Archive by category: News and Updates

Did you know that we have a Facebook page? ‘Like’ us on Facebook to get the latest updates about the MPSDC on your favorite social networking website. We will also be posting photos and other fun things so stay tuned!

In July of this year, we announced a Consortium logo design contest. The contest was open to all post docs, graduate students, lab technicians, and lab personnel associated with the Consortium, who were asked to submit a stylized design that informs and captures the spirit of the Consortium. These logos were reviewed by the Executive Committee of the MPSDC, who judged the logos based on creativity, originality, aesthetics, use of space, and color. The prize for the winning logo designer was an Apple iPad with Wi-Fi and 32GB Memory. To our delight, we received over a dozen entries from a number of affiliate laboratories. Some of the entries that were submitted can be viewed here.

Upon much deliberation, we decided upon two finalist submissions: one of the logos submitted by David Medovoy from the Perozo and Roux labs, and the logo submitted jointly by Amelia Randich from the Perozo lab and Ernesto Vargas from the Roux lab. We asked the designers to revise their logos in accordance to some of our criteria, and this is what they came up with:

By David Medovoy

By Amelia Randich and Ernesto Vargas

In the end, we decided to select David Medovoy’s logo as the winner, which is now on display on the top left of the website. David goes home with the coveted prize, but we gave Amelia and Ernesto an iPod shuffle for their efforts as well.

We would like to thank all participants for their creativity and hard work!

We are delighted to announce the launch of the newly redesigned Membrane Protein Structural Dynamics Consortium (MPSDC) website. This new website is intended to be a gateway to the Consortium’s research and publications as before, but also a means for us to reach out to and engage with the scientific community and the public at large. We have also made a number of tweaks that we hope will improve the user’s browsing experience.

We invite you to take a look at the following new or refurbished sections and pages:

• The new Homepage, which presents all of the latest updates from the MPSDC and is intended to be a guide to the website at large.
• A Mission Statement, providing a succinct and current overview of the Consortium’s goals and ambitions.
• A page dedicated to our new initiative aimed at maximizing the reach and investment of the MPSDC through direct or indirect interactions with the scientific community at large: Associate Members. To find out more about associate members and a current list of AMs, please visit this page.
• The Community section is entirely new, and much of the effort in giving our research a broader purview and significance can be found here. We provide external links to related scientific initiatives, and access to various educational resources that we’ve created. Importantly, we offer Consortium affiliates the opportunity and forum to reflect on their research, as well as the field at large. Finally, we’ve created a subsection that will allow Consortium affiliates to write their own guide to the field, under the heading Ideas and Concepts. There is much more to come within this section so stay tuned.

In addition, we have incorporated a new logo for the Consortium, which was designed by David Medovoy from the Roux and Perozo labs. David’s logo was selected as the winner of the Logo design content, and has graciously tweaked his original design to fit the theme of the website. Congratulations, David!

We’ve made many other changes and additions throughout, and there is still more to come. Overall, we hope that these changes will provide an enhanced perspective of the Consortium’s collaborative activities and augment our communications with the scientific community. We would love to hear from you and welcome any suggestions, corrections, comments, or compliments. Let us know what you think by sending us an e-mail or in the comments section below!

Because the MPSD C website is our primary means of communicating with the biophysical community at large, we are currently planning significant improvements to our website in terms of content, organization, and overall aesthetics. As part of this broader redesign initiative, last year we announced a contest to design our official logo for use on the website and in official publications. The contest was open to all post docs, graduate students, lab technicians, and lab personnel associated with the Consortium, who were asked to submit a stylized design that informs and captures the spirit of the Consortium. These logos were reviewed by the Executive Committee of the MPSDC, who judged the logos based on creativity, originality, aesthetics, use of space, and color. The prize for the winning logo designer will be an Apple iPad with Wi-Fi and 32GB Memory.

We are pleased to announce that we have made our decision, which will be made public shortly. We would like to thank all of the Consortium affiliates who participated in the contest for their time and creativity. What follows after the jump are several of the submissions that we received.

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