On April 04-06, 2023, we met in Dresden at Hotel Elbflorenz for our 4th µBone Retreat.

Since we were not able to meet face-to-face for the last two years, we were all excited to get together face-to-face and listen to our nineteen µBone projects and see the progress by the µBone members of the second funding period during the last challenging years.

Our retreat started with a Pre-Day on which a soft skill course on “Scientific Storytelling” was offered to our young scientists. Fifteen PhD students and PostDocs took the chance and participated in the workshop led by Nadine Lux from Science³. Quite an experience and hopefully something, where we will see the benefits in future presentations and papers!

The second day of our Retreat started with a brief welcome address given by µBone speaker Lorenz Hofbauer followed by the first session of project presentations. Each talk was followed by an interactive discussion. The quality of the science and the presentation style was amazing. After a short coffee break we continued with the second round of project presentations. After a light lunch, we enjoyed our first key-note lecture given by Dr. Simone Cenci from Milano, followed by our third session of project presentations. After Coffee we continued with our “Talk Show” in which Hanna Taipaleenmäki, Klaus Pantel, Michael Hölzel, Lorenz Hofbauer and Simone Cenci answered questions from our young researchers regarding career development strategies, real-life experiences & challenges, and we were impressed of the interesting questions and for the enthusiastic atmosphere. Bottom line by all five PIs was that you need a viable plan B for success. Afterwards we went to the City center and enjoyed dinner overlooking the Elbe river.

Day 3 started with our session 4 of project presentations followed by our second Keynote talk. Dr. Jens-Peter Sölch from Amgen delivered his presentation on “Working at a Global Biotech Company” in a video format. After a short break we continued with our last set of project presentations. Finally, our 4th Retreat closed with a short award ceremony given by Lorenz. The award for the „Best structured presentation“ was given to Ielizaveta Gorodetska (PostDoc from Dresden, Project 6), while Arwin Groenewoud (PostDoc from Erlangen, Project 8) received the price for the „Most entertaining presentation“ and the award for the „Best response to questions“ was given to Alexander Schäffer (PhD student from Frankfurt, Project 15). Congratulations!

At this point, we would like to thank to all our speakers for their great talks and all researchers who contributed with insightful questions and helpful hints, and for the motivated and enjoyable atmosphere. We were very impressed by the performance and productivity of the next generation researchers.

We are very happy that our 4th µBone Retreat turned out so well! It was a pleasure to have you all in Dresden!