46 Years Later, Basel and the ESRS: Still a Success!
Published in ESRS Newsletter December 2018
The 24th ESRS Congress held in Basel, Switzerland, last September was very well attended with almost 1800 delegates from 69 countries. We received very positive feedback on the scientific programme which consisted of 80 sessions, including symposia, round tables and oral sessions, and 5 satellite symposia. The Scientific Committee aimed to cover all aspects of sleep and chronobiology through all these sessions and privileged many translational symposia. Round tables were meant to be true discussion opportunities with a large period devoted to Q&A. The 4 keynote lectures (Prof. Wenbiao Gan, Prof. Charalambos Kyriacou, Prof. Emmanuel Mignot, Prof. Susan Redline) were well attended.
For the first time we had poster walks meant to bring more light on all presenters. These walks were very well received and appreciated. We want to thank the Board and Local Organizing Committee members for coming on board and act as moderators of some of the poster walks, as well as all colleagues who accepted late notice invitations to moderate a poster walk. The closing ceremony included the newly introduced Hot Topic Symposium which maintained high quality science all the way to the end of the congress. We wish to congratulate again Dr. Sasha D’Ambrosio and Dr. Stéphane Rehel for their poster prizes awarded during the closing ceremony.
Sasha D’Ambrosio received his Master Degree in Neurobiology at the University of Pavia.
Currently he is a PhD student at the Neurophysiology lab of the Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences “L. Sacco”, University of Milan, supervised by Professor Marcello Massimini.
His project is focused on linking basic mechanisms of sleep physiology to the pathophysiology of brain lesions. More specifically, his research is assessing focal brain lesion from a perturbational perspective that highlights the sleep-like features of the perilesional areas.
Stéphane Rehel is a PhD student since October 2016 and he is supervised by Géraldine Rauchs (Inserm U1077 “Neuropsychologie et Imagerie de la Mémoire Humaine” NIMH lab) and Gaël Chételat (Inserm U1237 “Physiopathology and Imaging of Neurological Disorders” PhIND lab). He is working on the MEDIT-AGEING project – a 5-year research study investigating mental health and well-being in the ageing population – and the aim of his PhD is to explore the relationships between sleep, ageing and Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers, focusing more precisely on how these relationships are modulated by lifestyle factors such as physical activity.
We want to warmly thank all members of the outgoing Scientific Committee, of the Board and of the Local Organizing Committee, for their contributions to a high quality scientific programme in such a nice atmosphere. We also wish to thank Krisztina Németh, Ariane Zimmermann and Olivia Montanari from Congrex for their support in putting this scientific programme in place. We wish all the best to the new Scientific Committee and are looking forward to the next ESRS congress in Sevilla!
On behalf of the ESRS Scientific Committee 2016-2018,
Raphaelle Winsky-Sommerer and Gilles Vandewalle
Co-Chairs of the Scientific Committee 2016-2018