Seville 2022

THE PERFECT TANDEM: How technology expands the frontiers of biomedicine

On 16-18 November 2022 the first FEBS-IUBMB-ENABLE conference took place. It was hosted in in the historic city of Seville in Spain, at the Institute of Biomedicine of Seville (IBiS) a multidisciplinary biomedical research center within the complex that houses the Virgen del Rocío University Hospital, a center of high-level care, education and research.

The conference turned out to be a huge success, with 300 young researchers participating from 31 countries within and outside of the EU. The ENABLE 2022 conference included a scientific symposium but also  outreach activities for the general public and a dedicated career day.

Our 10 sponsors were enthusiastic of this initiative and their contribution allowed us to support a total of 74 travel grants.

FEBS-IUBMB-ENABLE 2022 conference demonstrated once again how the ENABLE format is a unique high-level conference, different from the classic scientific conference to which we are used to, and with a special focus on the young generation of scientists and their needs.

Scientific Symposium

Following the scientific theme of the symposium, “THE PERFECT TANDEM: How technology expands the frontiers of biomedicine” eight renowned keynote speakers from different fields shared their expertise and experience in four sessions across several topics including Computational biology and artificial intelligence, Fundamental biology, Clinical and translational biomedicine and Innovation

Computational biology and artificial intelligence

Dr. Elena Papaleo

Danish Cancer Society Research Center
Copenhagen, Denmark

Dr. Joaquín Dopazo

Institute of Biomedicine of Seville
Seville, Spain

Fundamental biology

Prof. Jose Lopez-Barneo

Institute of Biomedicine of Seville
Seville, Spain

Dr. Daphne Cabianca

Institute of functional genomics
Munich Germany

Clinical and translational biomedicine

Dr. Laura Cancedda

Italian Institute of Technology
Genoa, Italy

Dr. Fathia Mami Chouaib

INSERM, Gustave Roussy Institute
Villejuif, France

Multidisciplinary Research

Prof. Matteo Iannacone

San Raffaele Research Institute
Milan, Italy

Asst. Prof. Cesar de la Fuente

University of Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania, USA

Career Day

With the career day, the FEBS-IUBMB-ENABLE event gave participants the opportunity to get inspired about their future as young scientists and to broaden their skill set to take their future in their own hands.

Workshops

During the FEBS-IUBMB_ENABLE 2022 Conference, participants had the opportunity to join one of the 8 workshops on personal and professional development. These sessions covered many different topics such as: “How to build your own Start-up”; “Sustainability in science”; “Alternative careers for scientists and researchers”; “How to land a job in the industry”; “Keys to succeeding in a job interview”; “How to elaborate a cogent grant application”; “Create your professional identity “; “Effective networking”.

Career chats

Career chats during the conference were a unique opportunity to have a direct interaction between the PhD and Postdoc communities and experts with different profiles from academia and industry, such as Business Manager, Scientist, Data Stewart, Startup founder, Editor and Scientific Officer.

Job fair

The Opportunity Fair provided a unique occasion for attendees to meet up with companies and organisations and build constructive interactions with people from various life science sectors. Representatives were present from: Pharmaceutical and Biotech companies, Academic organisations, Scientific Societies.

Outreach activities

One of the reasons ENABLE stands out among other conferences is the effort put into the outreach activities. It is a duty of scientists to continually commit to disclosing their work to the general public.

For the FEBS-IUBMB-ENABLE 2022 event we organised a series of outreach and public engagement activities, both online and face-to-face, to maximize the techniques the pandemic has taught us to appreciate, and also recover the proximity and familiarity of meetings in person.

The FEBS-IUBMB-ENABLE 2022 outreach activities started a week before the conference, in association with “Semana de la Ciencia” or Week of Science, celebrated by the University of Seville and associated institutions.

In collaboration with researchers from the team “Ciencia a la Carta”, two scientific talks were given to secondary school students. In “PCR, much more than COVID diagnose”, students were shown what the PCR technique is, and why it has become so important in these recent years. “The risk of unhealthy eating: Neurodegenerative diseases and nutrition” showed them the importance of good dietary habits and some of the long term consequences that come from bad nutrition.

In addition to this, secondary school students were invited to visit the Institute of Biomedicine of Seville (IBiS), to learn what it means to be a scientist and see how scientific investigations of different kinds are performed.

In order for the public to gain a better understanding about the PhD part of the scientific career, the activity “What is a PhD?”, which took place in one neighbourhood of Seville, allowed them to interact with four researchers at different steps of their scientific career, who shared their experiences of one of the most crucial steps for a scientist.

The organizing committee

One of the reasons ENABLE stands out among other conferences is the effort put into the outreach activities. It is a duty of scientists to continually commit to disclosing their work to the general public. The only way we can really become better and create a change in the society we are living in is through having clear and transparent discussions including all of the citizens interested and not just scientists. This is why ENABLE dedicates itself to public outreach activities and why the ENABLE conference started well before all of the participants have arrived.

SOC

SEMM

Erica Gasparotto

Martina Pezzali

CPR

Charu Jain

Rosa Lundbye Allesøe

IRB

Camilla Bertani

Olga Roman

RIMLS

Javier Botey-Bataller

Maren Pfirrmann (Vice-Chair)

IBIS

Marina Esteban-Medina

Marta Reyes-Corral (Chair)

FEBS

Vlastimil Kulda

LOC

LOC Members

David  Carneros Trujillo

Carmen Del Río Mercado

Sara  Fontalva Ostio

Antonio  Jurado Gómez-Alférez

Sara  Martín Villanueva

Alberto  Pérez Gómez

Laura  Contreras Bernal

Cynthia Clemente González

Hildegard Colino Lage

Vanesa Garrido Rodriguez

Monica González Moreno

Carmen Maria Gordillo Vázquez

Esperanza Lisha Granado de la Calle

Maria Isabel Lara Chica

Eduardo Ponce España

Emilio Martínez Márquez

Aida Amador Álvarez

Francisco José Calero Castro

Patricia de la Cruz Ojeda

Macarena López Sánchez

Marta Martín Bórnez

Esperanza Muñoz Muela

Antonio Jesús  Tagua Jáñez

Diana Rubio Contreras

 

LOCAL COORDINATORS

Dr. María D. Giráldez Jiménez  (Juan Rodés researcher IBiS, medical doctor at Virgen del Rocío hospital).

Dr. María Herreras Casado (Internacional Proyects and Communication – IBiS)

Motion video