The fifth annual meeting in BrainDrugs was held May 30 at Charlottehaven with participation by more than 40 BrainDrugs-affiliated researchers and one representative from the Lundbeck Foundation.
The program for the 1-day meeting contained 13 scientific presentations and ample time for questions and good scientific discussions.
On June 8-9, 2023, the fourth annual meeting in BrainDrugs was held. The venue for the meeting was again Comwell Borupgaard in Snekkersten, and this time around 35 BrainDrugs-affiliated researchers and one representative from the Lundbeck Foundation participated.
The 1½ day meeting program consisted of a total of 17 scientific presentations followed by questions and good scientific discussions. Most of the participants joined the meeting dinner Thursday night and stayed overnight at the venue which enabled some social gathering.
Dear all
We hope that all of you have got a good start on 2023.
It is time for a brief newsletter to keep you updated on the status of the entire BrainDrugs project.
We are happy to share with you that right before Christmas the Lundbeck Foundation approved a request from us to extend the overall project grant period with additional 2½ years, which means that the BrainDrugs grant now runs until Dec 31, 2026. This is very positive since it gives us more time for data collection in our two prospective WP4 cohort studies on Depression and Epilepsy, which were the components that experienced the largest delay due to the pandemic.
From WP1, you can read a short popular summary of Eva’s study where she investigates the association between epilepsy and depression: https://lnkd.in/emHuMAhH.
Staff news:
On July 1st, Anders Søgaard employed Wenyan Li from University of Maryland, College Park, as a PhD student on WP2. Desmond Elliott will be Wenyan’s supervisor. Welcome to both Wenyan and Desmond. You can find a list of all the salaried BrainDrugs employees on https://braindrugs.nru.dk/index.php/early-career-forum.
With regard to the two prospective WP4 cohort studies, we are blessed with having some very clever students who help with patient recruitment, planning, psychological testing and EEG- and MRI acquisitions. Every semester, we have about 5-10 new students starting at NRU.
Early Career Forum (ECF):
The ECF meetings which are spearheaded by Anjali Sankar are held every third Thursday at 14.00-15.00. People salaried by BrainDrugs are expected to participate but everyone is welcome to join. The next meeting is February 2nd. Permanent Zoom-link for the ECF-meetings:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83009616732?pwd=eEFjOC9zN2ZJQmswaldpa1g4R0V5QT09
Publications:
Please update the list if you have BrainDrugs-related papers that are missing or the status on those already in the list is no longer correct. Also, please remember that when you submit your BrainDrugs-related manuscripts you must not forget to acknowledge the Lundbeck Foundation.
A few useful examples are given below:
- The authors thank the Lundbeck Foundation for generous support (BrainDrugs grant: R279-2018-1145).
- This study is supported by the Lundbeck Foundation (BrainDrugs grant: R279-2018-1145).
- Xxx is funded by the Lundbeck Foundation (BrainDrugs grant: R279-2018-1145).
We are looking forward to seeing all of you at the BrainDrugs Annual Meeting which will be held on June 8-9, 2023, at Comwell Borupgaard.
Best regards,
Gitte M Knudsen & Peter S Jensen
On June 9-10, 2022, around 45 BrainDrugs-affiliated researchers and two representatives from the Lundbeck Foundation gathered at Comwell Borupgaard for the third annual meeting in the research alliance. Another 10 researchers attended the hybrid meeting online.
The 1½ day meeting program consisted of a total of 18 scientific presentations and two parellel break-out sessions, with one focused on depression and the other one on epilepsy. Hence, time for a lot of good scientific discussions were prioritized. Another priority was time for social gathering and therefore mosts participants joined the meeting dinner Thursday night and stayed overnight at the venue.
Dear all
Time for another newsletter and also a good opportunity to thank all of you who either made your way to the annual meeting a month ago to Snekkersten, and to those of you who attended online. To many of us, this was the first physical conference in 15 months and the weather was wonderful and spirits high. As usual, the breaks gave good opportunity for informal scientific discussions. It was great to see so many of you present novel data and publications are on the rise. A special thanks goes to Vibeke Dam for organizing games and quizzes for the ECF members, who got to know each other much better.
Summer holidays are now coming up – we wish you wonderful and well-deserved holidays.
On June 3rd, 2021, at Comwell Borupgaard, we gathered around 40 researchers from BrainDrugs as well as three representatives from the Lundbeck Foundation for the BrainDrugs annual meeting 2021. The meeting was hosted as a hybrid meeting with another 15-20 researchers attending online. For many of the participants this meeting was the first larger physical meeting in a long time because of the covid-19 lockdown period so it was fantastic to be able to gather so many.
The meeting program consisted of a series of inspiring scientific presentations, but already on the night before the scientific program, the BrainDrugs Early-Career Forum met at the venue for a dinner and some social gathering where NRU post doc Vibeke Dam had arranged some fun group-based competitions. This was indeed a nice oppurtunity for many of them to meet face-to-face for the first time.
Dear all
I hope you all are doing fine in spite of the ongoing pandemic and that you still have the chance to do good science. From now on, we will send you some more regular updates on the progress of the BrainDrugs project which hopefully will help you get filled in on the status of the different WP’s. One important component of the future BrainDrugs Newsletter is that all WP-leaders will be asked to provide a few lines about the progress of their WP, in the hope that the more you know about the other WP’s the more synergy between WP’s will be established.
Overall, we are almost done with recruitment of scientific staff for the individual WP’s. In WP3 and WP5, we have recently recruited neuroimaging analysis staff at postdoc and junior faculty level from abroad which means that they are not yet physically in Denmark. You can find a list of the BrainDrugs employees on https://braindrugs.nru.dk/index.php/early-career-forum.
Since our meeting with the Lundbeck Foundation in October, one important structural achievement is that the Early Career Forum (ECF) has been established with postdoc Vibeke Dam (NRU, WP4) as chair. Vibeke has done a great job in starting this series of meetings. Until now the participants in these online meetings have mainly been postdocs, PhD-students or research assistants funded directly by BrainDrugs so that they could familiarize themselves with BrainDrugs components and each other. These meetings are open to all BrainDrugs interested. We look forward to being able to meet you online!
The ECF meetings are held every third Thursday at 14.00-15.00 and the next meeting is Thursday Jan 28th, 2021 @ 2-3PM. Information about the speaker and topic of each meeting will be sent out before along with zoom links to the meeting.
Remember that you always can find updates, incl these newsletters, posted on https://braindrugs.nru.dk/.
If there are anyone missing on the mailing list, please let us know by sending a mail to BrainDrugs Center Manager Peter Jensen,
Best regards,
Gitte M Knudsen