Happy 2023 from the GEroNIMO coordination team!

When looking behind at the past year, we feel proud to see the involvement of all of you in making GEroNIMO project a success. When building a house, we need a strong foundation to have a solid building. The construction and the development of a project are the same, we need a solid start and motivated people all along the project to achieve our goals. GEroNIMO is thriving in a nice and solid project! Thank all the partners involved for that! 2022 was indeed an exciting year full of accomplishments. All animal designs were set up, many phenotypes measured, and most samples collected. The inventory of existing analyses of the societal and ethical concerns and interviews of stakeholders in different countries are also well-advanced. We submitted most of our deliverables and milestones in time, including, among others, an extensive report on the European-wide survey organized to assess the management practices of local chicken and pig breeds, a good exploitation plan, and an optimized R package for the optimization of breeding programs. Our training and communication activity was also rich and interesting with the organization of outstanding workshops in Sweden and Germany, dealing with molecular biology, quantitative genetics, and ethics, and an incredible online hackathon that we will remember for a long time J! Of course, we cannot forget our terrific first annual meeting in Paris, which allowed us to meet at last after two long years of Covid restrictions. 

We are now excited to start 2023 with renewed energy and enthusiasm and many exciting activities planned for this year!

Considering that successful communication is fundamental to making people understand what we do, which is not as easy as it sounds, we couldn't have started the year any better than by organizing a training course on scientific communication which will take place on 24 and 25 January. Science communication is essential to advancing research, and this training will help us acquire the skills we need to do it effectively.  

This gloomy wintertime is not stopping us from planning next summer's activities. We will meet again in June for our second Annual General Meeting in a great place in Switzerland: the University of Bern. This will be an opportunity for members of the GEroNIMO community to get together, present their work and discuss project advancement, share ideas, plan for the future, and enjoy Toscano's animations and activities.

This year is also full of expectations concerning the valorization of the first "GEroNIMO" results. We have all worked hard this year, and there are several manuscripts that we hope will be published in 2023. In addition, we plan to participate in several congresses and events throughout the year where we will be able to present the results of our research. These events will allow us to meet other scientists in person and discuss our work in greater detail, bringing GEroNIMO's activities to the attention of the global scientific community. These events will help us build relationships with other researchers and stakeholders and strengthen collaboration to enlarge the GEroNIMO community. 

Last but not least, we welcome all the young students and young scientists who have joined us so far, and encourage them to make the most of GEroNIMO by being proactive in proposing activities that could help advance and by benefiting from the stimulating and high-quality community that GEroNIMO can offer!

We look forward to another year working together to make GEroNIMO a continued success!