Due to the Covid-19 situation, this programme was converted into an online event instead of a face-to-face meeting at Trinity Hall, Cambridge.
The event was attended by 37 Post-docs and PhD students, not only from Cambridge and Denmark, but as far afield as the USA, India , Egypt, Portugal and Brazil.

Our speakers prepared short webcasts to be viewed in advance (see below) but joined the event live to present a summary of their topic and took questions.

We also had two poster sessions involving 17 participants, including digital posters to view in advance as well as one minute poster pitches followed by questions, during the live event. The poster pitches are available via the Danish Diabetes Academy website.

Other interactive tools to help re-create some of the networking opportunities that would have been part of a physical course included an ‘introduce yourself’ ice breaker session and group work in Zoom breakout rooms, and measuring goals and expectations at the start and end of the course!

The course was open to PhD students and early stage postdoctoral researchers interested in developing their research in this field and was run jointly by the Cambridge Metabolic Network and the Danish Diabetes Academy (DDA).

Programme and Abstract Book

A participant’s view:

I had a very enjoyable two days at the DDA-CMN meeting listening to engaging speakers, having interesting discussions with academics at different stages of their careers and expanding my knowledge of the metabolism field. As this was my first virtual conference/symposium I was slightly sceptical about how it would work, however I was very impressed by the smooth running of the schedule and the opportunities for networking despite being in a different location to the other participants. I found that I was more confident about asking questions and discussing ideas with more senior academics than in a usual conference setting. I also enjoyed being able to watch the webcasts in advance and do some background research beforehand. The poster presentations worked really well but it was a shame that we couldn’t see all of them! While nothing can replace the networking at an in-person conference, the networking sessions and group discussions meant that we were still able to meet new people and hopefully we will be able to meet in real life at the next meeting. A massive thank you to all of the organisers and speakers for making this a very successful virtual meeting.”

Some thoughts from other participants:

Really stimulating-great talks and posters

Hopefully, this course will help me find a research project in this field

..an outstanding course in a difficult time

Main Programme

Please click on each speaker to view their webcast (all speakers have given their permission to share their webcast).