BluePharmTrain in the School of Microbiology

19 Nov 2014

The Marie Curie funded Initial Training Network (ITN)- BluePharmTrain is a multi-disciplinary alliance of 18 European academic and industrial partners working in collaboration to train young scientists in multi-disciplinary aspects of Blue Biotechnology. 

The focus of the project is on the use of marine sponges for the development of new pharmaceuticals, given that marine sponges and their bacterial symbionts are a rich source of bioactive molecules.

BluePharmTrain is also providing a complementary set of network-wide training modules and workshops to the 15 young PhD and Post Doctoral researchers funded by the project.

One of these training workshops is taking place in UCC this week, with the young scientists receiving training in Marine Natural Products Chemistry and on Metagenomics/Metatranscriptomics/Bioinformatics under the tuition of Professor Marcel Jaspars from the University of Aberdeen, Professor Peter Schaap from Wageningen University  and Dr Marcus Claesson from the School of Microbiology at UCC. 

The group is being hosted by Professor Alan Dobson a BluePharmTrain  project partner and Professor Detmer Sipkema from Wageningen University, the project coordinator.