Sven Lange, a PhD student in the MRC PPU has won The FEBS Journal Poster Prize at "Pseudoenzymes 2018: from molecular mechanism to cell biology" which was held on the island of Sardinia from May 16-19 2018. Sven was also invited to present a short lecture at the meeting on his research on the IRAK3 pseudokinase. Sven's studentship is supported by Medical Research Scotland and Janssen Pharmaceuticals and his Supervisors are Philip Cohen and Yogesh Kulathu in the MRC PPU and Marina Nelen at Janssen. Sven said "The meeting was the first International Conference that I have attended. It was very interesting and informative and pointed out to me the importance and diversity of the emerging field of pseudoenzymes. The pizza and sun during the breaks were quite enjoyable too!"

Several of the MRC PPU's former students, who are now Principal Investigators running their own labs, also gave invited lectures at the conference. They included Professor Nick Tonks FRS (Cold Spring Harbor Labs, New York), who was a PhD student in Philip Cohen's lab from 1981-1984, Professor Pat Eyers (Department of Biochemistry, University of Liverpool, UK) who was a PhD student in Philip's lab from 1996-2000, Gopal Sapkota (now a Principal Investigator in the MRC PPU), who was a PhD student in Dario Alessi's lab from 1999-2002, and Elton Zeqiraj (Principal Investigator at the University of Leeds, UK), the organiser of the conference, who was a student in Dario's lab from 2005-2009.