Our Autumn School is an annual scientific conference organized by the students of the Elite Graduate Program “Translational Neuroscience”. The biggest motivation for students to organize the symposium every year is primarily to promote collaborations and exchange the latest research results, advances and breakthroughs in this field.
This year we tried to address the diverse interests and expertise of the participants with the topics “Epigenetics in Psychiatry”, “Stress”, “Sleep” and “Alzheimer's”. In addition, as part of our symposium, we had two poster sessions that illustrated many methods and scientific results and enabled interactions and discussions that were both entertaining and insightful.
As the organizing team of the Autumn School, we hope that we have provided a platform and managed to bring the scientific community together for knowledge exchange and possible future collaborations.
Translational neuroscience in a nutshell
Being a student means not only learning from textbooks but also from new experiences and sharing our knowledge and ideas with others. The Autumn School with international experts allowed us to delve deeper into different research areas.
In particular, the guest speakers' presentations clearly visualized experimental methods and reconstructed the complex steps from the laboratory to the patient. In this respect, everyone could take part in the scientific conversation, even if they were not an expert in every subject.
We, the students of the new year, took part in this traditional event in the Rudolf Virchow Center in Würzburg. We were able to exchange ideas with students from older years and from several departments in Würzburg and around the world. In order to counteract the uncertainty about what to do after graduation, which many students suffer from, guests from industry and science shared their personal experiences and helpful advice with us.
The poster session was a great opportunity for us as students of the Translational Neuroscience course to present our own research projects. Although it can be difficult to be confronted with questions from all the bright minds, the active discussion and fruitful criticism at the end helped to significantly increase our individual learning curve.
The Autumn School provided an atmosphere that allowed us to ask questions without feeling stupid, it gave us space for discussion and time to think. Finally, I am grateful for all the fascinating and creative thinkers I had the opportunity to meet and for everyone's open-mindedness.
Text: Dr Manuel Nagel, Maria Georgalli, Lissy Liebeskind
