Even though a face-to-face meeting was not possible due to the pandemic, we are pleased that a virtual meeting with fruitful discussions also offered a great opportunity for the doctoral students from the ADI (Alberta Diabetes Institute) and the HRD (International Helmholtz Research School for Diabetes) and their group leaders to meet and to exchange research ideas.
The opening and introduction to the exciting program was given by Prof. Carolin Daniel, spokesperson of the HRD. Prof. Carolin Daniel gave an interesting overview of the importance of diabetes research, HRD updates of the passed year and introduced the new doctoral students who started with us in fall. Dr. Vince Rogers from the Alberta Diabetes Institute opened the second day with an interesting presentation on the latest developments at the ADI. Many thanks to Theodore dos Santos, Janyne Johnson and Hellen Da Silva from ADI, who guided us through the program and introduced the different speakers on both days. Altogether, 6 graduate students from the ADI and 14 graduate students from the HRD gave presentations covering their research project progress, and those who recently started gave an overview on their exciting future plans. Thanks to more than 70 participants their fantastic talks were followed by interesting discussions.
At the end of the symposium Dr. Peter Senior, who has recently taken over as the director of the Alberta Diabetes Institute, gave us a positive outlook for the future and brought the Joint symposium 2021 to a close. After Dr. Senior's concluding words, the break-out sessions were used to exchange ideas for possible cooperations or existing projects.
We are already excited to organize our meeting in 2022 and are very hopeful that we will be able to welcome our partners from ADI in person in Munich!