Building Bridges 2023, the 34th Annual Conference of Academia Europaea (AE) and the 12th Annual General Assembly (AGM) of the Young Academy of Europe (YAE) was organised on 9-11 October, 2023, at Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich, Germany. At the YAE AGM on Monday 9 October, Katalin Solymosi (co-Vice-Chair) welcomed the participants and presented the activities of the YAE in 2022-2023. These included, among others, the Arts & Science webinar series, one 10th Anniversary webinar with previous YAE chairs as speakers reflecting on YAE, the ERC Starting Grant Mentoring Event about narrative CVs, YAE’s collaboration with other stakeholders and participation in European level science policy and science advice initiatives, as well as our publications and interviews. Scott Bremer (co-Vice-Chair) and Katalin Solymosi then handed over the membership certificates to the new members present at the AGM, and Linn Leppert (Treasurer) presented the financial report of the last year.
This was followed by a panel moderated and organised by Serim Ilday (Activities Chair) with insightful research talks by new YAE members from the three different domains. Núria Codina talked about literature in the context of migration, Philippa Warren about restoration of breathing after spinal cord injury, and Bruno Ehrler about high efficiency solar cells. The elections of the new Board were held in hybrid format: Katalin Solymosi was elected as new Chair; Scott Bremer was re-elected as Vice-Chair; Jihan Zakarriya, Marc Yeste and Philippa Warren were elected as new members of the Board. At the AGM, Gemma Modinos and Sylvestre Bonnet were elected to the Advisory Council of YAE, where they will start their 5-year-term in January 2024.
In the afternoon Susie Edwards from WonderIf held an inspiring leadership workshop which allowed participants to exchange and reflect about their experiences and best practices of group leadership, and to realise the great expertise and knowledge that is already present within the YAE community and only needs to be shared in order to help each other’s personal development. This was followed by an Arts & Science panel discussion in which members shared their videos, drawings, microscopic images, music and other artistic activities related to their research. Members had the possibility to continue networking and discussing during the coffee and lunch breaks, as well as the nice dinner at Hofbräuhaus München. We are grateful to LMU and the AE Munich Hub for helping us to organise our AGM at LMU.
Excellent science was in the focus of the Building Bridges 2023 Conference on 10-11th October, featuring brilliant research talks from each Class of AE with speakers from both AE and the YAE. On the 10th October, the passionate talk by Mona Simion about fact-checking and disinformation elicited a great response from the audience, as well as the interesting presentation of Marc Yeste which discussed how semen contributed to fertilisation and early embryo development. On the 11th October, Máté Csanád started the day by an insightful talk about femtoscopy and particle accelerators deciphering the Big Bang, and Scott Bremer’s inspiring presentation about seasonal cultures in New Zealand shaping adaptation closed the conference. In addition to these research talks, along with Steve Evans, Poul Holm and Peter Wagner (AE members), Katalin Solymosi took part in a panel discussion entitled “Healthy Food and Sustainable Agriculture: Exploring Transformative Practices” which presented the work of the Task Force for Environment, Sustainability and Climate of AE.
On this day, Katalin Solymosi and Scott Bremer awarded Professor Renaud Jolivet with the André Mischke YAE Prize for Science and Policy. In additon to his scientific excellence recognised as a full Professor at the Maastricht Centre for Systems Biology, and Chair of Neural Engineering & Computation at Maastricht University, he has been involved in science policy at the European level by taking up various roles in the Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA), the Initiative for Science in Europe (ISE) and the European Commission’s European Research Area Forum. In addition to his latest research deciphering the imaging and modelling of the plasticity of neuronal networks within the brain, Renaud Jolivet also shared his experiences and vision for science policy at the European level in his talk entitled “Spanning boundaries between science and policy”. The video recordings of the BB2023 event are available here.