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Farewell Symposium for Prof. Ueli Aebi on January 26, 2012
A farewell symposium featuring several distinguished speakers will be held on January 26th 2012 in honor of Prof. Dr. Ueli Aebi, Professor and Founding Director of the Maurice E. Müller Institute for Structural Biology at the Biozentrum, University of Basel on the occasion of his retirement. All Employees of the University of Basel are warmly invited to attend.
The event will commence at 8.20 am in Hörsaal 1 at the Pharmazentrum with a welcome address by Erich Nigg, Director of the Biozentrum, and Ed Constable, Vice Rector of Research at the University of Basel. This will be followed by lectures presented by internationally distinguished guest scientists.
Farewell Symposium for Prof. Ueli Aebi
26th January 2012, starting at 8.20 am, Klingelbergstrasse 50/70
Pharmazentrum, Hörsaal 1
Distinguished speakers include Nobel Laureates Prof. Günter Blobel (Rockefeller University) and Prof. Werner Arber (Biozentrum, University of Basel), Prof. Tom Pollard (Yale University), Prof. Wolfgang Baumeister (Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry), and Prof. Hans-Joachim Güntherodt (Swiss Nanoscience Institute, University of Basel).
Ueli Aebi founded the Maurice E. Müller Institute for Structural Biology at the Biozentrum, University of Basel in 1986. As Professor of Structural Biology, Prof. Ueli Aebi has produced over 300 publications which have been cited a total of nearly 16’000 times. He is also a member of both the Swiss Nanoscience Institute and the NCCR “Nanoscale Science”. He is presently a member of several scientific associations including the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and the Academy of Europe. Ueli Aebi has been honored with the Gregor Mendel Medal from the Czech Academy of Science, the Arne Engström Award, the Carl Zeiss Lecture Award from the German Society for Cell Biology, as well as the Distinguished Scientist Award for Biology from the Microscopy Society of America. He also holds a Dr. honoris causa (h.c.) from Charles University in Prague.
Further information on the symposium: http://www.biozentrum.unibas.ch/symposium-aebi/program.html
Invitation from the sheik
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For Meret Hornstein und Tibor Gyalog science shows are by now routine. Several times a year, the two communication experts from the Swiss Nanoscience Institute at the University of Basel pack their boxes and head off to explain nanoscale science to kids and interested adults. For each event and for each specific audience they adjust their presentations and topics. However, they both have gained such experience that they are able to present their Nanorama ad-hoc.
In November 2011, this was all a bit different. Sheik Zayed, crown prince of Abu Dhabi had invited some selected experts for science communication to his country to present the fascination of science to the open public and especially to the Arabic youth. So Tibor Gyalog, Meret Hornstein and Florian Dettwiller, all from the SNI, this year invested a lot of time to revamp the exhibition, to present current research at the SNI and mainly to present a number of hands-on experiments for children. Posters were newly designed, a course with experiments was built up, kids passports were printed for awards and banners were drawn in Arabic. However, there was much more than the preparations in Basel. When the three arrived in Abu Dhabi they instructed Arabic students who translated all materials into Arabic and supported the SNI team during the exhibition.
Audience with the ambassador
After all these preparations, on 19th November the show started. At the first Abu Dhabi Science Festival Meret, Florian and Tibor presented their exhibition from Basel. The more than 1000 visitors were excited and could not get enough. They asked hundreds of questions and were keen to get everything explained in detail. Over a period of ten hours the team from Basel explained, demonstrated and instructed. Children as well as adults would have investigated even more if the day had been longer. Enthusiastic were also the Swiss journalist Michael Breu from the Basler Zeitung, who joined the SNI group and reported in two articles about the event, and the Swiss ambassador Wolfgang Amadeus Brülhart. He invited the team to an audience. “ The whole event was very exciting for us”, commented Meret Hornstein, who finalized her Master studies in Nanoscience two years ago at the University of Basel. “The United Arab Emirates are keen to become states of knowledge and invest a lot in scientific exchange.”
Long-standing experience
For Tibor Gyalog, who himself has a PhD in Physics and is now fully committed to science communication, this invitation to Abu Dhabi is a nice step into the right direction. His goal is to show the fascination of nanosciences to the wide public. Already in 2001 he started to get involved while creating within the project Nano-World together with colleagues an online learning program. Tibor participated in the first Science Festival in the Europa Park in 2001. In 2006 he designed the exhibition Nanorama and took part in the development of the Mobile exhibition “Size Matters”, that toured around big shopping centers in the eastern part of Switzerland. Together with Meret he set up an exhibition for the Daejeon Science Festival 2007 in South Korea that was presented by Meret and Florian. Tibor and Meret have taken an active role during the Swiss Tecdays for many years. Within this initiative that was founded by the Swiss Academy for Technical Sciences (SATW), high school students are invited about five times a year to focus on one specific topic from natural sciences. During these Tecdays, the module Nanomedicine offered by the SNI is very popular, especially among young women. In 2010, it was one of the most visited and best rated modules of the TecDays.
Target group is the key
“We have successfully organized various exhibitions and events”, Tibor describes the SNI activities. “It is essential for us to adapt our activities to the respective target groups and to visit places where people go anyway –department stores, promenades, adventure parks, and schools.” For the future he and Meret are dreaming about a “Science Center Basel”. Together with colleagues from the University they are brainstorming over various scenarios. But until this dream comes true they plan and improve the current mobile Nano exhibition. The sheik of Abu Dhabi has not yet invited them again, however, science festivals in Harvard and Peking have already inquired.
Journey to other worlds - a success story
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To join a researcher on a trip to different worlds - this was the reason for more than 400 interested visitors to come to visit the sold out Schauspielhaus in Basel on the 18th of November. A diverse audience between 10 and more than 80 years old used the unique opportunity to witness this first trip through other worlds from the cosmos to the nanoworld.
Most visitors judged the event very positively. They were fascinated by the spectacular pictures that Professor Friedrich-Karl Thielemann showed from the universe. For most guests, it was new information that almost everything that is needed to form life can be found in huge dust clouds in space. With the fact that even buckyballs can be detected in space, Professor John Paul Maier surprised even some experts among the visitors.
The trip that at first had catapulted the audience from Earth into space went back to our world after an informative break. After a closer look into the origin and development of life, Professor Anna Spang took the travellers into cells of higher organisms. She illustrated how membranes made the development of life on Earth possible and how these structures fulfill their different duties in our bodies. That nature can be used as a role model for scientists was demonstrated by Professor Wolfgang Meier, who talked about artificial membranes and nanocontainers. Professor Jörg Huwyler afterwards showed how these nanocontainers can be used in the future as transporters for drugs to specifically treat diverse diseases.
The variety of topics and the special appeal of the different dimensions from the unimaginably huge universe to the tiny nano objects inspired all visitors. The journey through different worlds, jointly organized by the Swiss Nanoscience Institute, the University of Basel and the University of Applied Sciences (FHNW), succeeded in making a connection between processes that happened billions of years ago to an outlook into the future.
In addition to the presentations, an info market took place in the foyer of the Schauspielhaus. Interested visitors could inform themselves about the Nano Curriculum at the University of Basel and about nanoscale sciences in general. Numerous nanostudents from Basel became the travel guides for this part of the journey and introduced the audience into the secrets of different aspects of nanosciences.
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