The project started with a Kick off meeting (KoM) to ensure that all participants had a complete overview of the aims and structure of the project, and to establish good relationships between the project partners. The KoM took place on January 13th, 2016 in Barcelona, Spain.
A total of 17 ESRs have been recruited for the programme. All of them were involved in the network meetings and workshops, in weekly laboratory meetings, courses, single-topic conferences, journal clubs, and secondments to other laboratories within the network.
During the lifetime of the project they benefited from training, tools and scientific advice from all collaborators. A total of 26 secondments have been performed. During these stays in other laboratories from the consortium, ESRs had the opportunity to learn new techniques and to interact, discuss and receive guidance from other PIs inside the network. These secondments together with the annual meetings have helped to create a real and solid network between the participants. Every year all members of the Phd consortium met for the annual meeting that were organized together with a scientific and a complementary workshop. Annual Meetings/workshops were set up every year by different beneficiaries and in a different place (London November 2016, Cambridge September 2017, Berlin April 2018 and Barcelona February 2019). Visiting different Institutions at each meeting have supported the career development of researchers through international and intersectoral mobility. During annual meetings ESRs had the opportunity to present and discuss the progress of their projects and explained their experience within the network. As part of the aim to provide ESRs with transferable skills the consortium organized 4 complementary workshops on bioethics, Science communication, Project and personal Management and Career Development, and as part of their scientific training ESRs also attended scientific workshops arranged by the consortium each year on different topics related with PI3K. Scientific workshops were open to external researchers. To complete their scientific training, in June 2017, ESRs attended the PHENOMIN 2nd European School for Advanced Mouse Phenogenomics in Strasbourg, France and to expose all ESRs to a non-academic ambient Arivis hosted them for a week and taught them on image analysis.
As we know the importance of the communication with the lay audience and to try to make people understand the relevance of the European research, ESRs were encourage to participate in as many outreach activities as possible: they have invited high school students to their labs to talk about their research, they have given talks to the general public, participated in the science day of their hosting cities and in the European research Night, etc
To disseminate the research results 4 papers have already been published, one has been sent for revision and at least 6 more are in preparation.
Most of the PIs extended their ESRs’ contracts in order to give them more time to finish their PhD. By now 4 fellows have already got the PhD degree and 9 will get it in the following months. The fellow settled at the SME is currently a permanent employee there and will use the experience and expertise acquired during the ITN, to develop Machine Learning tools that will be included as part of the company’s products. And the methodology described and published in an article from one of the Phd ESRs is in the process of request for a European patent.
