Our third SmartAge Network Meeting took place from 04 - 06 October 2023 in Wageningen, Netherlands.
On Wednesday we gathered at Fletcher Hotel "De Wageningse Berg" around noon for registration. After a nice lunch, Lisette de Groot and her team from the Wageningen University, the organizers of this year's meeting, welcomed everyone and opened the event. Then Renger Witkamp, Professor and chair in Nutritional Biology of the Wageningen university, started with the first keynote lecture about “Food-Drug interactions in the elderly: A two-fold problem with potentially severe consequences”. Following we had a very interesting presentation from our beneficiary Domokos Mathé (CROmed, Hungary) about "In-vivo imaging - design and application of imaging tracers to monitor multitissue inflammation". The final block of the scientific part consisted of a presentation about the WP1 results and three SmartAge ESRs, who gave a progress report of their respective subprojects. The Wednesday evening was rounded off with a dinner in the Fletcher Hotel and a following Get-Together.
On Thursday, we started with our Supervisory Board Meeting, followed by the Coordinator Report and a second keynote lecture by Esther Aarts, Professor for Nutritional Neuroscience at Radboud University, about "Nutrition and cognitive neuroimaging: understanding the gut-immune-brain axis in aging". Following this, we had again presentations from our work package leaders and progress reports from the ESRs. In the late afternoon we had a short walk to the neighboring Belmonte Arboretum, a botanical garden in Wageningen. It was a country estate for a long time. In 1951, the estate passed to the then Wageningen Agricultural College, which set up the grounds as an arboretum. Until 2009, the arboretum was managed scientifically. Since 2012, the Belmonte Arboretum Foundation has been responsible for its management, with the aim of managing this garden botanically, culturally and historically as well as scenically. With 850 species, the arboretum has the largest rhododendron collection in Benelux. In addition, the collection includes collections of apple trees, ornamental cherries, maples, magnolias and birches. In Belmonte Arboretum we first had a very informative tour through the garden followed by a tasty dinner with international dishes.
On Friday we started again with a keynote lecture: Marcus Böhme from Nestlè gave, especially for our ESRs, via Zoom an excellent insight into "Career Perspectives outside of academia". Following this, we had again a presentation from a work package leader and progress reports from the last three ESRs. After a short break, our beneficiary Emmanuel Roy (EDEN, France) gave via Zoom a lecture with the topic "Organ-on-a-chip: from a single lab idea to a multidimensional dynamic market, a 360° view perspective and hurdles analysis". Before lunch, Yannick Vermeiren from Wageningen University recapitulated our third SmartAge Network Meeting impressively and very entertainingly with AI created images based on our research topics and results. In conclusion he asked ChatGPT the question "What is preferred to be used when doing scientific research on the microbiota-gut-brain-axis: human intelligence or AI?" The answer from ChatGPT was: "Interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers with expertise in microbiology, neuroscience, bioinformatics and AI can be particularly effective in advancing our understanding of the MGB axis" - and that is exactly what our SmartAge consortium does.
After lunch we closed the meeting with a SmartAge Quiz, where our ESRs could test if they know the other ESRs well and if they followed the presentations of the previous days attentively. Hereafter, there was time for networking and discussions with regard to upcoming secondments, events or seminars.
It was a pleasure to meet most of the SmartAge participants again and we thank everyone for coming, for the great talks, for discussions, suggestions and the interactive and kind atmosphere.
Here you can find more impressios from the SmartAge network meeting.
