The EpiViral project organized several activities and networking events:
- EpiViral Kick-off (20th of January 2021) that brought together members of the partnering institutions to officially launch the project and discuss its implementation.
- Several EpiViral Spring Seminars and EpiViral sponsored seminars directed to iBiMED-UAVR researchers.
- Workshops on Intellectual Property Rights and Knowledge transfer organized in collaboration with UACOOPERA, the Technology Transfer Office from UAVR.
- 1st EpiViral Symposium – held online on the 10th of January 2022.
- The Symposium on Innate Immunity on Viral Infection held in Leiden from the 13th to 14th of December 2023.
- EpiViral Conference on RNA Biology in Host-Pathogen Interactions held in Porto, Portugal from June 4th to June 7th of 2024.
Staff exchanges:
- “Training on LC/MS-MS technique to identify RNA modifications” from the 13th of September to the 13th of October 2021 at GUF.
- “Researchers’ exchanges” held on the 27th of October 2021 at LUMC and on the 30th of November 2021 at GUF.
- “Researcher Support Office exchanges” held on the 27th of October 2021 at LUMC and on the 30th of November 2021 at GUF.
- Joint Lab Retreats –three Joint Lab Retreats were organized to promote networking between the EpiViral teams and share scientific results. One additional retreat was also organized to advance scientific writing of EpiViral members.
- One “Researcher Support Office exchanges” held from the 6th to 7th December 2022 at LUMC.
- One “Training Staff Exchange” held from the 27th February to the 10th March 2023 at LUMC.
- Three virtual workshops to implement new methodologies and advance the technical skills at UAVR held from March to August 2023. The two organized by LUMC focused infection and immunity studies and the one organized by GUF focused on tRNA modification analysis.
- Two Summer Schools held at iBiMED-UAVR, one dedicated to virology and other to epitranscriptomics.
- 1st, 2nd and 3rd Annual Plenary meetings to evaluate the project's progress, discuss the major challenges and achievements, and present the way forward.
- Stakeholder's meetings with healthcare and pharmaceutical/biotech industry stakeholders to present the project and the main results.
- EpiViral Career Mentoring Programme – This programme involved 16 PhD students and postdoctoral researchers.
- EpiViral Young Scientists Conference Attendance Award – The five editions of this award covered the participation of iBiMED-UAVR ESRs in international meetings.
- Training sessions on project management – Nine training sessions on research management and administration for UAVR RSO staff and researchers were organized by UAVR RSO.
- Communication, dissemination, and exploitation activities – EpiViral engaged with the scientific community, industry, and general public and potentiate EpiViral results and initiatives promotion. Communication with different stakeholder groups was promoted through the project website, social media accounts, flyers, TV, and radio.
- 36 publications in peer-reviewed journals plus three PhD and eight MSc dissertation thesis have been accomplished.
Beyond these activities, EpiViral researchers have been invited to participate in several national and international conferences and seminars and to participate in joint research projects.
Altogether, the work developed by the Epiviral consortium contributed to: 1) increase the research excellence of iBiMED-UAVR in virology and epitranscriptomics by cooperating with LUMC and GUF; 2) increase the number of stakeholders involved in iBiMED-UAVR research, including portuguese biotech/start-up companies; 3) Improve iBiMED-UAVR capability to compete successfully for national, EU and internationally competitive research funding (with approximately a 30% increase in project grant submissions); 4) increase the ability of iBiMED-UAVR to involve early-stage researchers in virology and epitranscriptomics research, with 59 ESRs participating in EpiViral's activities, largely surpassing the initial number envision (15); 5) Strengthened research management and administration skills at UAVR by promoting staff exchanges with the European partners, which resulted in the implementation of new regulation at UAVR that contributed to increase by 25% the number of EU project proposals submitted by the Portuguese institution; 6) Establishment of long-lasting and sustainable research cooperation between UAVR, LUMC and GUF, by submission of joint research projects and supervision of joint MSc and PhD students.
