Filippidi Research Group

The 2nd Biophysics Summer School in Rethymno on Pattern Formation and Developmental Processes is now in the books! From July 7th to 14th, 43 participants and 9 instructors from Europe and the USA joined forces to create an engaging (and fun) week of lectures, computational workshops, poster sessions, panels and activities. Many thanks to the Flatiron Institute for funding, and to Emma's co-organizers, Profs. Dimitris Vavylonis from Lehigh University and Eleni Katifori from UPenn, both of whom are Flatiron affiliates. And of course, many thanks to the wonderful participants and instructors who joined. Until next time! Press release at The University of Crete's Welcome Office page.

In April, after a successful proposal, Giannis and Emma travelled to ESRF to measure protein conformation in solution at BM29! Intense days, great conversations with the beamline scientists and lots of data to be analyzed.

Christmas came early for Giannis Sampson, who presented his Master's thesis work today (18.12.2024) on liquid-liquid phase separation of polyelectrolytes and proteins. Lots of hard work, great data acquired, so stay tuned for his manuscript! As the first student he also helped set the lab up, an invaluable experience for him, and a pricelesss helping hand to me.

Triantafyllos Siamanis presented his senior thesis work today (09.12.2024) as part of his studies in the Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering. He is currenttly exploring Erasmus+ opportunities abroad. Congratulations Triantafyllos!

Christina Chatzichrysou presented her senior thesis work today (25.10.2024) at the Biology Senior Theses Event and will be graduating next month and then heading to Sina Wittmann's lab in Mainz (IMP)! Congratulations Christina, and to all the Biology undergraduates.

ECIS 2024 was a wonderful conference! Emmanouela headed to Copenhagen (1-6 Sept. 2024) to present on "Mechanics of networks with two types of bonds: the effect of polymer crystallinity" at the "Self-Assembly: New structures, Dynamics and Supramolecular Hierarchical Assemblies" session, and chair a couple of "Polymers, Polyelectrolytes, Gels and Ionic Liquids" sessions! Exciting works presented throughout, old colleagues to share updates, and an opportunity to meet people whose names I had only seen on articles!

Giannis and Emmanouela visited the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG), in Dresden, where Emmanouela is a Partner Group Leader, for two productive months! July and August were full with protein expression, purification, labeling, phase diagram measurements, analysis, writing and kayaking down the Elbe. Thank you CBG for your hospitality!

Emmanouela, along with Reidar Lund (University Of Oslo, Norway) and Jason DeRouchey (University Of Kentucky, USA) comprise the Scientific Theme Committee for the session "Polymers, Polyelectrolytes, Gels And Ionic Liquids" of the 2024 ECIS 2024 (European Colloid and Interface Society) Conference in Copenhagen (September 1-6, 2024). Looking forward to putting together an interesting session!

Christina will be attending the 3-day hands-on oriented course offered by the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Czech Academy of Sciences (June 12-14, 2024) focused on high resolution and super-resolution methods in light fluorescence microscopy in preparation for our single molecule experiments!

The 2023 Biophysics Summer School in Rethymno (5-11 August, 2023) organized by Emmanouela Filippidi, Dimitris Vavylonis (Lehigh University) and Eleni Katifori (UPenn) was attended by 47 students, among which were our own Giannis Sampson, Nikos Koutsianas and Triantafyllos Siamanis.