MY‐ATRIA activities have dealt with the training of ESR and development of their research. These activities focused on three main lines: i) Training‐by‐doing as part of research activities of WP2, WP3 and WP4); ii) Secondment periods and joint‐research activities; iii) Network‐wide training and events.
Despite the COVID-19 outbreak which has delayed or postponed some of the planned activities, MY-ATRIA was able to run all the scheduled events (even if some were converted in on-line events or rescheduled to allow in-person participations) and to reach all the training objectives.
Concerning the research activities, MY-ATRIA researchers were very productive and advanced the knowledge on AF mechanisms and progression (see “Progress beyond the state-of-the art” sections). Their research generated results which deserved publication on scientific journals or presentation at international conferences. The scientific production consists of 20 journal papers, 22 articles in international conference proceeding and 2 articles in national conference. A fairly balance ratio between journal and conference contributions was maintained (45% journals, 55% conferences) and shows that dissemination activities was differentiated to maximize potential impacts. Quality of the scientific results is also demonstrated by a few scientific awards obtained by the ESR (best poster awards).
Concerning the training part, during the second reporting period three Network‐wide events were organized as planned: a) The Winter School in Milano, Italy (January 2021,remote); b) ESR’s day in Milano, Italy (January 2021,remote) c) The Final Workshop in Karlsruhe, Germany (September 2021, in person). Also, an additional ESR’s day in Valencia, Spain (January 2022, remote) was organized in cooperation with the PersonalizedAF MSCA ITN Consortium (grant agreement No.860974). This event gave the ESRs the opportunity to exchange experience within two consortia which shared a common interest in the area of Atrial Fibrillation. This event was important to create a link and professional interchange among two large research networks.
Secondment periods and joint‐research activities were highly impacted by the outbreak of the COVID‐19 pandemic, but several actions have been set in place to mitigate this problem (postponements of secondments, enrolment of new partners and remote secondment execution). Globally, the ESR had, on average, secondment experience for a duration of 4.05+/-2.35 months.
In support to the research/training activities, the communication/dissemination tasks were constantly running during the period and resulted in: i) two newsletters, ii) the update of the website to spread information of MY‐ATRIA activities and iii) the presentation of preliminary results in Scientific Conferences.
