Report on the 2nd international molecular biosciences PhD and postdoc conference 2023: The emerging challenge – environmental impacts on human health

The 2nd International FEBS‐IUBMB‐ENABLE Molecular Biosciences PhD and Postdoc Conference was held from 23rd to 25th November 2023 in Cologne, Germany. Over 240 participants from 31 different countries came together at the University of Cologne to follow the two‐day scientific symposium and the career day. This year's topic was “The emerging challenge – environmental impacts on human health”. In four different sessions, eight renowned keynote speakers presented their current research. By offering flash and short talks, 39 participants were able to present their work in front of a big audience. Scientific exchange and networking were encouraged during the two poster sessions, during breaks, and the conference dinner. On the Career Day, a career fair was held and participants could attend workshops as well as career chats to improve their job prospects. The success of the series will be continued during the next conference edition: “Artificial Intelligence – Reshaping biomedical and healthcare research”, which will take place 4th to 6th December 2024 in Singapore.

The 2 nd International FEBS-IUBMB-ENABLE Molecular Biosciences PhD and Postdoc Conference was held from 23 rd to 25 th November 2023 in Cologne, Germany.Over 240 participants from 31 different countries came together at the University of Cologne to follow the two-day scientific symposium and the career day.This year's topic was "The emerging challengeenvironmental impacts on human health".In four different sessions, eight renowned keynote speakers presented their current research.By offering flash and short talks, 39 participants were able to present their work in front of a big audience.Scientific exchange and networking were encouraged during the two poster sessions, during breaks, and the conference dinner.On the Career Day, a career fair was held and participants could attend workshops as well as career chats to improve their job prospects.The success of the series will be continued during the next conference edition: "Artificial Intelligence -Reshaping biomedical and healthcare research", which will take place 4 th to 6 th December 2024 in Singapore.
The FEBS-IUBMB-ENABLE conference series is a joint initiative of the Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS), the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (IUBMB), and four leading biomedical research institutes across Europe: the Institute for Research in Biomedicine-IRB (Barcelona, Spain), the Radboud Research Institute for Medical Innovation-Radboudumc (Nijmegen, The Netherlands), the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research-NNF CPR (Copenhagen, Denmark), and the European School of Molecular Medicine-SEMM (Milan, Italy), together with the Institute of Biomedicine of Seville-IBiS (Seville, Spain), where the 2022 event was held, and the University of Cologne-UoC (Cologne, Germany), where the 2023 event took place.
ENABLE started as an initiative to promote European excellence in biomedical science with an annual three-day international event that included a scientific symposium, career development sessions and outreach activities.After the initial funding from the European Union Horizon 2020 initiative for the organisation of four conferences (2017-2021), FEBS and IUBMBwhich were already involved as sponsors in ENABLE conferences-partnered since 2022 to continue this initiative and support the development of young researchers.The FEBS-IUBMB-ENABLE conference series is unique, because the organising committee is composed of PhD students and postdocs from the core institutes as well as the hosting institute.Coordinators from the core and hosting institute as well as FEBS and IUBMB representatives provided guidance during planning of the event (Table 1).
After the success of the 1 st International FEBS-IUBMB-ENABLE conference that took place in Seville (Spain) in 2022, the 2 nd International FEBS-IUBMB-ENABLE conference was held in the lively student city of Cologne (Germany) from the 23 rd to 25 th of November 2023.The conference took place at the University of Cologne (UoC).The UoC covers a broad field of disciplines with a strong focus in Life Sciences and has a long history of intense scientific and strategic collaboration that connects basic research to translational medicine.The Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences (FMNS) as well as the Faculty of Medicine (FM) along with the University Hospital Cologne (UHC) have developed a vibrant interdisciplinary Life Science Campus consisting of the Center for Molecular Medicine Cologne (CMMC), the Cluster of Excellence Cellular Stress Responses in Agingassociated Diseases (CECAD), the Cologne Center for Genomics (CCG), as well as the Max Planck Institutes for Biology of Ageing (MPI-AGE) and Metabolism Research (MPI-MR) along with seven collaborative research centres.The whole conference series is entirely organised by PhD students and postdocs, who take care of the scientific symposium, the career day and all the activities.The Scientific Organising Committee (SOC) was an international group of people composed of two representatives of each core institute (CPR, We tried to financially support participants who applied to join the conference, and thanks to our amazing sponsors and the Cologne graduate schools, we were able to award 37 EU travel grants (each 400€) and 25 non-EU travel grants (each 900€) to outstanding young scientists.The travel grants allowed many young scientists from all over the world to join the conference.Moreover, IUBMB awarded five travel grants (each 1500$) to African applicants through their Millipore Sigma programme, and the Croatian Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (HDBMB) supported three students (each 200€).In the end, we were incredibly proud that 100% of the scientists that applied for a travel grant were awarded one.
The title of this year's conference was "The emerging challenge -environmental impacts on human health".With this theme, we aimed to draw attention to different aspects of environmental changes and how these can affect humans and other organisms.We welcomed over 240 participants from all parts of the world to Cologne, reaching 31 countries (Fig. 1).

