The 2008 ION-IGDB Joint Annual Meeting between ION and IGDB (Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, CAS) was held at the SIBS lecture hall from December 26th to 28th. Following the traditional Director's Report from Prof. Mu-Ming Poo, in which he overviewed ION progress over the past year and discussed important factors in selecting good research projects, faculty members, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students from 22 ION laboratories and 9 IGDB laboratories presented their recent work. Faculty, staff and students exchanged ideas and talked about potential future collaborations during this annual meeting.
The 2008 ION-IGDB Joint Annual Meeting will be held on December 26-28, 2008 in the SIBS Main Lecture Hall at 320 Yue-Yang Road. Members of ION laboratories and invited PIs and students from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of CAS, Beijing will present some of their recent research progress. The meeting is open to the scientific community, although onsite registration (free of charge) is required.
Dr. Xu Zhang was invited to attend the Hillarp Family Reunion Conference held in Stockholm, Sweden, from December 3rd to 5th. During the conference, Dr. Zhang gave an invited talk entitled "Large dense-core vesicle, a carrier of receptor-signaling molecule complexes".
The first meeting of the Third ION Council was held at ION on November 29. After listening to reports by the directors of ION and the State Key Laboratory of Neuroscience (SKLN), council members met in closed session and gave recommendations for the future development of ION and SKLN.
On October 29, 2008, Prof. Olaf B. Paulson (Copenhagen University Hospitals – Rigshospitalet, Denmark) and Prof. Maurice Ptito (University of Montreal, Canada) visited ION. Dr. Si Wu hosted their visit and gave a brief description of current research at ION.
On October 29, 2008, the Science Deans Delegation of the United States visited ION. Prof. Mu-Ming Poo, Director of ION, hosted their visit and gave a brief description of current research at ION.
On Oct 26, 2008, Nature Neuroscience published online a full original article from ION entitled "GABAB receptor activation mediates frequency-dependent plasticity of developing GABAergic synapses". This work was carried out by Chun Xu and Man-xia Zhao, under the supervision of Drs. Mu-ming Poo and Xiao-hui Zhang.
On Oct. 28, PNAS published online a paper from ION entitled “TrkB-mediated Activation of Geranylgeranyltransferase I Promotes Dendritic Morphogenesis”. This work was mainly done by graduate student Xiu-Ping Zhou, under the supervision of Dr. Zhen-Ge Luo.
Prof. Zhi-Bin Zhang, Director of the Bureau of Life Science & Biotechnology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, visited ION on October 17, accompanied by Prof. Jian-Xin Zhang (Party Secretary of SIBS), Prof. Xu Zhang (Deputy Director of SIBS), Mr. Fu-Di Ni (Assistant Director of SIBS) and Mr. Jin-Hua Zhang (Scientific Program Office of SIBS).
On October 8th, 2008, a delegation from Wyeth Research visited ION. Delegation members included Drs. Frank Walsh (Executive Vice President, Wyeth Research), Gino Toffano and Soren Andersen.
On September 22nd, 2008, a delegation from the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) in Singapore, visited ION. Following a brief description of current research at ION from Dr. Shu-Min Duan, the delegation members visited the Two-Photon Microscopy Laboratory.
On September 17th, 2008, a delegation from the Toulouse Institute for Brain Science in France, visited ION. Delegation members included Prof. Pier-Giorgio Zanone, Michele Fabre-Thorpe, Yves Trotter and Dr. Jeanne Leung-Tack, et al.
On September 9th, 2008, a delegation consisting of Dr. Kim Yong Hyun and colleagues from the Daegu-Gyeongbuk Development Institute in Korea visited ION.
An ION Retreat was held at Tianmu Lake in Jiangsu Province on August 16th and 17th. The meeting was chaired by our director, Prof. Mu-Ming Poo and attended by all ION faculties and some secretaries.
Dr. Xu Zhang was invited to attend the 3rd International Conference for Neurons and Brain Diseases held in Seoul, Korea on August 5th to 7th. During the conference, Dr. Zhang gave an invited talk entitled "Function of fibroblast growth factor 13 in dorsal root ganglion neurons." Three Ph.D. students and two postdoctoral fellows from ION also attended this conference and present their recent findings.
