This year over 170 CMMC members attended the CMMC Annual Retreat, including 52 Principal Investigators, 29 PostDocs, and 93 PhD/Master students.

The successful combination of engaged and enthusiastic participants, an excellent scientific program, and the friendly atmosphere of the venue (Katholisch-Soziales Institut at Siegburg) contributed significantly to the success of the CMMC Annual Retreat 2024.

We are delighted that the Vice Rector for Research of the University of Cologne - Prof. Dr. Claus Cursiefen- opened the CMMC Annual Retreat with a welcome address.

Professor Benzing and the CMMC Executive Board express their sincere thanks to the Scientific Organizing Committee - Dr. Robert Hänsel Hertsch, Dr. Felix Hoyer, Dr. Hien Nguyen and Dr. Simon Pöpsel - for putting together a challenging and varied program: 

CMMC PIs or their representatives presented the progress of their CMMC research project in four pre-sessions. In two flash talk sessions, 22 PhD students or PostDocs presented their posters in a very appealing way and thus perfectly introduced the two poster sessions with a total of 73 poster contributions. The "poster presenters", mostly PhD students invited the other participants to learn more about their research project and to discuss open questions, thus providing a lively platform on which the discussions were intensively continued. The scientific program was rounded off by the CMMC Lecture by Prof. Anna Köttgen from the Institute of Genetic Epidemiology (Freiburg), who gave a very nice talk on the value of population studies for translational research.

Finally, we were pleased to choose the Poster Prize and Flash Talk Awardees:

• Poster Prize Winner: Maria A. Garcia-Marquez (RG Schlößer), Priscilla Piccirillo (RG Hänsel-Hertsch), Matea Zrilic (RG Annibaldi)
• Flash alk Awardees: Ina Lisewski (RG Annibaldi), Julie Mudler (RG Rybniker), Tang Cam Phung Pham (RG Wiesner)

Many thanks to all participants who were involved in the evaluation of the flash talks and poster contributions to identify the three best contributions.