Over 50 EMBL alumni and staff joined the EMBL pre-Summer party event to hear what’s happening at EMBL and beyond in academia, research and other work sectors on Saturday 7th July.

The talks were short, informative and fun – just the right balance for a Saturday morning! Participants included more EMBL group leaders and predocs than previous years, as well as more alumni from abroad: Italy, Finland, Switzerland, France and Brussels were represented. See list of speakers and participants in the links above.

From the discussion on how EMBL staff and alumni can better support one another it was clear that the most valuable part of such meetings is the opportunity to careers network, more so than detailed talks. The participants asked for more networking opportunities through an organised breakfast and lunch at the next event as well as more interactive sessions and announcements on who’s coming.

Carsten Sachse: “I enjoyed hearing about other people’s career paths. I strongly agree with the main discussion point that came up after the meeting: current PhDs and Postdocs could tremendously benefit from hearing about other people’s career paths and get in personal contact if needed.”

Berthold Rutz: “Thanks for organising this interesting exchange and the opportunity to see some familiar faces. As already mentioned at the event, it would be great if in the future you could manage to get some more pre-docs and post-docs from EMBL joining through more advertising and smaller discussion rounds after the talks, for example.”