Pre-conference and outreach activities
Before the conference started, the Outreach team of the LOC organised activities to bring scientists and the general public closer together.This included a workshop for kindergarten children to learn about the danger of UV light on our skin.Furthermore, they organised a pub quiz about the environment and pub talks by students from the hosting institute for the general public, where the entrance fee was used to plant trees in the ENABLE forest.The topics for the pub talks had a wide range: "Green infrastructure: a lifeline/necessity for climate change adaptation in cities" (Minka Aduse-Poku, PhD candidate, Institute for Didactics in Biology), "Time to take time seriously how the environment is affecting our internal clock" (Dr.Roberta Colapietro, PhD candidate, CECAD), "Age is just a number: epigenetic clues to extending reproductive lifespan" (Tahira Aslan, PhD candidate, CECAD), "Cheers to sun-kissed skin: unravelling the UV mystery!" (Nihan Erden, PhD candidate, CECAD), and "The good, the bad, and the tastelesswhat's the deal with pollution, really. .." "(Dr.Philip Antczak, Junior group leader, CMMC).Both the pub quiz and pub talks were very popular and sold out.
Instead of a traditional city tour, a brewery tour through Cologne's oldest K€ olsch brewery was organised where participants could learn more about beer brewing and the German purity law.As a pre-conference event, a laboratory waste quiz was also organised where participants could test their knowledge about energy use and waste production in the laboratory.

Scientific symposium
The conference started with a two-day scientific symposium.We invited eight internationally renowned keynote speakers to present their research in four different sessions: Computational biology, Complex diseases, Novel experimental model systems, and Epigenetics and the exposome.Each keynote was followed by flash talks and short talks on the session's subject.Participants selected for a flash talk had the opportunity to very quickly highlight their work in 3 min in front of the whole audience, while participants selected for a short talk had a more structured 10 min presentation.By offering both types of talk, we could offer 39 participants the chance to present their research in front of a big audience.At the end of both days of the scientific symposium, 105 participants presented their research in a poster session.
The first day of the scientific symposium started out with the official Opening Ceremony of the event, where we formally welcomed the conference participants.We had various representatives introducing the conference and saying a few words about the conference series and supporting partners.We had different speeches from the conference organisers, the University of Cologne representatives Dr. Isabell Witt and Dr. Debora Grosskopf-Kroiher, the FEBS Secretary General Prof. Dr. Miguel A. De la Rosa, the IUBMB President Prof.Dr. Alexandra Newton and the Vice Rector of Research of the University of Cologne, Prof. Dr. Claus Cursiefen.
Dr. Fernanda Pinheiro, group leader at the Human Technopole (Milan, Italy), opened the first session on Computational biology presenting her work on mathematical modelling of antibiotics resistance evolution.Unfortunately, Fernanda had to give her keynote lecture online, due to unforeseen sickness.After that, flash talk awardees Indranil Singh, Dr. Rukayat Abiola Abdulsalam, Alba Sala and David Farr e-Gil highlighted their work briefly, followed by two short talks by Macarena L opez-S anchez and Dr. Carmen Gordillo-V asquez.Before the next session, participants enjoyed some coffee and pastries and got the chance to network.Dr. Serena Nik-Zainal, Prof. of Genomic Medicine and Bioinformatics (Cambridge, UK), closed the session on Computational biology with her talk on how to exploit mutagenesis in cancer genomes.We had two flash talks by Dewei Hu and Stefano Roncelli, followed by two short talks by Claudia Robens and V ıctor Manuel de la Oliva Roque to conclude the morning session.After lunch in the main hall, we kicked off the second session titled Insights into complex diseases with a lecture by Dr. Pascal Miesen, Assistant Professor of the Medical Microbiology Dept., (Radboudumc, Netherlands), on molecular determinants of virus transmission by mosquitoes.Similar to the morning, we had three flash talks by Dora Koli c, Mar ıa Dolores Serrano-Mart ın, and Andrei-Sabin Popa, followed by two short talks by Dr. Mario Cocorullo and Dervis ß Birim.It was time for another coffee break and brief networking among participants.Dr. Dirk Haller, Full Professor in Nutrition and Immunology, School of Life Sciences Weihenstephan of the Technical University of Munich (Freising, Germany), was the last keynote speaker to present on the first day, with a talk on the functional complexity of the human gut microbiome.We concluded the session with four flash talks by Dr. Marlid Garc ıa, Dr. H€ ulya Irmak Aksan, Oana-Ana-Maria Mardare, and Elena Mirela Lamba and two short talks by Daniel L ainez-Gonz alez and Dr. Ver onica Miguel.To end the first day of the scientific symposium, we organised a two-hour long poster session where half of the researchers had the opportunity to present their work in a more relaxed environment while enjoying some finger food and K€ olsch beer (Fig. 2D).
Day two of the scientific symposium started with a session on Novel experimental model systems and a lecture by Dr. Mar ıa Bernabeu, group leader at EMBL (Barcelona, Spain), on malaria pathogenesis.Similar to day one, we had four flash talks given by Dr. Marta Zaninello, Dr. Maria Isabel Alvarez, Melania Lazzari and Marcel Zimmeck, followed by two short talks by Carmela Cela Rodr ıguez and Amada El-Sabeh.After some coffee and more networking, we had the second keynote lecture of the session given by Dr. Solenn Patalano, Group Leader at the Institute for Fundamental Biomedical Research "Alexander Fleming" (Vari, Greece), on mechanisms of phenotypic plasticity of social insects.Christina Efraimoglou, Dr. Jos e Daniel Camino, Bayan Kharrat and Nur Cengiz Winter gave a flash talk and Dr. Rãzvan Ștefan Boiangiu and Abhay Tharmatt a short talk.After the lunch break (Fig. 2A), Dr. Martin Howard, Prof. of the Dept. of Computational and Systems Biology at John Innes Centre (Norwich, UK), opened the last session of Epigenetics and the exposome with a lecture on how plants can measure and remember temperature signals.After the talk, we had the last four flash talks given by Dr. Meltem Uyaner Kan, Jazib Shafiq, Dr. Mar ıa Quintana Verdaguer and Femke van Hout, and the last two short talks given by Manuel Lessi and Claudia Bigas.It was time for the last coffee break of the day before going back to the last lecture of the day.Dr. David Aylor, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences and Deputy Director of the Center for Human Health and the Environment at the NC State University (North Carolina, USA), was the last keynote speaker of the conference and gave a talk on how early life exposure of TCDD can shape epigenetic profiles across the life-course.We concluded day two with another two-hour poster session where the other half of the participants could present their work, always paired with some snacks and soft drinks.The second day of the scientific symposium ended with the conference dinner, which took place in Cologne's oldest K€ olsch brewery.This also gave attendees the chance to network more and talk to the keynote speakers in a casual environment.A quick recap of some wonderful moments during the conference can be seen in Fig. 2.

