At the General Assembly of ECNP Members in Vienna next month, having had the honour of being the President of ECNP for three years, it will be time for me to step down. So this will be the last monthly
Message of the President from me, and our next President, Martien Kas, will take over.
It has been an honour and privilege to serve as president of the College, but the period of my presidency has also been a quite an atypical one. Only a few months after I took over, stories about a mysterious viral infection in the eastern parts of the world started to emerge and only a few of us, if any, could guess what a massive impact the pandemic would have on our daily lives and the extent to which it would leave its traces on how we meet and collaborate today.
Nevertheless, in spite of the difficult circumstances and with the help of excellent colleagues on the Executive Committee and in the ECNP Office, we have accomplished a lot over the last three years. The circumstances have also encouraged us to revisit our College’s strategic vision through the Innovation Task Force, which now has finalised its recommendations for actions to be taken. Addressing climate change is also the responsibility of a College like ours and a number of tangible carbon-footprint-reducing action points have come out of the Sustainability Task Force. We wish to modernise the way our Executive Committee works and is elected and also here a task force is underway with recommendations for changes to the ECNP statutes. Finally, we have taken the step of forming our own fully ECNP-owned journal,
Neuroscience Applied. The former ECNP logo (which to me always looked like a middle cerebral artery stroke) has been exchanged with one that better captures the new direction and spirit of change.
Our congress also underwent substantial changes in the same period. On a short notice, the ECNP Congress in 2020 went virtual and was hugely successful, with very few technical hiccups. ECNP was in 2021 also among the first European larger medical congresses to insist on a hybrid meeting. This risky decision turned out to be the right thing to do and the meeting in Lisbon in 2021 received high attendance rates, with many colleagues tremendously thankful that they could finally meet in person again. Our decision was later backed up by a
study on the risks of acquiring SARS-CoV-2 transmission, published just a few weeks ago. It is reassuring here to learn that in a large hybrid medical congress in Florida in February 2022, when transmission of the Omicron variant was most intense (i.e. incidence rates of >1%), there was no difference in infection rates between in-person and virtual attendees. ECNP believes that hybrid conferences will remain our new standard. We have seen how the improved technology has made hybrid scientific conferences excellent. And it comes with many benefits, enabling disabled and less affluent colleagues to join and cutting down on travel, resulting in a reduced carbon footprint and energy use. But physical congress attendance is still key for most human interactions and for those of you who prefer to be there in person, we now know that the risk of acquiring infections during a congress is limited, as long as appropriate measures are taken.
I hope to see many of you in Vienna at the upcoming
35th ECNP Congress. With its 230 speakers across 21 scientific symposia, seven Educational Update Sessions, two all-new Hot Topic sessions for late-breaking science, as well as the ECNP Inspired, ECNP’s Got Talent and Top Paper sessions, there should be plenty to choose from! The Campfire sessions have been enormously popular, which is why this year we have increased the number from 18 to 26. As a tribute to our early career colleagues, more emphasis is being put on the poster sessions too, and in Vienna we will have 192 poster jam presentations,
150 more than last year, as well as over thousand posters, with 900 presented onsite, printed by ECNP to make the life of our young colleagues easier. A Regulatory Spotlight Session on how to measure quality of life and a Patients’ Session on the patient’s experience with electroconvulsive therapy and esketamine are also ones to keep an eye out for.
To all those of you who read my 28 monthly messages over the last three years and to those of you who sent personal comments to me: thank you! It was always a pleasure for me to interact directly with the members of our community. I look forward to meeting you all in two weeks at the ECNP Congress, whether in Vienna or online!