ESRS Newsletter July 2024

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

We’re so happy to announce that the number of participants registered for Sleep Europe 2024 has surpassed 2200 as of the Earlybird registration deadline. With over 2100 participants planning to participate onsite, we have already exceeded the attendance in Athens! If you haven’t registered to participate in this record breaking congress yet, do it now.

After reviewing abstracts, I am even more excited to let you know about the excellent level of science to be presented orally and especially the 1500+ posters. The ECN is diligently working to organise poster walks and with this great number of posters, have opened a call for poster walk chairs from all specialities.

You may have noticed we are not selling lunch boxes this year. In order to maximise the congress experience and provide more time for networking and posters, we will provide a light lunch on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday as part of the congress. As always, lunch will be provided to participants of Master Classes on Tuesday. There are still spaces open to add a Master Class to your agenda.

Member Elections 2024

As part of Sleep Europe 2024, we are also diligently preparing for the Member`s General Assembly. It is once again time to exercise your rights to vote within the society. In 2024, we are implementing an electronic voting process for the first time, following the change in the Bylaws which was accepted at the last General assembly (Athens, 2022). We hope the electronic voting  will allow for more members to participate.

We ask that you read the following carefully as we outline the process which is new for everyone this year. All electronic voting will be conducted via the ESRS website. You will need to log into your account in order to be able to vote. In case you have forgotten your password, you can reset it or use the Magic link option for a password free login via the email address associated with your account.

There will be three voting forms separated by topic: 

1) Bylaws changes, 

2) Member elections, 

3) Sleep Europe 2028 venue selection.  

All members are eligible to vote for all topics. Later this month, you will receive an email containing proposed changes to the Bylaws and soliciting feedback. Following the feedback period, the Bylaws voting period will open.

Mid of July we will also open the call for nominations for Member elections to positions in the ESRS Board and Scientific Committee.

There will be many positions open this year and we encourage you to think about colleagues you would like to nominate. In specific, due to the consistently increasing number of scientific symposia and abstracts received, the Scientific Committee will be expanded to 16 members in total. Considering that six current members will run for re-election, we will need at least 10 new members of the scientific committee. As always, we encourage you to consider diversity in all of your nominations.

Please make a note in your calendar to sign into the ESRS website during the anticipated voting periods.

1. Bylaws Changes (anticipated 2-16 September)
2. Member Elections – Board and Scientific Committee  (anticipated 12-25 September)
3. Sleep Europe 2028 Venue Selection (26 September during the General Assembly)

Thank you in advance for your engagement on behalf of the ESRS Board.

Upcoming Webinar – 8 July, 17:00 CEST

Last but not least,  I am also honoured to moderate an upcoming webinar together with Dr. Paul-Antoine Libourel on 8 July titled “Sleeping into the Wild: Insights from Seals and Penguins,” scheduled from 17:00 to 18:00 (CEST). Our panel of speakers includes:

• Dr. Paul-Antoine Libourel, Researcher from the Neuroscience Research Centre of Lyon and Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology of Montpellier.
• Dr. Jessica Kendall-Bar, Marine Biologist from the University of California, San Diego.
• Dr. Gianina Ungurean, Sleep Scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence in Munich and the University Medical Center Göttingen.
• Dr. Markus Schmidt, Physician, Deputy Head of Sleep-Wake Epilepsy Center SWEZ, from Universitätsklinik für Neurologie, Bern.

We will explore how elephant seals and chinstrap penguins have evolved remarkable sleeping strategies to survive in challenging environments. You can register via the button below: