Richard Hopkinson spent May and June at LINXS as a guest researcher with the Chemistry of Life theme. Having time to fully immerse himself in research, as well as meeting many new people proved very fruitful on both a professional and personal level. – There is often little time for research during term time, so being able to go away and focus on grant applications and papers was really great, says Richard Hopkinson. His own research is particularly focused on understanding the behavior of the cancer-causing toxic metabolite, formaldehyde – and he will now pursue this area further with researchers in Lund and Copenhagen. While he is glad that his stay garnered many positive outcomes on a professional level, Richard also reflects that it is important for both the Chemistry of Life theme and LINXS to pursue longer lasting and larger collaborations to really cement the relationship between LINXS and Leicester. They can ideally take the form of postdoctoral fellowship programmes like AMBER or joint PhD-programmes. – To have significant impact with our theme, we need to get younger researchers invested in our work through formal funding. I think this is absolute key! – In turn, these students will be able to spend time in many different institutions, where they get to learn new skills, while also producing preliminary data. This data can then be used to build larger grant programs, enabling us to build a truly collaborative environment, in spirit with both LINXS and the Institute for Structural and Chemical Biology. https://lnkd.in/dnaajkSx
