10-Nov-2023
Instruct-ERIC has held 16 internship calls since 2013, providing a platform for early career researchers to get hands on training and experience in new laboratories, working with new technologies and colleagues. This includes remote internships during the COVID-19 pandemic.
These three-six month internships have been invaluable for many researchers, who opened up their skillset in integrated structural biology. It has also been a fantastic way for the home and host laboratories to interact, engage, and exchange experience and expertise.
In 2023, Instruct has awarded 13 internships to researchers from across Europe. The next Internship call will open in January 2024.
The full list of internship awardees in 2023 is below.
Nika Žibrat, Slovenia - Internship at Instruct Centre-EMBL
Tsouri Angeliki, Greece - Internship at Instruct Centre-NL
Hannula Liina, Finland - Internship at Instruct Centre-UK
Liedtke Janine, Netherlands - Internship at Instruct Centre-CZ
Costanzo Antonella, Italy - Internship at Instruct Centre-ES
Borja Sáez, Spain - Internship at Instruct Centre-FR2
Sharda Bharti, Italy - Internship at Instruct Centre-EMBL
Marialaura Giannaccari, Italy - Internship at Instruct Centre-FR1
Lucía Sánchez-Alba, Spain - Internship at Instruct Centre-FR1
Daniel Muñoz-Reyes, Spain - Internship at Instruct Centre-UK
Stephanie Spada, UK - Internship at Instruct Centre-EMBL
Matteo Amadei, Italy - Internship at Instruct Centre-UK
Marta Cozzaglio, Italy - Internship at Instruct Centre-CZ
Find more information on our internship programme here: the full list of internship awardees, testimonials from previous interns, as well as submission guidelines for future applicants.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Instruct-ERIC offered remote internship opportunities. These involved the researcher accessing equipment in a host laboratory remotely, and operating as a member of the team from their home - In the same way many labs operated at that time.
This ensured that interns could still gain experience working with new teams and technology, even if they could not travel to the site itself.
One remote internship was awarded to Katharina Weinhäupl. Katharina was based at University of Porto, Portugal, and worked with the teams at the EMBL Heidelberg Imaging Centre, and at EMBL Hamburg. Katharina aimed to screen and collect structural data on a complex constituted of the bacterial membrane based enzyme diadenylate cyclase CdaA with 2 regulatory proteins, CdaR and GlmM.
Katharina said of the internship: "The interaction with both teams from Heidelberg and Hamburg was excellent. Although everything was organised remotely, they provided very helpful suggestions on how to get the best out of each technique and which experiments would be best for my type of samples. I could even write to them if I had doubts during sample preparation and I would get answers very quickly. It was even possible to watch the cry-EM data collection process live and learn what are the important clues to assess sample quality.”
The University of Porto (Left), EMBL Heidelberg Imaging Centre (Middle), and EMBL Hamburg (Right).
The internship project involved sample preparation at the host laboratory, remote discussion with the team at EMBL Heidelberg to select the most interesting samples, then sending the prepared cryo-EM grids for analysis. Samples were also sent to EMBL Hamburg to assess their stability in different detergents. As a result of the long-term remote collaboration, Katharina produced a cryo-EM model of the complex (demonstrating its feasibility), and established several sample optimisations for future cryo-EM work.
“Currently I am still using the same conditions optimised during this Instruct internship and it led to greatly improved sample quality for my cryo-EM experiments.”
