About knights, progress and construction - our first CRC1279 retreat

Typical weather for a day in November in Ulm- foggy, rainy and a little chilly. Nevertheless, Prof. Frank Kirchhoff warmly welcomed all PIs, PhD students and postdocs involved in CRC1279 to a first status symposium at the Villa Eberhardt.

Some external collaborators came a long way to meet their colleagues in the “Rittersaal” (Knight’s hall) which was well packed. The PIs themselves or their PhD students and postdocs gave update on novel results and developments as well as emerging challenges of their projects.

Like the Villa Eberhardt itself, the CRC1279 is under intensive development. It became clear that some goals have already been reached. For example, promising new peptides have been identified and others were optimized for preclinical studies. It also became clear, however, there is still a lot to discover and work to do. The schedule was busy: Talks and discussions moved on from 9 am until around 6 pm. Coffee breaks and the lunch break offered well-utilized opportunities to intensify collaborations and discuss future directions. In addition, students introduced the founding of an interactive “screening group”. In summary, it has been a successful and productive meeting with many stimulating discussions.

The next retreat will be organized by the students involved in CRC1279 in late spring or summer 2019.

By the way: You can now follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/crc1279/typo3/