ELSO MeetingsELSO 2002

ELSO 2002

The ELSO 2002 meeting took place in NICE, France from June 29th to July 3rd, 2002 at the Acropolis Conference Center.

The ELSO 2002 meeting was a great success. There were about 2000 attendees, mostly young and eager scientists. Despite the nearby beaches, all the lecture rooms were filled throughout the meeting. The plenary symposia attracted the whole meeting and were of outstanding quality. The minisymposia in the afternoon were so packed that the participants complained that the lecture rooms were too small!

The poster sessions were also packed and were of the highest standard. There was a continuous dialogue around the posters with lively discussions between junior and senior investigators, exactly as the organizers had hoped for. As at ELSO 2000 in Geneva, the Cinema of the Cell attracted the whole congress. Some of the Bioclips were of stunning quality. Even the sessions on Career Development were drawing large crowds and raised a lot of discussion on the problems of being a young scientist in Europe. The Career Development Award was awarded to MARIA BLASCO of the Spanish National Centre of Biotechnology in Madrid.

This year there was also a dancing party with great music. All in all ELSO 2002 was a smashing hit. Judging from the e-mails and the comments ELSO has now established itself as an organizer of meetings that catch the excitement of contemporary molecular life sciences.

The next ELSO meeting will be in Dresden, Germany September 20-24, 2003. So now, all of you work hard in your labs so that you are ready with great results to be presented at ELSO 2003. This meeting will be organized together with GMB. Special emphasis will be given to making the industrial exhibition a success. The industry that supplies us with consumables and infrastructure needs our support and we need their support to help to finance the meetings.