WELCOME MESSAGE FROM JULIA FERNANDEZ-RODRIGUEZ, NEW CTLS PRESIDENT
I hope that everybody is well in these complicated times!
First of all I want to express my gratitude to my colleagues for the trust they have placed in me for this position. Briefly, I would like to base my mandate on three pillars that I consider to be important:
- Career-path and training, by designing and delivering a training programme to fulfil the competency requirements for the current and future operators and managers of the core facilities (thanks to the RItrainPlus EU project!)
- Make new connections with potential corporate stakeholder and Institutional partners
- Promote cooperation with other alliances and organisations that support the community of researchers and core facility scientists within Europe and beyond!
CTLS MONTHLY WEBINARS
It is great to see so many CTLS members and non-members participating in our monthly webinars.
The next webinar entitled ‘Building a Successful Career Path for Core Facility and Research Infrastructure Scientists’ will be held on Wednesday 28th April (4pm CET, 3pm UK). Click here for more details and to register.
A new group has been set up to organise these monthly webinars. Please contact Josh Rappoport or Kateřina Hošková you have ideas for further webinars or any questions.
CTLS members can catch up on previous webinars by clicking here.
CTLS2021 ONLINE CONGRESS
The CTLS2021 Steering committee is pleased to inform CTLS members that they will have a free registration to this congress held 13th to 15th September 2021! The congress will contain eight satellite workshops and six congress sessions covering:
- Core facility automation
- Methodological and technological development in core facilities
- Funding of core facilities and research infrastructures
- Quality Management
- Building a successful career path in Core Facilities
- Core Facility Benchmarking
- Open Science and Integrity in Scientific Data
- Multi-institutional core facility sharing models
For more information about Abstract Submission, Registration and Speakers, please, go to the CTLS2021 website.
CTLS2023 CONGRESS
As we very much hope that the situation will return to “normal” during 2021, we are starting to think about the following (hopefully physical!) CTLS congress, that will take place in 2023. The call for congress venues is open, and the deadline for bid submissions is April 30th 2021. If you are potentially interested in hosting the CTLS2023 congress and would like more information please contact Julia Fernandez-Rodriguez.
ABRF CONFERENCE
The Association of Bimolecular Resource Facilities (ABRF) conference entitled ‘Supporting Interdisciplinary Science’ was held virtually from March 7th to 11th. CTLS was pleased to be given 20 places to offer to CTLS members to attend this conference.
The program blended timely and informative sessions focusing both on administrative issues and technology area specific topics. CTLS President Julia Fernandez-Rodriguez presented a fascinating talk on running a multi-modal imaging core, and CTLS Secretary Josh Rappoport, who was on the conference Program Committee, received the ABRF Robert A. Welch Outstanding Research Group/Committee Member of the Year Award.
CatRIS CATALOGUE IS NOW FULLY OPERATIONAL!
The official launch of CatRIS was hosted by CTLS on 11th March with positive feedback from over 70 participants and the European commission. About 600 services from over 100 providers are currently listed on CatRIS. Thanks to the active participation of CTLS, these are mainly in the biomedical domain.
The following resources are available to CTLS members:
- 1-on-1 webinars to support with onboarding of services (select date here).
- A series of pre-recorded tutorials and guides is available on the CatRIS portal.
- If your organisation offers a lot of services, CatRIS can help you to onboard them all in a one-step process via an API. This semi-automatic way of onboarding will require only minimal intervention from your side. Please email CatRis to find more.
As CTLS members your feedback to CatRIS is very welcome!
CTLS WORKING GROUP (WG) NEWS
Partnership and Funding WG
The Networking and Outreach WG and Funding and Corporate Relations WG have merged together and created a new Partnership and Funding WG. This merge was supported mainly due to overlaps in agenda and duplicating efforts of members. During the transition period, this WG is led by Kateřina Hošková and Josh Rappoport. Currently this WG has 10 members, and we will be more than happy to welcome new ones.
Look out for news about this exciting new working group. If you have any questions, please contact Kateřina Hošková or Josh Rappoport.
Communications WG
The Communications WG are pleased to welcome two new members, Leonor Heleno Wielgosz and Michelle Malloy, from Stratocore, a CTLS corporate sponsor. Together we are working on increasing our presence on social media, refreshing the CTLS website and digitalising the CTLS newsletter and communications. We hope you like our new newsletter and look forward to sharing the website with you soon. Please contact us if you have any comments or would like to join our active WG.
Follow us today on Twitter (new name @CTLSlifeScience) and LinkedIn!
Community Engagement WG
One of the key aims of this WG is to increase the number of CTLS members each year and with 107 members this year so far, the number for 2020 will be surpassed very soon! This WG will be introducing ‘Welcome Events’ for new members that will allow us to get to know the new members, to learn about their interests and expectations from the association, and to answer their questions.
This WG is also pleased to welcome a new member, Alexandre Jesus from the University of Lisbon, Portugal.
Training WG
Members of the Training WG have published a paper in the Journal of Biomolecular Techniques (Volume 32, Issue 01, April 2021) entitled ‘An international survey of Training Needs and Career Paths of Core Facility Staff’.
CTLS members can access this very informative paper here – enjoy the read!
Italian Core Facilities meeting
The Italian Core Facilities will meet online on Wednesday 5th May 2021. For more information and to register please click here.
This event will be in Italian.
REMEMBER TO RENEW YOUR CTLS MEMBERSHIP!
And remember to invite your colleagues and friends to join too!
CTLS membership has many benefits including:
- Reduced rates and priority registration at CTLS congresses and events
- Access to CTLS sponsored trainings at preferred rates
- Networking opportunities with other core facility staff
- Access to CTLS webpages with news, job listings and event
Click here to renew or join.
CALLING ALL CTLS MEMBERS!
Please take a couple of minutes to review your member profile on the website. Click here to access your profile and update any changes to your affiliation, role, domains of expertise and so on. This will help us all to collaborate more effectively with each other – thank you!