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Report 9th EPIZONE annual meeting
The ninth EPIZONE annual meeting was organised together with the Xth international conference of the European Society of Veterinary Virology (ESVV). Under the slogan ‘Changing Viruses in a Changing World’ ESVV started first on the 31st of August and on Wednesday September 2nd EPIZONE officially joined in.
Since the majority of EPIZONE scientists work on viruses, a lot of our researchers were present on August 31st already for a welcome drink. Thereby showing their appreciation to join with ESVV for a meeting in the same venue: The convenient conference centre ‘Le Corum’ in the beautiful city of Montpellier.
Well-organised joint meeting
EPIZONE together with ESVV was able to invite 9 keynote speakers who did excellent presentations which were very well attended. In total we had around 400 delegates, taking care of 102 oral presentations and more than 250 poster presentations. Special on this meeting were the ‘Animal health in the Caribbean’ sessions and also this year some other related projects took the opportunity to meet aside the EPIZONE annual meeting.
ESVV and EPIZONE members mixed easily in a very friendly atmosphere. The meeting was very well-organised and proceeded smoothly thanks to our hosting partner CIRAD. Young EPIZONE had their meeting on the day of September 2nd(see their report on the website under Young EPIZONE), which was attended by 30 to 50 young scientists, of whom the majority also joined for a dinner on the same day.
Additional social events included a city tour on Wednesday and a Gala dinner. Helped by the sunny weather the city tour-walk was a pleasant happening and also a very interesting one because the hired guides did a fantastic job to explain a lot about the buildings and the history of Montpellier. The Gala dinner in the evening of September 2nd was a lively event with nice music and buffets with a lot of nice small dishes, snacks, deserts and of course drinks. Delegates moved around a lot and especially our younger colleagues danced until late in the night.
Coordinating Forum meeting
- The EPIZONE Coordinating Forum renewed the three year term of Wim van der Poel as the EPIZONE ERG coordinator.
- In the same meeting it was decided to organise a workshop on ‘Next Generation Sequencing’ (more detailed information to follow soon).
- The possibility to organise a workshop on ‘Requirements and new EU regulation for animal experiments’ will be explored. Keep an eye on the EPIZONE website for more information!
- EPIZONE partners agreed to work together to produce proposals for the next EU Horizon 2020 call.
We look back on a very good and joyful 9th EPIZONE annual meeting, together with ESVV. We look forward to meeting each other again next year in September in Madrid for our 10th EPIZONE annual meeting.
Wim van der Poel, coordinator EPIZONE