RSC Chemical Biology Forum Annual Meeting 2006 Report

In October, the Chemical Biology Forum, (CBF) met for their first Annual Meeting in Burlington House London.  

The CBiF Executive Committee, chaired by Professor JohnMcCarthy, sets RSC strategy for the chemistry and biology interface and meets three times per year.  One of these meetings is accompanied by a substantially larger CBiF Annual Meeting, which serves as a forum where representatives from many RSC specialist interest groups (e.g. Nucleic Acids Group, Biophysical Group) and other interested parties assemble to discuss important issues and set priorities for the coming year.  The next CBiF Annual Meeting will take place from 10.00 am till 12.30 pm on Friday 21 September 2007 at Burlington House in London.

The chief aim of the CBiF is to promote high quality research at the chemistry and biology interface.  For this meeting the Executive identified issues prevalent to supporting research at the chemistry and biology interface. 

The promotion of high-quality research at the interface is a priority issue and Chris St Pourçain, BBSRC Cross Disciplinary Research Programme Manager, gave a presentation on ‘Funding Mechanisms for research at the interface between the physical and life sciences’. 

To show case research being conducted at the chemistry and biology interface, Nigel Scrutton (MIB) presented his research ‘Squeezing barriers – a dynamical view of enzyme catalysis’.

In promoting of awareness that strong physical science components support research at the interface, Jenny Littlechild, School of Biosciences, University of Exeter spoke about her experiences at the Chemistry Department at Exeter, and discussed lessons for the future, ‘Undergraduate Teaching in Interdisciplinary Science’.

A key issue for research at the interface is education of the next generation of interdisciplinary researchers.  As a chemist and as Chair of the Royal Society Higher Education Working Group, Judith Howard, University of Durham, gave a short talk on the future of undergraduate science education, in the context of burgeoning interdisciplinary research, ‘Science Higher Education in 2015 and beyond’.