SKINTEGRITY.CH remains on the road to Success
On 30 June and 1 July 2023, it was time again: SKINTEGRITY.CH held its fifth Retreat in Spiez and presented exciting research work during two days.
Focus on the Skin
76 SKINTEGRITY.CH participants were guided through the two-day event in Spiez by Sabine Werner and Lukas Sommer, where the focus was on topics and activities with an interdisciplinary connection to the skin. 21 lectures were presented from engineering, clinical and mechanistic-biological perspectives on skin and skin equivalents. The idea of interdisciplinary collaboration at SKINTEGRITY.CH poses challenges, but at the same time the research results clearly demonstrate that this challenge is worth it. Since the beginning
of the project in 2016, more than 80 publications, 4 patents, 18 PhD dissertations and several grants were made possible by SKINTEGRITY.CH
The presentations at this year's retreat were equally distributed over the three topics of wound healing, skin cancer and inflammatory skin diseases. «Thanks to the confidential atmosphere, a lot of unpublished data could be shared, and new technologies could be presented again this year, making the discussions very lively and constructive», says Maarten Schledorn, Scientific Coordinator of KINTEGRITY.CH. His personal highlight was the informal and open interaction among the researchers. «The discussions, both scientific and personal, are always open and on an equal footing. The whole event is characterised by a flat hierarchy and thus a very constructive exchange»,
Schledorn adds.
The team still grows
The SKINTEGRITY.CH Consortium already consists of 48 Principal Investigators (PI) and was pleased to welcome three new PIs this year. Antonios Kolios, Julia-Tatjana Maul and Laurence Feldmeyer have joined the SKINTEGRITY. CH team and thus also support the
younger generation. SKINTEGRITY.CH's successful «Young Investigator Program » (YIP) held a pre-conference programme one day before the actual retreat. Two guests were invited to this event, where they discussed about artificial intelligence (AI) in research, imaging
and academic education. One of the guests specifically addressed the Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer (ChatGPT), a software application developed by the AI research company «OpenAI».
The next SKINTEGRITY.CH meeting in summer 2024 is already being planned. The venue will be at a different place, centrally located in the country and thus easily accessible for all team members. We are eager to see what else SKINTEGRITY.CH has to offer in the future and look forward to more contributions
The next SKINTEGRITY.CH meeting in summer 2024 is already being planned. The venue will be at a different place, centrally located in the country and thus easily accessible for all team members. We are eager to see what else SKINTEGRITY.CH has to offer in the future and look forward to more contributions in the What's New section of Dermatologica Helvetica.
Review 4/23 - 21.07.2023