Cilia 2022
Cilia 2022 conference in Cologne
4.-7. 10. 2022
We went to Cilia 2022, finally!
This conference was the biggest cilia event we were waiting for since the beginning of our PhDs. Most of us started our PhD journey in 2020, when Cilia conference should have taken place and it should have been our introduction to scientific ciliary community. Instead, covid-19 pandemic made all the travelling, which we were waiting for so much, impossible, and unfortunately the conference had to be postponed to 2021. However, 2021 was not kinder to us either, conference got postponed again and we all were bit heartsick that we cannot meet all the cilia famous scientists who we had known only through computer screens.
Our wish became true this October when all the waiting came to an end we could finally go to EMBO Cilia 2022, the 5th European Cilia Conference.
First day, the program was focus on connecting patients with researchers. I believe that I am writing for all us, when I say that especially Exchange session touched our hearts. In Exchange session, patient organizations, patients and parents with children affected by ciliopathies share their experience how challenging life is when you have to live with such rare diseases. It was truly motivating to meet people for whom we are trying to increase our knowledge so they can be more informed what to expect when ciliopathy is diagnosed and in ideal case also help with treating it.
This way, we would like to thank all the people for sharing their story and also organizers of Cilia conferences for this beautiful idea to bring researchers and patients together.
Wednesday and Thursday were of many great talks and presentations and posters. All most all of us had prepared posters and three of our PhD students - Emma, Guilia and Jindriska - were awarded with flash talks. Flash talks are one-minute presentations of your work to increase interests of people in your poster. This was an amazing initiative and not only that it certainly worked but our PhD students got the opportunity to try how it feels to stand on the podium. Poster presentations were divided into three sessions of which the evening one was with drinks. Yay!
After successful poster presentations we enjoyed the gala dinner and then the only day left, Friday, filled with amazing speakers. It was sad to see the conference come to an end and depart Cologne and our friends. But we can already start to look forward to Cilia 2024 in Dublin!
We are all thankful to organizers for making this experience possible, especially that for most of us it was our first international conference. Thank you!
