The summer is here !, but we have still been busy with MINDDS through the last few months, building on our progress at the end of last year.
To recap, we have now grown to 25 European countries, and Albania and Estonia have applied to join. We also brought South Africa on board with Prof Kirsty Donald in Cape Town joining as an international partner. This is giving us a very good geographical spread, and hopefully delivers a big boost for potential patient recruitment in future, as well as great opportunities for research collaborations.
Can I remind you that we are in a position to support Short Term Scientific Missions (STSMs) for ECI to visit for up to 3 months with a group in another member country (mindds.eu/activities/stsm/) and some ITC conference grants to support ECIs from Inclusiveness target countries (ITC) to present their work at an international research conference. (mindds.eu/activities/conference-grants)
Further information on STSM can be obtained on the website or from Silvana Simoska (silvana@manu.edu.mk), our STSM coordinator
A date for your diary is MINDDS 2 – to be held 4th-7th February 2019 in Leuven. I think we all felt that our Belgrade workshop (MINDDS 1) was a great success, but could have been better. This period, we plan to build on Belgrade with a bigger meeting to bring everyone together. Further details will follow.
Shlomo Wagner and Francesco Papaleo (WG5) are organizing a hands-on training school CONVERGENCE NEUROSCIENCE – Bridging the gap between human patients and animal models of neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) from 8th-12th October in Genova, Italy. This will provide hands-on training for phenotyping cognitive and social function in animal models and their human translational value in the context of convergence neuroscience for NDD (mindds.eu/activities/training-schools/genova).
A second Training School on Clinical Phenotyping is being planned for 3rd- 5th December at the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Skopje, Macedonia, local organiser will be Silvana Simoska (silvana@manu.edu.mk). The objective is to promote good practise and standardisation for NDD phenoptying.
If you have any ideas for Training Schools for the next grant period 2019-20, please contact Srdjan Djurovic (srdjan.djurovic@medisin.uio.no)
Finally, we congratulation Jerome Weinbach (WG5 Leader) and Mathurin Baquie (WG3) on their recent new jobs and we wish them the very best for the future. Their new appointments mean that they will no longer have time to continue in the MINDDS network, and we are looking for new members to replace them, particularly with expertise with data science, health informatics and databases and cellomics for cell phenotyping. If you know of potential new MC members in these areas, please can you highlight them to us.
If you have any news, or would like to contribuite to the next newsletter, Please contact Sara Medved (saramedv@gmail.com), our communication coordinator. Also don’t forget our Facebook (facebook.com/MinddsAction) and Twitter (twitter.com/MinddsAction).
We hope that you are having a good summer. We look forward to working with you through the rest of 2018 and hope to see you at some of the activities coming up, in particular at MINDDS 2 in early 2019
Prof Adrian J Harwood (Action Chair) – harwoodaj@cf.ac.uk
Dr Marina Mihaljevic Vice Action Chair) – mihaljevicm@yahoo.com
