UNE > News and Events > Browse by article > Secrets of the cell under scrutiny

Next Australia's only Indigenous Senator delivers annual lecture September 8, 2004  

Previous International meeting of the minds September 6, 2004 

Secrets of the cell under scrutiny

September 07, 2004

The University of New England is organising a four-day workshop that will help young researchers from around the world to look more deeply into living cells.
The international workshop this month will allow its 50 participants to practise the latest optical techniques used in biomedical research. A major focus will be fluorescence spectroscopy, which takes advantage of the physical properties of fluorescent light to detect and investigate biological processes in tissues and cells down to the level of single molecules.
The workshop, from September 20 to September 23 at the National Marine Science Centre, Coffs Harbour, has attracted participants from six overseas
countries as well as from the eastern States of Australia. It will emphasise
practical issues related to setting up new research equipment and expanding
the use of existing equipment. Some of the techniques investigated will be
recent developments, including “fluctuation correlation spectroscopy”, which
enables researchers to follow the movements of molecules in living cells,
and “multi-photon excitation microscopy”, which provides a deeper view into
cells than ever before. The latter technique has a variety of potential
medical applications.


Most of the overseas participants will be attending with the help of travel
grants. They will be coming from The Philippines, Chile, Slovenia, Russia
and Poland. Invited speakers will include Professor Peter Fajer (Florida
State University, USA), Professor Enrico Gratton (University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, USA), and Professor David Jameson (University of Hawaii at
Manoa).
The UNE workshop is the third in an Australian series that began with a
workshop in Melbourne in 1997 and continued with one in Sydney in 2001. The
Chair of the organising committee for this month’s workshop, Dr Pierre Moens
from UNE’s School of Biological, Biomedical and Molecular Sciences, said the
workshops were aimed at postgraduate research students, young postdoctoral
research fellows, and recently appointed junior Faculty members.
Media contact: Dr Pierre Moens, School of Biological, Biomedical and
Molecular Sciences, UNE (02) 6773 3740 or Jim Scanlan, Public Relations, UNE
(02) 6773 3049.

Posted by Lydia Roberts at September 7, 2004 12:20 PM