Mid-Term Review and 2nd IRMED Meeting
The IRMED Mid-Term Review Meeting and Second IRMED International Meeting were held in Paris on 23rd April 2012 All IRMED Fellows, PIs and EC representatives attended the meeting. The Fellows were happy to meet again and find out about each other personal journey through science and their research work. They found interesting to hear about what other teams were doing and how they had progressed. Dr Paolo Bonomi succeeded to synthesis fluorescent monomers as sensor receptors for anionic analytes. Judith Ray tagged a polymer with a fluorescent molecule which had optical properties and were sensitive to the presence of an analyte. Pinar Cakir presented interesting results of MIP structuration using the bottom up approach while Dr Serena Ambrosini performed her results from solid-phase synthesis, and my talk concerned mainly the optimisation of imprinted polymeric systems. The Fellows had a unique possibility to talk about their progress and difficulties with their work, and to appreciate that other members of the IRMED network could give useful advice or opinion. One of the best parts of the day for the Fellows was the opportunity to talk to the EC representative about any potential problems they had in their labs and about their relationships with their supervisors. They also discussed the fact that all parties seemed open to sharing ideas and results to further the development of the project. They all came away with a great feeling that they were all working together as one unit. They also discussed the challenges of living in a foreign country and how their host labs were all very good at integrating them into the new cultures both in the lab and in daily life. The PIs took this opportunity to have a number of interesting discussionsand this was a valuable way to talk about the progression of the project, collaborations and future events.