Career day
The FEBS-IUBMB-ENABLE conference series aims to not only foster scientific discussion among young scientists, but also to improve their future career prospects by including a career day as part of the three-day conference.Throughout the day, participants could attend the opportunity fair and get in touch with different companies.Very popular also were the different workshops that were offered, which were ranked relevant or very relevant by 77% of people and given 4/5 or 5/5 points by 81% (Fig. 3).The workshop topics included improving research quality with "Biases in Science" (Prof.Dr. Niels Gehring, UoC) and "How to identify and generate robust data?" (Prof.Dr. Martin Michel, Johannes Gutenberg University).Furthermore, thinking about applications for your own research was discussed in the workshop "Research Canvas -Identify the application potential of your research" (Bernd Rathmer, Centre for Entrepreneurship and Transfer, TU Dortmund).In line with the overall theme of the conference and our efforts to increase sustainability, we offered the workshop "How to make your lab more sustainable?"(Dr.Tomo Sari c, Dr. Anna Schmitt, and Dr. Johanna Stachelscheid from the Gamma Sustainability Group, UoC).A very important topic for researchers is of course publishing results, which the workshop "How to successfully publish your work?" (Valerie Teng Broug, publisher at Elsevier) covered.PhDs can be very demanding for mental health, so "Overcome imposter syndrome for success and lower burnout risk" (Dr.Michaela H€ ohne, Elanto Science) aimed to provide tools to feel more confident again.To better prepare for the job market after the PhD, two workshops were offered: "Providing evidence for the skills that stay with you" (Dr.J€ org Stange, hfp consulting) and "Skills Canvasnavigating career paths beyond the PhD" (Dr.Isabelle Schiffer, Gateway Cologne).

Fig. 1 .
Fig. 1.Participants of the 2023 FEBS-IUBMB-ENABLE conference.(A) A group picture of all the participants in the conference venue lecture hall building.(B) A map showing the distribution of participants of the conference.Countries highlighted in blue represent participants' countries of residence.The 2023 FEBS-IUBMB-ENABLE conference reached 31 countries worldwide.

Fig. 2 .
Fig. 2. Impressions of the 2023 FEBS-IUBMB-ENABLE conference.(A) Coffee break.(B) Announcement of the SOC Sustainability Chair Ximena Hildebrandt in the Auditorium.(C) Career Chat.(D) Poster session.(E) The SOC, LOC and local coordinators.

Fig. 3 .
Fig. 3. Participant overview and survey results.(A) Gender distribution and (B) occupation distribution, (C) expectations for the conference, (D) relevance of keynote lectures, (E) relevance of workshops, and (F) improvement of job prospects after attending the conference; x-axis ranges from 5 (highest) to 1 (lowest).Results from an anonymous satisfaction survey conducted through the conference app after the conference, n = 65 responses.

Table 1 .
Members of the Scientific Organising Committee (SOC), the coordinators and the Local Organising Committee (LOC).