First NCCR Microbiomes Annual Meeting

The NCCR Microbiomes celebrated its first Annual Meeting on 10-11 June 2021. Almost 90 NCCR members came together at this online meeting to share the progress of their projects and discuss the future direction of the NCCR. The meeting was also attended by the members of the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB), who gave feedback on the achievements of the NCCR in its first year of existence, and suggestions on how to improve moving forward.

Work Package leaders updated the NCCR community and the SAB on the progress of the Work Packages as a whole, with a special focus on the collaborations that have been established or consolidated in the first year. PhD students and postdocs presented their projects via flash presentations followed by an lively poster session, held on Gather.town. The first day of the meeting was closed with a remote apéro, giving the participants the opportunity to get to know each other better and to continue their discussions in a more relaxed and informal manner.

The Annual Meeting also gave SAB members the opportunity to hold smaller discussions with the members of each Work Package, after which they provided recommendations for the continued development of the NCCR in its second year. The first General Assembly of the NCCR was celebrated during the meeting: members were informed about all the activities of the NCCR and could partake in the discussion of the plans for the second year.

Finally, on the occasion of the Annual Meeting the NCCR Microbiomes organise its first UN-seminar: a brainstorming session aimed at revisiting the original overarching aims of the NCCR. What is the current state-of-the-art regarding the main questions we are trying to answer? What have we and the larger scientific community learnt in the past couple of years? What experiments could we plan in order to address the questions that remain open? Small groups addressed these questions and subsequently came together to share their reflections and further discuss.

The effervescent discussions at the Annual Meeting and the UN-seminar yielded a plethora of new ideas and experiments: we are all excited to pursue them in the second year of the NCCR Microbiomes.