From the coordinator:
As we approach Midsommar, we in MultiPark can reflect on the extraordinary last few months and hope that our environment can return back more to meetings, seminars and productive exchanges after the summer. Although neurodegenerative diseases were less in the news because of Covid-19, people with Parkinson and Alzheimer’s diseases were however more affected by the virus. Our work to improve the health and life-situation of those afflicted by these major diseases of aging continues to require our hard work. With a grandmother from Ireland who died from Alzheimer’s disease and an American neuroscientist father currently afflicted by Parkinson’s disease, I, like many of you, know the ravages these diseases bring to people and their families, and therefore how important our work is within MultiPark.
MultiPark tries to provide a nourishing environment to support the important work that we do, by bringing people together to learn and exchange ideas via e.g. noon-time seminars and retreats, but also by providing funding for valuable new infrastructures and platforms. Much of this work is done behind the scenes to those working in the labs, for who the Strategic Research Environment (SFO) MultiPark might seem not much more than a distant name. This year a new infrastructure working group composed of young and mid-level experimental PIs was formed to give advice to better streamline and make our technical platforms more user friendly, efficient and financially accessible. For this I thank Maria Swanberg, leader of this group, and the other members of this group, Daniella Ottosson, Oxana Klementieva, Christian Hansen and Andreas Heuer, for their ongoing efforts. Managing infrastructures in an environment such as ours is not as straightforward as one might think. PIs running infrastructures are busy and their research will come first, which makes organizing and improving infrastructures not a top priority.
This spring many of our talks had to be cancelled, such as our 2nd year of innovation talks organized by Tomas Deierborg, head of our innovation group. However, the plan is now for these talks to be held in the autumn. Noon-time seminars were initially cancelled but then moved to Zoom, with increasing numbers joining despite the drawback of no shared lunches. Our retreat was moved from September to December 3 & 4 and here the Retreat organizing committee has been hard at work, going even beyond their work for the retreat to also set up a Twitter for MultiPark; take a look at this!
For some overview on how MultiPark operates and makes decision to those less familiar with how we work, in brief, the coordinators, our MultiPark study coordinator, our administrator Diana Jerman and, starting this year, also one representative each from experimental scientists, Malin Parmar, and the clinic, Gesine Paul-Visse meet every two weeks in a management working group to discuss upcoming initiatives and plans to take to our steering group. The steering group meets once a month and is composed of leaders of the working groups as well as the two coordinators. All decisions eventually taken by the Board are first discussed in and go via our steering group, and Minutes from the steering group meetings are provided to our Board. Members of MultiPark can approach their respective working group leaders if they would like to bring something to the attention of the steering group. Although the working groups, see https://www.multipark.lu.se/research/working-groups, are not considered perfect, since some PIs don’t feel fully at home in one of them, they were set up to encompass the work in MultiPark and fulfill an important purpose of facilitating communication from MultiPark research labs and their PIs via these working groups to the management and steering group.
Thus, I wish you a safe and happy summer!
Gunnar K. Gouras
Coordinator of MultiPark