Workshop and Conference "Mechanical Manipulations and Responses at the Scale of Cells and Beyond"

Last summer, before our time in Woods Hole, where my boss Jitu and me gave a workshop about in vitro systems at the Physiology course of the Marine Biology Lab (MBL) summer programs, I discussed with Jitu a crazy idea: Why not organizing a workshop about ways to mechanically manipulate cells and tissues including a lot of "hands-on" time, so that the participants learn how to set up the systems. Fortunately, Jitu was very supportive and liked the idea. In addition, every other scientist I was talking to about this project, became excited so that it was clear in October that I we will do it. After some discussion with other faculties at NCBS, we decided to combine the workshop with a conference to have reason to invite many speakers. Thanks to the support of Jitu, John and Madan at NCBS, and Shivashankar at MBI in Singapore, we could win many internationally renowned scientists form the US, the EU, Israel, Singapore and India for the program and to win fundamental financial support of the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS). It was a lot of work and super interesting, to coordinate the different work-groups, the program, the catering, the visas, the stay for the invited speakers, and so on and so on. Fortunately, NCBS has an experienced conference office which gave support in many of the procedures. But still was my activities in the last two weeks before the start of the program governed by making things running! The result of this, were two amazing weeks, which pushed me to the limit of my capacities. But the joy and excitement of the participants and the speakers, and the amount of good feed back that we received, were more than enough as compensation.

 Here are some impressions about the event

 And here is the official website A few more detailed descriptions might follow in the next days.