On April 15th – April 17th we met in Dresden at Hotel Elbflorenz for our 5th µBone Retreat.

We started with a brief welcome address given by our µBone speaker Lorenz Hofbauer followed by the first session of project presentations. PhD students, PostDocs, and PIs presented their newest results, many of which have been gained through collaborations within the µBone consortium. Each talk was followed by a lively discussion and more ideas for collaboration. After a short coffee break we continued with the second round of project presentations. To close the day, we went to the city center and met for our consortia dinner.

The second day started with our third session of project presentations followed by our Keynote talk given by Prof. Jean Paul Thiery. He is the director of emeritus research at the CNRS-Paris-Diderot University laboratory on complex materials and systems, at the Institut Gustave Roussy Cancer Center and Professor at Guangzhou Laboratory, China. We were very happy to have him as speaker at our retreat.

From left to right: Prof. Klaus Pantel, Prof. Jean Paul Thiery, and Prof. Lorenz Hofbauer

After our fourth set of project presentations we had lunch together, before continuing with our last project session. On the third day, we offered the soft skill course “Live strong! What it means for young scientists” to our young scientists. Eight PhD students and PostDocs took the chance and participated in the workshop led by The Scientist Coach (Dr. Iris Köhler).

At this point, we would like to thank to all our speakers for their great talks, all chairs and researchers who contributed with insightful questions and helpful hints, and for the motivated and enjoyable atmosphere.

It was a pleasure to listen to our nineteen µBone projects and see what was achieved by the µBone members of the second funding period during the last challenging years!