ELSO MeetingsELSO 2004

Sun, sea and science:
ELSO's annual congress 2004

Carol Featherstone

The beautiful and exotic city of Nice on the French Côte d’Azur played host for a second time last month (3–7 September) to the European Life Scientist Organization (ELSO)’s annual congress. The location is a great attraction to researchers from all over Europe looking to prolong their summer with some sunny days beside the sea. But it’s not just the location that attracts, as the large audiences for the plenary sessions and the crowded poster halls showed. What scientists like to do best is talk science.

ELSO 2004 in Nice brought together around 1500 scientists, 250 speakers, 650 poster presentations and over 40 commercial exhibitors in the city’s vast and comfortable Acropolis conference centre, just a stone’s throw from the old town restaurants and the beaches. The annual congress is developing a reputation for the quality of the science it showcases, with its programme packed with lectures by world-leading biologists not only from Europe but also from around the world.

Indeed, this year’s meeting was a joint affair with the 8th World Congress of Cell Biology, organized in collaboration with the International Federation of Cell Biology as well as with the French cell biology society, SBCF. Speakers came from as far away as Japan, Australia, the USA, Canada and Korea, as well as all points European east of Lisbon and south of Umea.


Breaking boundaries

ELSO aims at a constituency of ‘molecular life scientists’, but its core domain, for the moment, is cell biology – the subject area of its President and founder, Kai Simons. Nevertheless, ELSO strives to integrate all areas of the molecular life sciences that impinge on cell biology: immunology, genetics, plant biology, microbiology, biochemistry, structural biology, development and molecular medicine – the latter two being particularly a target for bringing closer into the ELSO ‘fold’ in the coming few years.

As well as breaking down the boundaries between subjects, ELSO also aims to break down the national boundaries in Europe that restrict free communication and collaboration in the life sciences. There has been a lot of talk from politicians over the past five years about creating a ‘European Research Area’, where free movement of scientists and information across the continent produces a synergy between our national strengths and characteristics. More science and better science will be the foundation, politicians hope, for the knowledge economy of the future.

The ELSO congresses are a demonstration of this European Research Area in action. The Nice meeting brought together researchers from 13 European and 12 other countries, all communicating their work in a common language, establishing new collaborations and recruiting new colleagues.

“What ELSO has a achieved is to create a communication forum that people return to every year,” says Simons. The ELSO meetings stimulate not only communication about science but also a sense of complicity in belonging to a European research effort, and a concern for the wellbeing of science and our scientific colleagues in neighbouring countries. “What is really missing in Europe is this feeling of being together,” Simons adds. “The flair of the ELSO meetings and the participation of so many young scientists is helping to create this sense of unity.”


Shaping policy

This year’s ELSO meeting came at a crucial time for European science policy, since the European Commission’s proposals for Framework Programme 7 (FP7) – the next period of research funding through Brussels, which will begin in 2007 – were laid on the table for discussion earlier in the summer. These plans are crucial to the future of life science research in Europe. First, because the budget the Commission is hoping to obtain for FP7 will represent, for the first time, a substantial chunk (more than 10%) of all public research spending in Europe. And second, because of the Commission’s plan to launch a new European funding agency for basic research – the European Research Council (ERC).

ELSO 2004 reflected the importance of this moment in European science’s history by inviting a member of the Commission’s Research Directorate, Octavi Quintana Trias, to give the opening lecture of the congress and describe the projects for FP7. There was also a session of ELSO’s Career Development Committee dedicated to informing ELSO members and debating plans for the ERC and FP7.

ELSO has played an important part over the past two years in the discussions about the ERC (an idea that has been pursued mainly by the life science community) by participating in several debates, publishing position statements and discussing with policy makers. ELSO has worked hard, both as an independent organization and as a participant in the European Life Science Forum (ELSF), for the creation of an ERC. It is a quite remarkable achievement that within the space of not much more than two years an idea first mooted by scientists has already been integrated into a political plan of implementation.

Since last February, ELSO has also been working for reform of the Framework Programme with an online petition launched to demonstrate not only grass-roots support for the ERC and increased investment in research but also the widespread frustrations with bureaucracy in the Brussels administration and with the large networks encouraged by current science policy.

The petition had collected over 5,000 signatures and hundreds of interesting comments from European researchers in many disciplines across the world when it closed on 1 October. ELSO has produced a document based on the petition that it has already sent to EU member states governments requesting action on five fronts: to meet the 3% GDP investment goal agreed in Barcelona in 2002; to double the EU research budget without cutting national budgets for research; to create a European fund for basic research administered by an ERC; to reduce the administrative burden of Framework Programme contracts on scientists and to reverse the trend towards huge networks. The document is available online and will also be sent to members of the European Parliament and to the Commission.

Nurturing talent

The future of European science lies with the generation of young scientists that we are currently training, so ELSO is very much geared towards bringing these young scientists together at the annual meeting, as well as helping them in their personal development as scientists and helping to create opportunities for their future careers.

The registration fee for the congress is kept to a strict minimum for students, making the meeting very accessible to young researchers. The poster sessions – traditionally the domain of students and postdocs – are important, with a dedicated two-hour slot in the early afternoon when there are no symposia or minisymposia to distract. The posters are centrally positioned among the exhibitors’ stands for maximum visibility. And the authors of two of the most outstanding poster abstracts in each section are selected to give oral presentations alongside their more established colleagues in the afternoon minisymposia. There are also prizes at the end of the conference for the three best-presented posters of the meeting.

Young people are also the main driving force behind the regular evening ‘bioclips’ session. The brainchild of French biologist Christian Sardet, the bioclips are multimedia presentations of science in a ‘music video’ style. The goal is, ultimately, to produce a set of resources for teaching or communicating science to the general public that are at once informative and entertaining. In the meantime, it’s mostly just plain fun!

On a more serious note, each year ELSO also rewards the achievements of one outstanding young European life scientist with its Early Career Award. This year, the prize went to 36-year old German researcher Jan Ellenberg of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg. He is among good company with the past winners Eliza Isaurralde (Germany), Maria Blasco (Spain) and Juergen Knoblich (Austria). Although the prize is modest – this year a cheque for 1000 from the sponsor Elsevier science publishers and a pair of binoculars from sponsor Carl Zeiss Jena – the prize is an important recognition of the world-class work being performed by Europe’s young researchers.

Careers were also in mind elsewhere in the meeting at the highly successful Career Mentoring Lunch tried out for the first time this year. With sandwich in hand, dozens of young scientists sat down at one of ten tables with two older ‘mentors’ to discuss various career issues. Topics ranged from moving to a career outside academia, through raising kids with a career in science and finding an appropriate role model, to applying for higher positions, improving your CV and interview techniques, setting career goals, etc.

The Career Mentoring Lunch, sponsored by Science Careers and organized by ELSO’s Career Development Committee (CDC), is sure to be a regular feature of future ELSO meetings, as will be a session, also organized by the CDC, showcasing funding opportunities for postdocs and junior group leader positions.

After four successful meetings, the shape of the ELSO annual meeting is now clear: bringing together young people and top-notch science with informative and practical help for career development in an attractive and fun environment. It remains now to spread the word about the congress beyond those national and subject boundaries to make ELSO a truly European life scientist’s organization.