Conference reports
School of Life Sciences Newsletter
9th European Zebrafish Meeting, Oslo Norway, June –
July, 2015.
I would like to thank the School of Life Sciences for
providing me the opportunity to present my research at
the 9th European Zebrafish Meeting in Oslo Norway
from June 28 – July 2, 2015.
The conference was attended by two thousand people
from all over the world who are at the forefront of
zebrafish research. The program included four keynote
presentations by Professors Ewan Birney, Rainer
Friedrich, Leonard Zon and Laia Ribas that were
particularly stimulating. In addition, twenty plenary
talks, 78 short oral presentations and hundreds of
posters provided ample opportunity to choose relevant
subject areas. Workshops and strategic discussions
were also on offer, overall covering recent scientific
breakthroughs in functional genomics, developmental
biology, biomedicine including disease models,
toxicology and drug development. Moreover, the 9th
EZM draw attention to zebrafish and medaka as
models for aquaculture related research.
Particularly memorable were the keynotes ‘Finding Therapeutics Using The Zebrafish’ presented by Prof.
Leonard Zon from Boston Children's Hospital (US), and the plenary talk ‘Decoding the Molecular Cues That
Regulate HSC Specification’ by Prof. David Traver from University of California at San Diego (US), which
presentations discussed similar mechanisms of recruitment and signalling pathways directly relevant to my
project, providing insights into research areas in my field and valuable experience for me to present my
own work. Best of all was that I had the opportunity to discuss my research about ‘Redundant function of
Def6a and Swap70b regulating cell movements during epiboly independent from non-canonical Wnt
signalling’ with internationally renowned researches and I received valuable advice that will help in my
future studies.
The conference venue offered great social events too including the welcome reception, an invitation to the
Oslo City Hall by the Mayor, and a dinner in the Oslo’s Opera House. I particularly enjoyed my evening
walks around the harbour after long hours of talks.
Overall, it was a conference that combined high level of science in a condensed manner, and yet provided
an enormously comfortable and relaxing environment to indulge.
Chen Chen
3rd Year PhD Student
Supervised by Fred Sablitzky