Event | DRIG - Open Doors Day at the Life Sciences Lab
Key Facts
Tuesday, February 6, 2024 - 10:00
This year DRIG's Open Doors Day at the Dundee University Life Sciences Labs will start with a coffee, pastries and welcome. This will be followed by the morning information talks from five key Parkinson's research scientists (and their non-scientist DRIG partners - a new addition this year, aiming to help non-scientists' understanding of the scientific content), followed by lunch and a chance to chat to the research teams and sign up for your preferred lab tour. In the afternoon there will be tours around the MRC-PPU Labs, Cell Signalling and Immunology and the Centre for Targeted Protein Degredation.
Report on Event
Our event was fully booked within two days of advertising and on the day we had over 40 people join us at the Life Sciences Building. Using 'The Street' space in the entrance to the building as our base for the day was a great place to meet each other and socialise over coffee and lunch. The young scientists who joined us took great pride in explaining their work and seemed to enjoy meeting People with Parkinson's and learning about living with the condition they are working so hard to cure.
Having DRIG members introduce the scientists with some every day anologies and other explanations, which made the complexities of the research science being explained more accessible to the non scientists, seemed to give everyone more confidence in putting questions to the scientists and joining the discussions. So a big thank you to Paul Ford, for his beer and Parkinson's analogy about enzymes, to Mark Coxe with his PD phone network analogy about the PINK1 gene and Brendan Hawdon for his details on Andy's search for a needle in a haystak! We also have a huge thank you to make to all of the scientists who welcomed us into their world and in particular to our speakers, Prof Dario Alesssi, Dr Miratul Muqit, Dr Esther Sammler, Andy Howden and Will Farnaby. Andy also deserves a big cheer for his excellent organsiation of the practicalities, including all the delicious food. We also had a lot of help, and useful information leaflets from Anita Jeffires from Parkinson's UK Scotland. It was fantastic to meet so many new faces in among the People with Parkinson's and have them sign up to join our DRIG mailing list - so we hope to be seeing you all again soon!
Please also visit the University's site to read their report and see some great photos of you all!
https://www.ppu.mrc.ac.uk/news/open-day-connects-researchers-and-people-lived-experience-parkinsons
This link is to the STV news clip which covers the event, plus PUK's Scottish Report 'Scotland Can't Wait' and Brendan's drug trial participation - you can read more about that under News and also My Parkinson's:
https://news.stv.tv/v/dundee-scientists-confident-on-verge-of-slowing-parkinsons
