EngBio Early Career Researchers

What advice would you offer to a postdoc new to Cambridge?

Find a community as soon as you can! This is difficult at first, but it is important to be able to do something besides work, and to aim for a degree of balance. In Cambridge, the cultural and social life is quite rich [and] professional networks such as EngBio IRC [...] are great for networking."Dr Indra Roux and Dr Irina Gostimskaya

Why Join the EngBio Early Career Researchers?

The Engineering Biology Early Career Researchers (EngBio ECRs) are a group of postdocs, postgraduate students and technical staff working in the fields of engineering biology, synthetic biology and biotechnology. While Cambridge has a large community of researchers working in these areas, ECRs often find that knowledge and skills are siloed within campuses, departments or research group. The EngBio ECRs aim to bridge these gaps, by offering talks outside of peoples’ disciplines and promoting exchange. In 2024 our meetings were attended by ECRs from 22 different departments, so it's a great place to meet new people!

Join Us

Meetings

Our meetings take place on the third Monday of every other month at the Postdoc Centre, Mill Road. We usually host 1-2 short talks, followed by informal discussion and time to meet and chat with ECRs from across the University. Lunch and drinks are provided.

We have had attendees from engineering (mathematics, software and instrument development, AI, manufacturing, etc) and biology (biochemistry, biomedicine, plant sciences, etc), but also people from the social sciences (policy, entrepreneurship). We make sure to advise speakers that not everyone has a biology background, so the talks are engaging to a broad audience.


On Monday 15 June we are welcoming 2 talks:

Improving the fitness of recoded bacteria for applications in the gut

Dhriti Rao, MRC LMB

and

Second Brain Decoding through Conformal Bioelectronics

Alvaro Castano-Medina, Dept. of Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology

Sign up here for 15 June Meet Up

 

Register for upcoming events

We are always looking for new speakers who are excited to share their work with us, so if you'd like to present at a future meeting please get in touch at coordinator@engbio.cam.ac.uk.

Photo of a group of people sat watching a young man give a presentation

EngBio ECR Meeting June 2024

The EngBio ECR Committee

The EngBio Early Career Researcher meetings are run by the EngBio ECR Committee, who work hard to grow our community. We aim to support early career researchers, including postdocs, postgraduate students and technical staff, working on engineering biology at Cambridge. We connect researchers across schools and institutes, to create opportunities for networking, collaboration and career advancement. We promote activities tailored towards early career researchers researchers including workshops and seminars.

Our aims are to:

  • Interconnect the EngBio postdoctoral and early career community across Cambridge 
  • Provide support to ECRs for career advancement and development in the form of workshops, panels, mock interviews, etc. 
  • Provide networking opportunities and spark collaborations
  • Organise seminars, meetings, and conferences to showcase the breadth of EngBio research in cambridge and provide ECRs with opportunities to present their work

If you are interested in joining the committee and helping to organise events please get in touch at coordinator@engbio.cam.ac.uk.

EngBio ECR Committee Members