e:Med Summer School ConlSym

Ringberg castle, May 20 – 24, 2019

The BMBF funded ConISyM Summer School 2019 under direction of Prof. Dr. med. Bernd Pichler focused on image processing in systems medicine. ConISyM aimed to strengthen methodological skills of young scientists and to open up new perspectives on their own projects. The young scientists were inspired to think beyond their own research field and learned new techniques that can be applied in combination to optimize their use in answering various scientific questions.

Twenty ambitious doctoral and postdoctoral researchers and 15 (inter) national speakers met at Castle Ringberg near Lake Tegernsee. Their areas of research ranged from systems medicine, clinical research and application to preclinical research and computer sciences. In combined efforts, they approached diverse areas of image processing interdisciplinarily. The structured training program on imaging focused on macroscopic and microscopic imaging modalities as well as clinically relevant diagnostic procedures such as multiparametric imaging, histopathology, omics data, and fluid biomarkers. This was complemented by topics on data integration, network analysis, machine learning as well as questions on personalized medicine and systems biology.

In keynote lectures about their complex topics, a cross-link was set to the e:Med project groups “informatics & data management”, “data security & ethics” and “epigenetics & sequencing" to further strengthen the interdisciplinary knowledge exchange, interchange on cross-section topics.
Based on their abstracts, four participants were selected in a peer-review process for oral presentation of their projects in a lecture to the audience. During poster walks all participants were able to share and discuss their research. Topics ranged from Imaging Biomarkers and Liquid Biopsies over Software development for machine learning, different machine learning approaches and computational pathology to analysis of sequencing data and the development of multi scale modelling.

Overall, the wide range of topics and diverse aspects of imaging were assessed very positively by the participants in the ConISyM Summer School. The presentations were scientifically excellent and well-coordinated with one another. The lively, intensive discussion among the interdisciplinary group of participants and speakers throughout the entire workshop were especially emphasized and broadened the scope for each participant. Participants had plenty of time and opportunities to ask specific questions and discuss their issues with the speakers intensively.
Due to heavy floods on Tegernsee the planned boat trip literally fell into the water, whereupon a workshop on crowd sourcing was carried out spontaneously, which was very well received. The participants were trained in the analysis of tissue slides on a web-based computational pathology platform and performed complex image annotations themselves.
The spacious ambiance of Ringberg Castle provided plenty possibilities to play table football, table tennis and music. Together with the excursion with gondola ride to the Wallberg, the highest summit on the Tegernsee, this stimulated further informal exchange of ideas among the scientists in an inspiring, relaxed atmosphere and rounded off the workshop successfully.

Webpage with further information: https://www.sys-med.de/conisym/