It rained on the 1st day, but afterwards the sun came out allowing the participants of The Stem Cell Niche to socialize in the outside courtyard of the conference venue, Favrholm, which was reserved exclusively for the conference participants.
This was the 2nd time The Danish Stem Cell Center (DanStem) and the Novo Nordisk Foundation collaborated on creating a Stem Cell Niche conference. The first time was in June 2012.
A poster competion was held during the conference with prizes being awarded for the best PhD poster and the best PostDoc poster. In each category, 3 judges evaluated and choose a winner with the PhD prize being awarded to Sanja Sale, University of Rijeka, Croatia, and the PostDoc prize being awarded to Ivan Bedzhov, University of Cambridge, UK. The participants had brought posters describing their research projects and got to share their knowledge in two poster sessions.
4 busses drove the participants to Copenhagen on Tuesday afternoon. Here they paid a visit to Christiansborg Palace and had dinner at Restaurant SALT with a sea side view to the Royal Danish Opera. The excursion was part of the social program of the conference. Busses were also arranged to shuttle the participants between their hotels and the conference venue throughout the conference.
The 5 centres in the Novo Nordisk Foundation Research Centre Cluster was presented in shinny fashion on Sunday evening as a team also employed at the largest Danish festival, Roskilde Festival, provided lights and music to accompany the five center representatives on stage. For further information on the cluster, click here.
6 editors participated in the session “The Editors’ Corner” where the participants were invited to ask questions and get inside knowledge about the reviewing process.
Only 7 days prior to the conference, Favrholm Campus finished the restoration of their last stall. For that reason, 25 of the participants were the first ones ever to stay and sleep in the stall. Favrholm used to be an old farm with milking cows, but is today a meeting and conference centre and hosts the annual Copenhagen Bioscience Conferences.
8 hours of time difference gave the Australian participant Stephen Frankenberg jetlag for the first couple of days of the conference. In total, 27 nations from 5 different continents were represented.
It took 9 minutes for the photographer to gather all 188 participants in a group photo, which the participants got to bring home as a memory from this year’s conference.
At 10 pm at the final night dinner, the DJ duo Semb and Semb (Professor Henrik Semb of DanStem and his son) took to the stage and made sure that no one left the dance floor before the party had come to its end.
