51³Ô¹ÏÍø

51³Ô¹ÏÍø neuroscientists host an open day

The idea for Meet the Scientist came into my mind when I was telling my friends about growing neurons in the lab. Although they were well educated, it was a complete shock to them that this was routinely done in neuroscience labs. Their surprise made me realise that the public don’t know how we conduct our research. More profoundly, the people we work for, who suffer from neurodegenerative conditions we research, and charities which sponsor much of our work don’t know about our lab work.

Sharing this thought with my friends and colleagues in the Department, we decided to create an event to host 80 people (the most that we could) with multiple sclerosis, motor neurone disease, Parkinson’s disease or Alzheimer’s disease and their relatives in our labs for an open day. We showed them the tissue and brain bank, cell culture, cryostats, microscopy and immunostaining and explained the reasons why we carry out our experiments. The tour was accompanied by short presentation sessions with our Principal Investigators and patients who wanted to share their thoughts and experiences dealing with the neurodegenerative condition that they have.

The extra value we got from this event was not only showing our labs and findings, but also relating to the people who care about these. Bench work, pipettes and writing papers hardly relate to why we do research. Getting to know the people you make a difference for links us immediately to the reasons we are here almost every morning. After the lab tour and presentations, tea/lunch with our enthusiastic guests was simply fantastic. Their amazement and deep interest to meet us have touched me.

The event took place on 18 September in the Burlington Danes building. It was organised by Michael Motskin, Praveen Paul, Amy Birch, Ian Harrison, Miriam Mattoscio and Renée Schalks and involved six Groups with our Principal Investigators: David Dexter, Magdalena Sastre, Paolo Muraro, Richard Reynolds, Jacqueline de Belleroche and Nicholas Mazarakis, with help from Jane Saffell and Steve Gentleman. Professor Paul Matthews helped us to materialise our ambitious plan and we thank him for this opportunity.

Now we plan to have this wonderful event on a regular basis and we hope it will grow every year throughout the Division of Brain Sciences.

By Dr Michael Motskin 

Some comments received from our guests following the event:

Judith Potts - The Telegraph (AD tour):

“I left 51³Ô¹ÏÍø's Centre for Neuroscience and headed home, wondering how long it would be before Professor Gentleman's bleeper announced another brain was on its way. The day had been fascinating and my respect and regard for research scientists – and their dedication to finding the causes of Alzheimer's and then to developing a drug to halt the disease – knows no bounds.”

Grace (PD tour):

“When I first asked my husband to attend the open day with me he didn't seem too keen but came along for my sake. During the afternoon he couldn't stop commending the researchers and the icing on the cake was when we were shown the human brain cut into slices showing the different parts of the brain. He was very keen to know what was going on.
Thank you all for this afternoon, everyone was friendly and helpful and the information given to us from various people was clear and informative. We would like to come again”

Una (MS tour):

“ I can't tell you how inspiring I found it and how easily the information was absorbed-which is a testament really of how well it was delivered. It really was a privilege to be there. I'm going to attempt to get some of this across in a write up for the MS research network. Good luck with your cell cultures”