SAFE RESEARCH - GOOD RESEARCH

The Swiss Microbial Safety (SMS) group is an interdisciplinary platform whose goal is, at the national and international level, the exchange of scientific information on biological safety and the promotion of high standard biosafety practices. Its target public is the the research community, with an emphasis on young researchers in biology.

On January 14th and 15th 2013, the 3rd SMS meeting will be organized jointly by various scientific (EPFL, IVI), medical (CHUV) or public (EFBS, KL-BS) institutions. It will take place on the EPFL campus in the auditorium SV1717 (Building SV, School of biological sciences) and will be dedicated to risk assessment of infectious organisms and their containment, under the motto "Safe research, good research".

This two-days event is structured around four core themes that will each features several high profile speakers:

Symposium format:

Featured talks by invited speakers / breakout session / poster session / Life science Fair (industry exhibit).

Registration (mandatory) is open until December 1st 2012.

	confirmed speakers Bagutti Claudia Kantonales Laboratorium, Basel-Stadt (KL-BS) Bürki Kurt University of Zürich (UniZH) Coffin John Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research Dobbelaere Dirk University of Bern Ferrand Gisèle Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) Gert Zimmer Institute of Virology and Immunoprophylaxis (IVI) Glogger Beat scitec-media Invernizzi Cédric Spiez Laboratory Karlen Stéphane Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne EPFL) Kostic Corinne Jules-Gonin Eye Hospital (UniL) Meylan Pascal Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV) Schaffner Urs CABI, Delemont Summermatter Kathrin Institute of Virology and Immunoprophylaxis (IVI) Wackernagel Wilfried Carl von Ossietzky University, Oldenburg           (alphabetic list, as of November , 2012)

Poster session

Participants, especially young researchers, are stongly encouraged to present a poster of their current work in which the safety issues underlying the project are evaluated and discussed.

CUSO breakout session

The CUSO (Commission Universitaire de Suisse Occidentale) organizes a special breakout session on the theme of « Biological risk evaluation of research projects ». The goal of this interactive session is to sensitize the awareness of CUSO students for biological risks they may encounter during their research activity in microbiology. This will be achieved in an exercise in which students will prepare and present a microbiology research project under the aspect of biological risk assessment and biosafety classification in front of international and national experts in biosafety. A prize will be awarded to the best presentations. More information on http://biologie.cuso.ch/microbiologie/welcome/