This year’s staff-alumni event prior to the EMBL summer party was dedicated to life sciences from research and EMBL core facilities to industry, start-ups and and communication. We were delighted to fulfil the complete wish list from last year’s participants: attracting more EMBL staff (50% of the participants), focusing more on industry, providing information on EMBL Core Facilities and offering an additional topic outside research and industry with science communication. The biggest resource of course was the diversity of the speakers and participants (42 in total), from EMBL pensioners Konrad Müller, Frieda Glöckner and Mary Holmes to the contacts from EMBL’s industry arm EMBL-EM and EMBL-Ventures, to current and former fundraisers, academics and science writers. Participants clearly enjoyed the opportunity to catch up with an otherwise diverse group, attending both the breakfast session at 10:30 and lunch till 15:00 in large numbers.

We were delighted to have Martin Raditsch and Jan Adams join us, especially this year after the decision to adjust the EMBL Alumni Association statutes to allow former staff of EMBL-EM and EMBL-Ventures to join the EMBL alumni community.