The SynDegen Early-Stage Researchers (ESRs) have all be recruited and the associated milestones have been reached and submitted. All ESRs have integrated their local graduate school and received the initial ethical, scientific theoretical and technical trainings necessary for a good PhD start.
The SynDegen ESRs have participated to 7 thematic workshops on specific scientific themes, conferences and hands-on sessions provided by the SynDegen teams. In 2019, the 6th workshop took place on June 26-28, in coordination with the 3rd SynDegen annual meeting in Bordeaux. Because of the COVID pandemic, no workshop has taken place in 2020. The last training workshop, organized by the Cambridge team, took place by web conferencing on March 29, 2021 - " Clinical and molecular features of neurodegenerative diseases with tau and alpha-synuclein aggregates". The program included 5 keynote lectures with leading experts. Two ‘meeting the patient’ sessions have been organized with patients with tauopathies and a patient diagnosed at age 33 with Parkinson’ Disease. All SYNDEGEN ESRs were present, as well as 75 participants from the SYNDEGEN partner institutes. These workshops have provided a unique range of theoretical training and hands-on sessions to the ESRs. Together with the annual meetings, these workshops have been a genuine opportunity for ESRs to meet very regularly and create a professional community of young researchers.
Plans for ESR secondments have been updated following the Mid-term meeting. Unfortunately, in 2020 and 2021, most of the planed secondments have been cancelled by the lockdowns in Europe and travel restrictions linked to COVID-19 pandemic.
Major scientific achievements have been reached by the ESRs within the 3 scientific Work Packages (WPs 1, 2 & 3). Details of the scientific progress of the ESRs on their PhD projects are given in the 54 Months periodic report. All scientific deliverables have been submitted. Ten publications have been published by SYNDEGEN ESRs. 20 posters and 6 talks have been presented by the ESRs at national and international conferences.
The kick-off, 2nd and 3rd annual meetings have taken place. The mid-term meeting has been organized in Munich on December 10-11th, 2018, as planned. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the final annual meeting has taken place by video conference on June 23rd, 2021. The 24M, 36M and 54M ESR progress reports have been submitted on time.
Scientific dissemination and outreach actions have taken place in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 (slightly reduced because of the COVID). They have been listed in different deliverables (D6.1 D6.2 D6.3 D6.4 D6.5 D6.8 D6.6 D6.7) which have been submitted on time.
The exploitation plan has been discussed during the Mid-term meeting with representatives from the European Commission. An updated version of the reports on exploitation and IPR activities (M54) have been submitted on time.
