In January 2023 we finally could meet for our first face-to-face General Assembly Meeting within our CANDY project. This special occasion deservs also a special location: Paris.
After 3 years of online and virtual meetings, we were very happy that so many consortium members took the way to meet for 3 days. We had a very nice and cozy meeting venue in the 1st Arrondissement, near Les Halles and could welcome almost 50 CANDY members. Especially the Early Career Researcher (ECR) were strongly represented, which we highly appreciated. After the CANDY Master Class, a meeting especially organized for training of ECRs, on Wednesday, 11th January afternoon, we had a nice dinner at the Hotel “Novotel Paris Les Halles” to welcome everyone, who has already arrived.
On Thursday, 12th January, we officially kicked-off our 4th CANDY GA Meeting with a warm welcome of our Coordinator, Jan Buitelaar. He also gave an introductory presentation about the overall status of the CANDY project: where do we stand, what challenges were faced over the last year and what is upcoming for the next two years.
Subsequent the Work packages gave their progress reports – in which some ECRs could present their results and data. The Ethics Advisory Board and Clinical Breakout Session had to be scheduled as well for the first day, as some participants were only able to join this day. But with coffee and macarons we managed well to complete the day with the highly interesting Keynote lecture by Prof. Nael Nadif Kasri (Radboudumc) with the title “Leveraging spontaneous activity in human stem cell derived neurons to model neurodevelopmental disorders”.
After such an interesting but also long meeting day we enjoyed a wonderful traditional French 3-course menu at the “Au Pied de Cochon”.
The second day started with the pre-clincial breakout session and an update on the work packages for Dissemination, Ethics and Project Management. The Scientific Advisory Board as well as the Exploitation and Innovation Management Board had closed discussion and presented their overview and recommendation to the consortium afterwards. Overall, the Advisory Boards were happy with the progress, however emphasized also some recommendations for the last years with the CANDY project. After Jan had thanked everyone for joining and the productive meeting, we closed the first face-to-face CANDY General Assembly Meeting.
Thanks again to everyone, who contributed to make the first F2F meeting so successful. Especially for our Advisors, who took all the way to Paris and of course our ECRs. Until next year 🥳
As part of the “Horizon 2020” programme, the European Commission is funding the five-year CANDY research project with a total of six million Euro under grant agreement No. 847818.