomedical and clinical sciences. The university staff
associated with these attachments will move into the Crick during
the first half of 2016 and we will actively encourage them to
participate in Crick activities between now and then. Jim Smith,
Director of Research at the Crick, said 'The quality of the
applications was excellent and we look forward to the selected
Group Leaders and their lab members joining the Crick next year.
The university Group Leaders will bring skills and expertise to the
Crick that will complement our researchers and their contribution
will help ensure that laboratory discoveries are turned into
treatments as quickly as possible.'
This first round was a pilot, intended to test the selection
process and identify where we may need to refine our approach for
subsequent rounds. We will start a second round of applications
later this year, so that successful applicants will join the Crick
in late 2016 or early 2017.
Listed below are the names of the university researchers joining
us, their research area and the type of attachment. Clicking
on the names will take you to their university research
page.
Imperial
Wendy
Barclay* & Peter Openshaw, Flu
Morgan Beeby*, Electron
microscopy
Paul French*, Imaging
Christina Lo Celso*, Stem cells
Gunnar Pruessner***,
Mathematics
Molly Stevens*, Biomedical
materials
Ed Tate*,
Chemistry
King's
Patricia Barral**,
Immunology
Jeremy Carlton**, Cancer
Studies
Francesca Ciccarelli**,
Cancer Studies
Shukry Habib*, Stem
cells
Snezhana Oliferenko**,
Cell and Molecular Biophysics
UCL
Buzz Baum*,
Microfabrication
David Jones*, Computer
Science
Isabel Llorente-Garcia***,
Physics of B cells
Ewa Paluch*, Biophysics
Lucia Sivilotti***, Ion
channels
Gyorgy Szabadkai*, Cancer
metabolomics
Jernej Ule**, RNA
biology
Key: Satellite*, Secondment**, Sabbatical***