The conference had attendees from both local and remote EMBL partnerships including EMBL Rome, EMBL Australia, BRAINCITY, Hubrecht Institute, EMBL Heidelberg and also the four Nordic EMBL nodes (DANDRITE, MIMS, FIMM and NCMM). This year, more than 30 researchers from FIMM took part. This year’s conference took place at the unconventional and architecturally impressive Barcelona Biomedical Research Park PRBB building located adjacent to Hospital del Mar and by the promenade in Barcelona – a vibrant and energetic environment creating a great conference setting.
The purpose of the annual partnership conference was to support interaction and networking between researchers at all levels, to encourage knowledge-exchange, initiate scientific collaborations across organizations and research areas, but also to learn more within the topics of “translational neuroscience”, “host-pathogen interaction and immunity”, “model systems and disease modelling”, “genome organization” and “networks and computer modelling”.
The conference programme included keynote lectures, partnership updates, flash talks and poster presentations focusing on the field of molecular medicine. Edith Heard, the Director General of EMBL opened the conference following updates by the EMBL Partnership institutes. Poul Nissen, Director and speaker of the Nordic EMBL Partnership, along with the directors of each Nordic EMBL Partner, Oliver Billker (MIMS), Janna Saarela (NCMM) and Mark Daly (FIMM), gave an update of all four nodes.
Around 70 intriguing scientific posters were presented by researchers making room for plenty of scientific discussions, collaborative initiatives and interaction.
A huge thanks to the scientific organizers from the EMBL partnerships and the conference organizing-team from EMBL Heidelberg, Barcelona and the Centre for Genomic Regulation for arranging such an interesting and exciting programme. Also, a huge thank you to all of this year’s speakers and poster presenters for sharing their research. We are already looking forward to the next meeting in Umeå in 2020!